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I'm not just trauma. I'm also academics.

Zach Reynolds

Dr. Nancy Chase

December 2, 2010

Engl 3040

Analyzing the Tragedy of Septimus Smith

Captured in Mrs. Dalloway there is a reflection of the socioeconomic structure of early 20th century England, as well as the patriarchal class and imperial ideologies that marked this era in British history. The burden a civilization informed by these ideologies puts on its constituents, both its lower and upper class members included, is of focal importance to the novel, because despite its celebrated achievements in psychology and temporal analysis, “it nevertheless incarnates a critique of Empire and the war, taking the state as the embodiment of patriarchal power, and the upholder of what even Richard Dalloway calls ‘our detestable social system’” (Tambling 58; Woolf 116). Central to this critique is the tragedy of the character Septimus Smith, a literary-minded veteran who survives the war only to succumb to the more subtle violence of imperial social ‘justice.’

The portrayal of Septimus’ ambitions, military service, and mental collapse provokes a sharp Marxist criticism of the classist and imperialistic tendencies of early 20th century England, and creates through its criticism an interpretation of this moment in history that is defined by the opposite discourses of Septimus and the aristocracy that drives him to suicide.

When Septimus is first introduced to the reader, he is described as “pale-faced, beak-nosed . . . with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too” (Woolf 14). One cannot help but to label him a lunatic immediately following the passage detailing his hallucination of a sparrow chirping his name and singing in Greek, or his vision of “the dead . . . assembling,” with an unknown man, “Evans . . . behind the railings!” (24-25). In the passage that falls between pages 84 and 86, however, a brief biography is given of Septimus Smith, which informs the reader of his disposition before the war. Here, Septimus is made un-extraordinary as one of “millions of young men called Smith” (84), and characterized in his youth as a typical middle class idealist. He is “on the whole, a border case, neither one thing nor the other, might end with a house at Purley and a motor car, or continue renting apartments in back streets all his life . . .” (84). His experiences are summed up satirically in botanical terms, with Woolf imagining that were a gardener to voyeuristically look on Septimus at this early phase in his life, he would say that the young man, consumed with “such a fire as burns only once in a lifetime” with his love for “Miss Isabel Pole, lecturing . . . upon Shakespeare,” and his passion for “Antony and Cleopatra . . . Shakespeare, Darwin, The History of Civilization, and Bernard Shaw”(85) was flowering into a man ardently moved by his reverence for English society and the legacy of art of which his love Miss Pole was the beautiful embodiment.

So, when it came to war, it’s no surprise that “Septimus was one of the first to volunteer. He went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square” (86). The war changes Septimus though. He faces the traumatizing experience of watching his friend die in front of him, yet he stoically does not mourn his friend, Evans, and is rewarded with a wife, a promising promotion in his career in England, and honors for his military service. Yet these things bring Septimus no contentment; the effects of the war on his personality begin to emerge, and he finds upon opening Shakespeare again that what mattered to him before the war, the “business of the intoxication of language – Antony and Cleopatra – had shriveled utterly” (88). Septimus exits the war with his idealism atrophied; but even worse, his connection to civilization is severed:

“He looked at people outside; happy they seemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing, squabbling over nothing. But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the tea-shop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him – he could not feel” (87-88).

So disillusioned does Septimus become that he no longer can make the association of beautiful Miss Pole to the arts; rather he finds “the message hidden in the beauty of words . . . is loathing, hatred, despair” (88); and “human beings,” he observes, “have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity . . . They hunt in packs . . . scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness. They desert the fallen” (89). Compared to the idealistic youth who fell in love with Miss Pole, the post-war Septimus is a different person entirely, and suddenly there is an explanation for the lunatic introduced to the reader several pages earlier in the novel with his hallucinations of a man named “Evans.”

Following the detailed deterioration of Septimus’ mind comes his interaction with two different doctors, each a member of the English aristocracy; they are Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw. Septimus meets with these men at the request of his wife to receive diagnosis and treatment for his nervous breakdown. Coming from the proletariat places Septimus immediately in a position that is submissive to the bourgeoisie doctors Holmes and Bradshaw; it also puts his mental collapse into a context that allows for a Marxist interpretation of how his role in society has caused his neurosis to develop. In Dr. Holmes, Septimus first encounters the discourse of the English aristocracy, and finds to his disgust that it is a language informed by oppressive classist and patriarchal values that are ignorant of or deny the basic emotional needs that, not being met, are at the heart of Septimus’ mental breakdown.

In the passage written from Holmes’ point of view, the Smith’s are portrayed in condescending language that serves to communicate their lesser social rank and Dr. Holmes supposed superiority as a member of the bourgeois. He speaks down to his patient as one would to a child, and invokes the privilege of his rank as a doctor and aristocrat to force his way into the Smith’s home when his entry is refused by Septimus: “Did he indeed?” said Dr. Holmes, smiling agreeably. Really he had to give that charming little lady, Mrs. Smith, a friendly push before he could get past her into her husband’s bedroom” (91-92). In another example, Dr. Holmes belittles Septimus’ illness by telling him that “there [is] nothing whatever the matter” (90) with him, and suggests hobbies he could take up to distract himself, rather than offering any real medical advice. Patronizing Septimus’ illness as mere neuroticism is Dr. Holmes first step to establishing his superiority to Smith. In his second visit, a response to the patient’s talk of suicide, he invokes the patriarchal mores of male programming, and scolds Septimus for giving his wife “a very odd idea of English husbands” (91), implicating him as guilty of failing in both his duties to stoicism and patriotism as a male and a veteran.

In his failure to conform to typical male programming, Erika Baldt sees an applicability of Julia Kristeva’s definition of abjection to Septimus’ situation. Kristeva defines abjection as “the ambivalent, the border where exact limits between same and other, subject and object, and even beyond these, between inside and outside, [are] disappearing—hence an Object of fear and fascination" (qtd. in Baldt 14). Kristeva goes on to say that “at the limit, if someone personifies abjection without assurance of purification, it is a woman, ‘any woman’” (qtd. 14). Therefore, Septimus, for suffering from shell-shock, a form of hysteria, which was considered a feminine “extreme of emotion,” is seen as deviant because he does not comply with the “exact limits” of masculinity, and thus is deemed a “traitor to [his] sex” (Baldt 14). Just from his encounter with Dr. Holmes, then, Septimus is labeled as a deviant and potential threat to society. In addition, implied through the portrayal of traditionally feminine qualities in a male character, there is in the text a discourse of opposition to the biological essentialism that defined gender roles at the turn of the 19th century conflicting directly with a misogynistic and patriarchal discourse that is part of the discourse of the British Empire.

Further critique of the Empire comes out of Septimus’ encounter with Dr. Holmes in regard to the injustice of the war. It is, in fact, the callousness of his society that, internalized in Septimus, has caused his mental collapse – his interior monologue in reaction to Holmes’ insistence that nothing is wrong with him reveals this plainly: “So there was no excuse; nothing whatever the matter, except the sin for which human nature had condemned him to death; that he did not feel. He had not cared when Evans was killed; that was worst . . .” (91). It is this lack of remorse, which, because it is felt at the core of Septimus’ society and has been instilled in him through honors, through decoration as a war hero, that he has his nervous breakdown. This drives his guilt and drives him to condemn himself, and by extension, condemn the society that has instilled in him such callousness. As one critic aptly points out in his analysis, “This kind of satire on the author's part surely reveals the point of the outstanding irony in Smith's continuous self-condemnation of himself for his inability to feel. For it is precisely because he can feel that he is in such difficulty, and at such odds with society” (Samuelson 66). Having witnessed the devastation of war, in particular Evans’ death, places Septimus in the difficult and isolating position of knowing the truth of the war that is denied by the bellicose rationalization of leaders (embodied in Dr. Holmes, and later Bradshaw) who never saw the front line and dictated the terms of the war from the relative safety of their homes. Thus, “Septimus, appalled and revolted by the patriotic lies by which his fellow Londoners transform collective murder into "pleasurable . . . emotion" and himself into a war hero, is diagnosed as mad” (Froula 147).

At his encounter with Sir William Bradshaw, Septimus has worked up to his most vehement critique of his society. “Once you fall,” he says to himself, “human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert . . . The rack and thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless” (Woolf 98). Indeed, the conflict between imperial discourse and humane discourse is at its most vehement in this encounter too. It is also worth nothing that the narrator sympathizes strongly with Septimus Smith when, for instance, she criticizes the real motivation behind Bradshaw’s socially celebrated benevolence:

“Sir William would travel sixty miles or more down into the country to visit the rich, the afflicted, who could afford the very large fee which Sir William very properly charged for his advice . . . Her ladyship waited [in the car] with the rugs about her knees . . . thinking . . . of the wall of gold mounting minute by minute while she waited . . .” (94).

The portrayal of Sir William that follows in the remainder of the passage is equally satirizing, invoking Septimus’ discourse of anti-classism and overall cynicism. This becomes apparent again especially when Sir William says that “he never spoke of ‘madness’; he called it not having a sense of proportion” (96). After which he invokes his power as a doctor and knight and makes Septimus’ case a matter of law, ‘prescribing’ him rest and isolation, as per the norm of the medicalized society of early 20th century Britain, when this is actually equivalent to a death sentence for Septimus. For Bradshaw, however, the rest cure – or isolation and quarantine to put it more plainly – is the only recourse for deviant cases such as the Smith case. Though it is disguised, this is actually a reaction of fear; “The discourse of the lunatics, who lack what Sir Bradshaw euphemistically refers to as a sense of proportion, threatens to undermine the strength of the British Empire, already in danger at the historical moment of the novel . . . the insane threaten to contaminate the "sane" who uphold and submit to the order of the Empire” (Smith 18). In other words, the discourse of the “insane” Septimus, who recognizes the impersonal treatment of Evans as a crime, must be suppressed.

Thus, Bradshaw, “worshipping proportion . . . not only prospered himself but made England prosper, secluded her lunatics, forbade childbirth, penalised despair, made it impossible for the unfit to propagate their views until they, too, shared his sense of proportion” (Woolf 99). Just as Septimus views the rest cure as a sentence rather than a treatment, so apparently does the narrator. It is a means used to silence the unruly “lunatic” who questions the established social order and the callousness of his society. This more violent side of proportion the narrator embodies as its sister: “Conversion is her name and she feasts on the wills of the weakly, loving to impress, to impose, adoring her own features stamped on the face of the populace” (100). Calling to mind images of colonialism in Africa, in India, and around the world, the word “conversion” finally sums up Septimus’ and the narrator’s view of imperial England. Through criticizing the figures in the novel who most symbolize the top of the power structure in England, the policies of the English state are criticized, both for their brutality within the country and without.

Ironically, Septimus is condemned by Bradshaw and Holmes not because he cannot feel, but because he feels too much. While the socially prescribed norm values stoicism and blind patriotism, he nevertheless can’t help but to feel repulsed by the lack of humanity in such values. Indeed, “Septimus is in many ways more sane than the "civilized" society to which he returns” (Henry 233). Septimus is not the only character in the novel to recognize his society is insane, however. Speaking of Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf herself states in the introduction to one of the early editions of her novel that “Septimus, who later is intended to be her double, had no existence; and that Mrs. Dalloway was originally to kill herself, or perhaps merely to die at the end of the party” (qtd. in Samuelson 60). Though the two characters never meet, it can be observed that Clarissa does share some of the same emotional qualities that Septimus has, if only to a lesser extent. She knows nothing of the war, and the trauma that it has inflicted on Septimus’ mind, for example, but she shares in his oppression by the patriarchal ideology of imperial England. She expresses her awareness of being so oppressed most keenly with her intense dislike of Sir Bradshaw, judging him “a great doctor yet to her obscurely evil, without sex or lust . . . but capable of some indescribably outrage – forcing your soul, that was it –“ (Woolf 184-85).

Most importantly, Clarissa Dalloway becomes the receiving vessel of Septimus’ message in her empathetic vision of his suicide and death. Faced with confinement, Septimus finally throws himself out of a window before the approaching Holmes can deliver him to Bradshaw for conversion into a yielding imperial pawn through the abuses of the rest treatment. “Lone witness of a reality that everyone around him denies, Septimus . . . suffers, owns, and tries to bear witness to his civilization's "appalling crime" but is finally forced to reenact it through a death that he expects to be read--a death that he offers as a gift, and that the narrative insulates from dismissal as madness” (Froula 149-50). Though he is “pushed” to suicide, Septimus also “jumps” (150). His final act is an act of defiance that through her empathetic vision Clarissa is capable of reading into, and even fantasizing about, before withdrawing back into the insulating world of her upper class marriage and submissive status as Richard Dalloway’s wife. Ultimately, Clarissa can’t die because as a part of the bourgeois, her life is valued more and thus insulated, doubly so because she is a female and deemed feeble by her patriarchal society.

Septimus, on the other hand, is born into the proletariat and is expendable. Even so, the meaning of Septimus’ life is not lost on Clarissa, and more importantly, can not be overlooked by the reader:

“If Clarissa's elegy for Septimus is inadequate to arraign the world before the truths it brands madness, Mrs. Dalloway captures his message within its fictional bounds for the world beyond them. Not Clarissa but we readers receive (or not) the message of Septimus's death, the costs of the war he names a "crime," the measure of what his life means to him, the infinite possibilities of his unfurling days” (151).

Thus, though Septimus exists in an isolated world apart from the superficial reality that every other character in the novel except for him resides in, his tragedy affects them all. Clarissa recognizes how in death, Septimus has preserved through his suicide “a thing . . . that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter” (Woolf 184). This thing may be his individuality, which he is unwilling to compromise to the tune of Bradshaw’s idols “Proportion” and “Conversion,” or it may be his message to a future generation to “resist,” to “defy.” Either way, Septimus’ conflict with the society that expels him represents the turmoil of his society as it quietly grieves the catastrophe of the war while stoically denying that it has taken any injury. The discourse of Septimus’ “madness” pitted against that of Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw in Mrs. Dalloway captures the tension between the patriarchal force of the dying imperial empire and the rising class discontent and interest in socialism in the early 20th century. His tragedy, in addition to questioning the established classifications of sanity and insanity, helps new historians to understand how some of the traditional and subversive discourses of this age in England interacted.

Works Cited

Baldt, Erika. "Abjection as Deviance in Mrs. Dalloway." Virginia Woolf Miscellany 70.(2006): 13-15. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 14 Nov. 2010.

Froula, Christine. “Mrs. Dalloway’s Postwar Elegy: Women, War, and the Art of Mourning.” Modernism/Modernity 9.1 (2002): 125-163. Project Muse. 14 November 2010. Web.

Henry, Holly. "Woolf & The War." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 44.2 (2001): 231-235. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 Dec. 2010.

Samuelson, Ralph. “The Theme of Mrs. Dalloway.” Chicago Review 11.4 (Winter, 1958): 57-76. JSTOR. Web. 02 Dec. 2010

Smith, Amy. "Bad Religion: The Irrational in Mrs. Dalloway." Virginia Woolf Miscellany 70.(2006): 17-18. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 15 Nov. 2010

Tambling, Jeremy. “Repression in Mrs Dalloway’s London.” Essays in Criticism 39 (April 1989): 137-155. Print Copy

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. London: Harcourt, Inc., 1925. Print.

#virginia woolf #mrs dalloway #septimus ptsd and marxist proletariat theories #academic essay

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