Septimus and his PTSD
Right from when we first met him, Septimus Warren Smith was an interesting character. His personality and his problems throughout the novel differed greatly from some of the other characters we are introduced to in the novel Mrs. Dalloway. With Septimus, it is both important and fascinating to look at his character from the viewpoint of Virginia Woolf writing this person into the story.
Woolf depicts Septimus's illness and consequent suicide in a very passive and introspective way. We learn mostly about his own experiences with his mental health from his own thoughts-- not from another character diagnosing him. The only other characters that know about Septimus and his illness are his doctors: Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw, and his wife Lucrezia.
We don't learn much from Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw as they are pretty useless with this case of mental illness -- as many doctors in that time were. Their idea that Septimus just needs some rest obviously is a failed approach as Septimus ends his life before he even gets to have this miraculous prescribed rest.
While we do learn a bit about Septimus's behavior and illness from Lucrezia, it isn't enough to know much about the nature of his illness as Lucrezia doesn't know much herself. We can only really see Lucrezia's fear about Septimus and how his illness fits into their life and existence in London.
Since we can't really rely much on information about why Septimus acts the way he does from others, we have to interpret things from his background and his actions in the present. From these things, we can piece together that he has PTSD, but before we have enough information to figure this out with stories from his past in the war and with his friend Evans, we have to use the other character's pictures of Septimus to understand his character.
Woolf depicts Septimus's illness and consequent suicide in a very passive and introspective way. We learn mostly about his own experiences with his mental health from his own thoughts-- not from another character diagnosing him. The only other characters that know about Septimus and his illness are his doctors: Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw, and his wife Lucrezia.
We don't learn much from Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw as they are pretty useless with this case of mental illness -- as many doctors in that time were. Their idea that Septimus just needs some rest obviously is a failed approach as Septimus ends his life before he even gets to have this miraculous prescribed rest.
While we do learn a bit about Septimus's behavior and illness from Lucrezia, it isn't enough to know much about the nature of his illness as Lucrezia doesn't know much herself. We can only really see Lucrezia's fear about Septimus and how his illness fits into their life and existence in London.
Since we can't really rely much on information about why Septimus acts the way he does from others, we have to interpret things from his background and his actions in the present. From these things, we can piece together that he has PTSD, but before we have enough information to figure this out with stories from his past in the war and with his friend Evans, we have to use the other character's pictures of Septimus to understand his character.
This is a really interesting post that delves deeper into the fact of perspectives, specifically with Septimus. While reading your post, I was thinking about Woolf and her history with mental illness. I remember discussing in class that she also suffered from a mental illness and struggled with the doctor’s prescribed rest cure. A possible reason for only receiving Septimus’ perspective is that was her perspective. She knows to a certain extent how he feels but not necessarily how the doctors or his wife feels. She can make reasonable assumptions which we see (Lucrezia’s fear, Holmes’ obliviousness, and Bradshaw’s rest cure) but it would be much harder to delve deeper into these characters’ feelings about Septimus when Woolf herself had gone through this. The counter-argument would be that she could make up their emotions, however I would assume that Septimus has a much deeper meaning for Woolf and it would be harder to make up things about your personal experience.
ReplyDeleteI think of Septimus as an important limit-case for Woolf's narrative style. If a key aspect of her characterization of Clarissa or Peter entails the idea that what we see on the surface is not the full story, for Septimus this disconnect is much more profound, and much more consequential. On the surface he appears fearful, paranoid, and verbally incoherent--when directly asked about his "message" for mankind, or the "crimes" he's convinced he is guilty of, he can't string a cogent sentence together. But by occupying his mind more internally, the reader can see both a potent logical coherence and a kind of tragic poetry to Septimus's condition--we are forced to see him as more than just "damaged" or "crazy," and we know that in some ways, his brain is still functioning very well. He isn't entirely *wrong* that the world appears a brutal and fearsome place in the aftermath of the war---lots of artists were exploring similar ideas at the time, and this conclusion is based both on his own experience with the loss of Evans and his reading in Shakespeare and Dante. We take Septimus more seriously than most other characters in the novel (except Rezia, who has read his writings and finds some of them beautiful and profound), and this has everything to do with Woolf plunging us into his subjective point of view so fully.
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