Initial Thoughts on Mrs. Dalloway

In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf focuses on everything in the everyday life. Whether it is the backfiring of motor vehicle, the bustle of traffic, or the flight of an airplane, Woolf seeks to find meaning in the daily lives of Londoners. Woolf’s perspective is third-person omniscient, which allows her to explore the consciences of everyone on London’s streets. A bystander strolling along the sidewalk becomes much more than an element of the setting, and the reader learns much more about the common person’s views. We see the young fearfully and naively wandering the city, and aged upper class women fret over their social and love lives.

            I found Septimus to be very fascinating, and Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness narration effectively characterizes him. Woolf states, “Septimus had fought; he was brave; he was not Septimus now” (23). Since Mrs. Dalloway takes place shortly after the conclusion of World War I, we can infer that Septimus had fought for Britain in the war, and that he suffers from “shell shock.” Moreover, we can infer that Septimus’s “shell shock” has transformed him into a different, traumatized man. However, rather than simply state that the war has changed Septimus, Woolf shows this through stream-of-consciousness narration. She writes:

“But they beckoned; leaves were alive; trees were alive. And the leaves being connected by millions of fibres with his own body, there on the seat, fanned it up and down; when the branch stretched he, too, made that statement. The sparrows fluttering, rising, and fallying in jagged fountains were part of the pattern; the white and blue, barred with black branches” (22)

“There was his hand; there the dead. White things were assembly behind the railings opposite. But he dared not look. Evans was behind the railings!” (25).

Septimus seems to be in his own world. Rather than giving his attention to his wife Lucrezia, he stares off in the distance and focuses on the life of nature itself. Moreover, visions of his war experiences return to haunt him. Woolf’s narration effectively legitimizes the effects of “shell shock” and provides a stark contrast to Dr. Holmes’s conclusion that nothing is wrong with Septimus.