I found Septimus Warren Smith, from Virginia Woolf’s
work Mrs. Dalloway, to be a very
interesting character. When we are first introduced to him, we aren't immediately
plunged into the inner sanctum of his mind - we first get the opportunity to
view him as a non-omniscient bystander would. The first description we get suggests that
Septimus is quite different from the people passing him by on the sidewalk. A sense of paranoia and strange behavior
uncharacteristic of your average Londoner alludes strongly to a mental illness,
but we don’t learn much about his circumstances until later – all that is
evident initially is the abnormality in his thought process and the way he
seems to see the world.
Septimus’ thoughts exhibit a markedly different
style from the other characters. Compared
to Clarissa Dalloway and other more “normal” people, Septimus tends to spend
more time fixating on the minute details and sensations present in each scene,
and express them to himself with his characteristically elaborate description. This difference in the ‘lens’ that Septimus
uses to look at the world is probably due to his original profession as a poet –
and it likely would have made him successful if he hadn’t had to abandon poetry
during the war. Even after his traumatic
experience, which caused his mental illness, he has retained this lens, and it
allows him to immerse himself in wondrous experiences such as viewing the plane
as it wrote letters in the sky. However,
this trait seems to turn against him at times.
Suffering from hallucinations and delusions that twist the reality that
others see, the lens forces him to focus on and experience such bizzare scenes
like a dog turning into a man, and his friend rising from the dead.
These things feel very real to Septimus – as real
as anything else in his environment, and as such he has no idea that part of
his world is constructed in his own head.
He can’t explain his feelings and thoughts to anyone else – even his own
wife finds him inscrutable, and very different from his old self. He finds himself unable to even get his thoughts
across to his dismissive listeners. This
is his plight, to be privy to whispers and visions that no one else can comprehend. Only if you look at the world using Septimus’
unique lens can you snag the messages he is trying desperately to convey to the
rest of the world.
My initial impression of Septimus' illusions was that it was a result of the PTSD from the war. A point that I thought was interesting in your blog was connecting the hallucinations to his earlier profession of poetry. His profession before the war probably included a lot of observing the ordinary and having profound thoughts in the mundane, but his view had been skewed after the war. Suddenly his poetic genius starts to mentally attack himself as he hallucinates observing trees. This seemingly insignificant fact that Woolf included provided some important insight into the character of Septimus. Do you think this piece of information is eluding to a broader theme about war or the profession of poetry?
ReplyDeleteWhen I first considered Septimus while reading the book, I was completely fixated on his traumatic wartime narrative, and thus I believed that the way Septimus saw the world had mostly to do with his shell shock. But reading your post certainly makes me reconsider how Septimus sees this world, and I realize I hadn't put enough emphasis on how tragically beautiful much of his thoughts are (I think back to the part in the book where Lucrezia calls some of his papers "beautiful"). Throughout this book, Septimus thinks on a much deeper level about everyday things then the other characters, and that probably has more to do with his poetic lens than his PTSD. Examining his thoughts throughout the novel and you could certainly make the argument that Septimus would have been a great poet. Overall, I think you make an excellent point here which unfortunately does not make me cheerful. By shining light on how artistic Septimus is, my reading of Septimus' narrative becomes a more tragic story of how war ruined the next Keats.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I found it very interesting, especially the part about how Septimus communicates vs. the other characters. I think it's what separates him the most, and makes him seem isolated from everyone else. How you connected his old love of poetry with the way he expresses himself is also very interesting, and thinking back on it I believe Wolfe deliberately combined those two traits. The result is a very unique character that shows the perspective of someone with shellshock in a way most other victims of PTSD couldn't.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Septimus is a very interesting character, and his thoughts can only be understood through his perspective, a narration Woolf does pretty well. I think a very important part of Woolf's writing is her free indirect discourse, which allows us to look at Septimus through the eyes of many other characters, but most importantly Rezia and the doctors. If we were only stuck with Septimus' perspective, I think we would have a hard time understanding him, but when Septimus is complimented with Rezia and Bradshaw/Holmes, we get a fuller picture of his personality and we can better understand his plight. Therefore, not only are Septimus' lens important, but Rezia and Bradshaw/Holmes' as well.
ReplyDeleteSeptimus's character is a great vehicle in order to drive the point of how real "Shell Shock" (or now, PTSD) really is. His character shows how it negatively effects the lives of the veterans that must suffer with it for the remainder of their lives. Septimus is tainted by the war, but no one in his time understands what he is dealing with.
ReplyDeleteI like how you point out that all the hallucinations that Septimus experiences seem very real to him. In the part in the book where he imagines his old friend, Evans, approaching them he just exclaims, "It was Evans!", he doesn't question at first. Which shows that he truly believed that what he was seeing was real, so it makes me wonder if we can trust the part of the book from his point of view all the time or if we should be considering that possibly he is an unreliable narrator through the hallucinations.
ReplyDeleteI think that this port is very interesting. As I read the story I always thought that the reason Septimus was so sensitive to everything was because of his war experience. But the fact that it could just be his poetic self that causes him to be sensitive makes sense too. However, because of that he would become more sensitive to the visions from his ptsd. The fact that his 'lens" makes his problem worse make sense.
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