LIANALEAOUFPR: fevereiro 2011

The role of WAR in Mrs. Dalloway: Septimus Smith, a veteran suffering bouts of mental illness (modeled on Virginia´s experiences), has visions of his dead comrade Evans and experiences epiphanies: “There is a God.” Septimus’s wife makes futile efforts to treat him. His fear of being locked up leads him to commit suicide.

The novel has 2 apparent disconnected plots: 1) Septimus’s illness and suicide

2) Mrs. Dalloway’s party.

The two groups of characters pass each other on the streets of London, but the profound unity of the novel is given when Mrs. Dalloway hears of Septimus’s death (his psychiatrist is a guests at her party) and identifies with him. The knowledge of the young man´s death prevents Mrs Dalloway´s own death ( she thought of committing suicide).

Woolf is criticizing the logic of war and of society. She called her novel an “elegy” (a lament for the dead).

(This has been adapted from Pericles Lewis's Cambridge Introduction to Modernism (Cambridge UP, 2007), p. 113.)