Virginia Woolf's depiction of PTSD and other mental disorders

    Forgive me as I speak upon a similar topic as I did previously. Had I known that we were going to read one of Virginia Woolf's novels (I did, I just forgot), I wouldn't have chosen mental health as my main subject in by previous blog. Virginia Woolf, in my opinion, is one of the most fascinating authors ever. From her writing style to her real-life experiences, the more I study her the more interested I get. Last year my English class read her essay "Death of a Moth" and my group decided to turn the essay into a "movie trailer" for our finals project (you can watch it here if you'd like). Because the essay was quite vague, it was hard to have a lot of scenes with a moth (you can see in the trailer, the "moth" was made out of paper and drawn with a pencil by me), and most importantly, the was written close to her suicide (she actually died a year before this was published) and she expressed a lot of her own feelings through the moth. Thus, we decided to have the trailer mainly showing her writing the essay instead of depicting the moth itself. With that being the case, we did a lot of research on her life and what led to her suicide. I really should start talking about the main point/character, so I'll try to keep this short, Virginia's family has a history of suffering from bi-polar disorder, beginning from her grandfather, then her condition only worsened after suffering trauma from abuses and family deaths at a young age. 

    In Woolf's novel "Mrs. Dalloway", I believe Woolf's personal connections are linked to the main character Clarissa Dalloway, and the subject of this blog: Septimus Warren Smith. Septimus is a WWI veteran suffering from what is now known as PTSD, but as the novel takes place only five years after the war and mental health research hasn't been thoroughly researched yet, it is currently known as shell shock. I find Septimus as a character incredibly interesting and the way he is written fascinates me even more. Because of Woolf's own experiences with mental disorders, her description of Septimus' shell shock is not exactly accurate. Instead, Septimus' symptoms tend to lean more towards depression and bi-polar disorder, along with what Woolf could most likely find about shell shock at the time. For example, during Septimus' introduction on page 14 of the novel, he experienced hallucinations not unlike Woolf's, and from my (only about half an hour of) research, only quite recent studies found rare psychotic symptoms in PTSD patients. I believe mostly likely records at the time spoke of a more common symptom of PTSD: flashbacks, and perhaps it was generalized as hallucination, Woolf wrote about Septimus' experience as similar to her own. 

    Another part of Woolf that is linked to Septimus, as well as Clarissa, is their hate for the "doctors", both Holmes and Bradshaw were completely despised by the two and were the only one-dimensional characters. I definitely feel the implications that Woolf trying to say, that in her time, though there was improvement, as seen with Sir Bradshaw, the physicians view their patients with mental disorders as nothing but subjects or even experiments at best, and as monsters with "madness" instead of mental disorders at worst. This inference is further supported by Woolf's poor experiences with the so-called "doctors" who during her era slowly began evolving from placing patients in asylums away from society, to recommending rest cure, which forces them to stay in bed to "build the nervous system back up through rest and food", which obviously we know now, is not at all what to do.

    Woolf lived and suffered through an incredible life and wrote some incredible works, her mental struggles made her works unique with a certain melancholy charm. "Mrs. Dalloway" was a fascinating insight on the thoughts of two very different yet somehow similar characters in Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith. Her unique use of stream of consciousness allowed all the characters in the novel to be three dimensional and relatable. Each time I am introduced to another of Woolf's works I get more captivated by her life and yearn to learn more.