Isolation In Mrs Dalloway

Close proximity is equally distant, despite being in constant company with other human beings, the characters within the novel Mrs. Dalloway suffer from communication issues; they are unable to express their attitudes and feelings toward the people they share the greatest parts of their lives with. Through personal reflection of memories regarding important events, the characters thought processes illustrate their personal attitudes about life and its promises. Character’s included in point of view are revealed to be isolated by their facets through their personal reflections: Septimus Warren Smith is isolated by his PTSD symptoms, Hugh is distinguished by his class, Richard Dalloway is confined by his political views, Sally Seton is secluded by her demeanor against gender role while Peter Walsh is afflicted by

The stranger, Septimus Smith, war veteran of WWI is left in a tragic PTSD state after witnessing a close friend die during the war. He experiences the same symptoms of a mental drowning experience. Time for Septimus is a constant reminder of the death for which he escaped in the war. Both feel a diminishing existence suffocated by society’s demands of them. It is when Septimus commits suicide that Clarissa exhibits her deep felt emotion and understanding of the stranger she never knew, “He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud, in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it. (2258)” Septimus’s death is a form of communication which expresses more about himself toward Clarissa than any other character has been able to express. His inner pain resonates with Clarissa, for it is he who has overcome the repression of society which believes him to have nothing wrong and expressed his inner