Bipolar Disorder in Mrs. Dalloway
In Mrs. Dalloway, the novel contrasts its main character’s two identities: "Mrs. Dalloway" as her public image, and "Clarissa" as her private self. At the same time, the book follows a second character, Septimus, a war veteran who is openly struggling with his mental health. Reading about the two of them reminded me a lot of bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that impacts a person's mood swings, energy levels, thinking patterns, and daily functioning. It also turns out that Virginia Woolf had bipolar disorder that was never properly treated. This raises the question of whether these two characters reflect her own life, and I think they both do in different ways.
Through Clarissa, Woolf shows the hidden side of living with bipolar disorder. From the outside, Mrs. Dalloway seems like a normal, unremarkable woman. However, only when you see her private thoughts do you realize how much is actually going on in her head. People can look at someone on the outside without having any clue what they are dealing with internally. Virginia Woolf likely experienced the same divide: she appeared like a normal woman to those around her, while inside she struggled with heavy things.
While Clarissa represents the struggle of hiding mental illness, Septimus represents what happened when those struggles were exposed to the medical care of the time. Septimus's storyline heavily criticizes how doctors treated mental health, raising the question of whether Virginia Woolf was also a victim of the era's medical culture. I think she was, and she uses Septimus to show what she suffered. His doctor, William Bradshaw, seems to represent the medical "aid" Woolf faced, where doctors routinely enforced their will over patients and mistreated those who didn't submit.
Both of these problems, coming to terms with an invisible illness and navigating a flawed medical system, still affect many people in the real world today. I think one of the hardest things about bipolar disorder is accepting it in the first place. Often, you don't realize it yourself, and because it isn’t something you can diagnose with a simple clinical test, it can go undiagnosed for a long time. This also affects a person's family and friends, who often notice something is wrong first.
In the modern world, bipolar disorder is usually treated through medicine, psychotherapy, and lifestyle support, though our current system still isn't perfect. One major criticism today is that drug companies wanting people to buy their medicine sometimes push for bipolar diagnoses even when the disorder isn’t really there. In a way, this reflects how Dr. Bradshaw tried to enforce his own medical will onto his patients.
Ultimately, Virginia Woolf splits her experiences between Clarissa and Septimus to show what living with an untreated mental illness really felt like, and to express her own grievances with the medical field of her time.
Works Cited
"Bipolar Disorder." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder.
"Virginia Woolf." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. 1925.
Wow. Great post. That aside, I loved how you talked about bipolar disorder. I never thought about that in this book before it makes so much sense. The split personalities between Clarissa's homelife and public image are really something to think about. Great post again
ReplyDeleteI really like how you connected Woolf's personal experiences with mental illness to Clarissa and Septimus. I especially found it interesting how Clarissa is able to hide her struggles from society, while Septimus is judged for showing his. I also wonder how different Septimus's story would have been if the doctors had actually listened to him and knew about bipolar disorder. Do you think the doctors having the knowledge of bipolar disorder result in a better ending for Septimus.
ReplyDeleteGood blog! I didn't really think at all about what other people thought about Clarissa's mental state. I like how you share with the reader that most people don't see her issues, because when reading the book we were very aware of her problems. I like how you relate the probelms that were shown in the book to similar problems we have in society today. I also didn't really consider how Woolf created these two charactars to show the difference between hiding the illness and what happens eventually when the illness is not treated.
ReplyDeleteHi Krish! I think your connection of Bipolar Disorder and Clarissa's mental state is a connection that not many people notice! You make some very good connections between Clarissa, Septimus and Woolf! The paragraph comparing bipolar disorder today with the world back then also shows a lot about how different circumstances can change how mental illnesses are viewed. Great Blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Krish, I think I saw in one of the footnotes that Virginia Woolfe was committed to one of those countryside homes like Dr. Bradshaw talked about, so in many ways her description of mental illness reflects her own struggles in the medical system. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Krish, I totally didn't make this connection at all. But, this makes complete sense with the switch of names in different circumstances. Woolf is really good at weeving in pieces of mental health through her characters and storyline. I like how you highlighted the version of mental health expressed and hidden, and the constrast between them. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteWhile I highly discourage attempting to "diagnose" an author based on the characters they write, I believe an author who has a disorder (like Woolf with bipolar disorder) will tend to subconsciously write characters with/with traits of their disorder. This is especially likely in a book like Mrs. Dalloway, which is focused on the inner working of the characters. Since this is how the author's mind works, they will put the traits of their own mind into those of the characters', so the traits of their disorder will work their way in there as well.
ReplyDeleteHey Krish, I must admit that I never realized the extent to which the characters in Mrs. Dalloway could reflect Woolf's own experiences. I like how you contrast the two identities of Clarissa and Septimus, even with how similar their experiences are. I wonder if Woolf intended these characters to also represent how society responds to these problems instead of merely representing her own experiences. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Krish, I agree with a lot of what you've said. It's really sad that Clarissa represents the struggle of hiding mental illness but Septimus represents what it means to have them revealed. We talked a little in my class about how similar these characters and events are to her own life and I think reading blog has strengthed the claims.
ReplyDeleteLIke Sarah, I am always hesitant to diagnose a fictional character, and I also don't want to push the identification between Virginia Woolf and Clarissa Dalloway too far. They have a few things in common, but there's a lot that separates them (age, education, profession, etc.), and in some ways Woolf has more in common (at a deeper, psychological level) with Septimus than Clarissa. So I don't know if I would describe Clarissa as effectively "hiding" mental illness--but maybe we can see a person like her and a person like Septimus on a spectrum of health and illness. Clarissa appears healthy and functional, even a little stiff and conventional, but we see a much more complicated picture under the surface, as you note. But she is still "healthy" in that she can function effectively in society--she just has to go stand in a dark room alone from time to time, like in the middle of a party. Septimus is in some ways the opposite--he looks unwell on the outside, and his behavior makes people uncomfortable and suggests that something must be "wrong" with him. But when we access his interior consciousness, it's more dynamic and in some ways coherent than we might expect. At the very least we see a LOT that he badly wants to communicate but cannot, a kind of frustrated artist-figure. In this way, he and Clarissa have a lot in common, it just takes different forms. And clearly, Septimus is chronically *ill* in a way Clarissa is not. She's just getting over the flu, remember, and she has a heart condition--but psychologically she is viewed as healthy.
ReplyDeleteHello! WOW - with the amount of time I'd spent reading this novel, I'd never thought about this perspective! Despite knowing about the life of Virginia Woolf and how her life had ended, the connection between this particular aspect of mental illness/strife had never quite caught my attention - which shows that you're wonderfully insightful. I remember talking in class about Woolf's struggles and the connection to Clarissa and Septimus, but I am glad you took the initiative to bring this new perspective when it came to that! Great post!
ReplyDeleteHey Krish, great post! I agree that woolf might have used clarissa and Septimus to represent different aspects of her OWN mental health experiences. I think it's certainly possible that Woolf might actually extend this beyond her bipolar disorder, and actually talk about how the messed up medical system was mistreating her mental illness during the time.
ReplyDelete