Such a phenomenon as shell shock or combat stress reaction became a subject of psychological study since World War I. British soldiers, who returned to their homes, suffer from the impairment of vision, and almost entirely lost sense of taste and smell. Initially, it was ascribed to some physical injuries but after a while, it was ascertained that it was necessarily the injury, this mental disorder is considered to be the result of combat stress, fatigue, fear, etc.
In an overwhelming majority of cases, its long-term effects are slower reaction times, indecision, disconnection from one’s surroundings, and inability to prioritize. The trouble was that the British government decided to conceal these facts.
According to Elaine Showalter, a famous English critique, and feminist, this strange illness can be called a “male hysteria” She believes that this mental disorder is caused by the emotional disturbance produced by the war itself. She says that soldiers were trying to suppress or maybe to hide those feminine feelings and emotions, in an attempt to look as manly as possible and hide their effeminacy, the trait of character, that is so abhorrent to men (Showalter, 173).
Analyzing the novel “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf, Elaine Showalter arrives at the following conclusion. In her view, one of the main characters Septimus Smith, a former British military, tried to develop manliness during the war, but it was just make-believe, and after the war “this façade of stoic masculinity” disappears. He attempts to repress his war memories but it did not help him and in the end, Septimus committed suicide. Showalter believes that the main reason for that is that men are too ashamed of even looking weak, vulnerable, or perhaps feminine and that works against them (Showalter,178).
But this statement is quite disputable because there could be quite different reasons for Smiths feelings, emotions, and behavior.
A great number of factors caused Virginia Woolf’s critiques of war and compassion for former soldiers. Woolf’s family were pacifists and some of relatives and friends constantly objected to war. She and her husband Leonard gave support to pacifist organizations such as the Women’s Cooperative Guild, which opposed compulsory military service and contributed to peace and women’s suffrage.
Woolf got acquainted with suffragette and pacifist Mary Sheepshanks working on” Mrs. Dalloway”. Further, Woolf’s vulnerability to war losses was deeply affected by the death of a friend Rupert Brooke in World War I and the war trauma of his husband’s brother Philip, a talented poet and probable prototype for the main character of her novel Septimus Smith (Vickroy, 48).
First of all, we should take into account that at the moment Woolf completed “ Mrs. Dalloway”, which was published in 1925, the author was extremely astonished at how anxious people were trying to dismiss the war as if it had never occurred (Gorer, 120).
She knew that injured or permanently crippled veterans were almost forgotten by the public, that the assistance the government gave to them was becoming smaller, and that doctors researching “shell shock” were thinking that it was just an excellent excuse for malingering and insubordination” (Gorer,111). Woolf also could not understand that constant war propaganda. In this novel, the author tried to show the whole tragedy and futility of war.
In her novel “Mrs. Dalloway”, Virginia Woolf tried to show the world through the eyes of different characters: those, who were in some way wounded or injured by the war and those who were not. The author demonstrated how different their perception of the world was.
Septimus Smith embodies an average type of a young middle-class man of that time, capable of achieving certain social status, which was prepared for him by the then British society.
But in spite of his very limited education, Smith is dissatisfied with the mundane routine and hankers for spiritual growth Nevertheless, his flair for literature and language is completely ruined by his war experience, which completely distorted his perception of the world. Thus, we may suppose, that his so-called “shell shock” was produced by the striking contrast between his inner world and the brute reality of war.
Symptoms of his mental disorder become even more severe five years later. Although his war recollections are not so acute, they appear repeatedly in his works and his thoughts, which are full of battle images and survivor guilt.
Septimus attempts to avoid reemerging war memories with sophisticated fantasies of saving the world, he believes that in this way he can redress his guilt over Evans’s death.
He considers himself to be a Christ-like “eternal sufferer… lately taken from life to death, the Lord who had come to renew society” to put away “eternal suffering, that eternal loneliness”. These words show how those who survived war feel, often justifiably, Woolf showed how alienated Septimus felt because of his differences with other people, and experience that other people do not have. The war asked him intolerable questions about life that he could not answer.
So it should also be taken into account that the reason for Smiths shell shock was not only the fear of looking weak or vulnerable but that unbearable sense of alienation and solitude that he felt. People, surrounding him did not even want to put themselves into his position, maybe because it was too dangerous and it was easier for them to call Smith a coward
Through Septimus, the author wanted to show the human costs and the whole futility of war. Woolf believes that soldiers were mistreated by a society, which refused to understand the pain and sufferings soldiers experienced. In the beginning, Smith is kindly praised in the workplace for keeping his stoicism. But when all his fears and war recollections return, he is no longer a successful man, he is someone who should be ignored.
Although he is making some progress in restoring his emotional life, under the surface he feels lonely. A reminder of the war, he frightens and appalls others. His conduct is considered ”unmanly” by Dr. Holmes, who tells him, “Didn’t one owe perhaps a duty to one’s wife?”. His conduct also worries his wife, Rezia, an immigrant from Italy whom Septimus met during the war. He acknowledges that he married her just because he was afraid of being lonely. She entirely depends on him financially and emotionally and fights with his failures to be masculine (including fatherhood. His wife says, “… it was cowardly for a man to say he would kill himself, but Septimus had fought; he was brave; he was not Septimus now”.
His doctor. Holmes, can only see physical (visible) symptoms but not invisible ones, He says there is “nothing the matter” with Septimus. He and Rezia simply cannot admit Septimus’s suffering, because it is not the kind of conduct, they expect from him.
His threats to commit suicide are viewed as a direct threat to society, and this possibility seems to be so outrageous to his doctors that this possibility had never entered their minds.
So we may say that the basic reason for Smiths suicide was his sense of alienation, the fact that people who surrounded him, did not even try to understand him. The doctors who treated him had no idea of his emotional state, the only argument they could advance was that Septimus should forget all the miseries of war that he had suffered. Thus, we may arrive at the conclusion that it was not necessarily his fear of looking female or vulnerable, but lack of understanding from other people.
Bibliography
Elaine Showalter, The female malady: women, madness, and English culture, 1830–1980. New York: Pantheon Books; 1985.
Gorer Geoffrey. Death, Grief, and Mourning. New York: Arno; 1977.
Laurie Vickroy. “A Legacy of Pacifism: Virginia Woolf and Pat Barker. Women and Language” 27.2 (2004) : 45-50.
McLaurin, Allen. Virginia Woolf: The Echoes Enslaved. Cambridge: Cambridge UP; 1973.