63 pages • 2 hours read
Virginia WoolfMrs. Dalloway
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1925A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Doctors and Their Treatments
When Septimus Smith comes home from the war, he is a changed man. Hallucinations and anxieties plague him and stress his relationship with Rezia, his young wife who has left her life in Italy to be with her husband in London. Septimus seeks help from his GP, or general practitioner, Dr. Holmes, but Dr. Holmes is out of his depth; though Septimus suffers from severe hallucinations and dangerously frequent suicidal ideation, the doctor simply encourages Septimus to think about anything except himself, advocating the “stiff upper lip” approach to personal problems that characterizes British middle-class masculinity. Eventually, Dr. Holmes suggests that Septimus see Dr. Bradshaw, an eminent Harley Street psychologist, but Dr. Bradshaw’s advice to institutionalize Septimus disappoints the couple, who do not want to be separated. Dr. Bradshaw also represents a sort of British version of masculine ideal, one that does not give in to one’s own sensitivities and indulge one’s own weaknesses.
These two men and their immovable, ineffective approaches to the treatment of mental health problems represent the immovable traditions of England. These traditions inspired legions of young men to enlist during World War I, and Septimus represents the disillusion of a generation who watched their young men lose their lives while defending an England that will fail those who survive.
Flowers and Other Plants
In the first line of novel, Clarissa mentions needing to buy flowers, the first of many mentions in the novel of flowers and other plants. Different kinds of flowers and plants mark different events, thoughts, and memories in many of the characters that figure in Mrs. Dalloway. Rezia, lost in her fond memories of her home in Italy, compares the potted plants in London to the Milan gardens, thinking the British flowers ugly. The plants symbolize the grim existence Rezia must endure far away from the warmth and beauty of her own home. Richard’s roses for Clarissa represent the love he feels for her, a love of which he cannot speak; later, when Clarissa sees Sally Seton unexpectedly at her party, Clarissa observes Richard’s flowers again, perhaps seeing them as trappings of a life she does not find completely satisfying. Peter and Clarissa both recall the sumptuous gardens of Bourton and Sally’s way with flowers, both symbols of their youth and the fecundity of their young emotional lives. Sally’s particular skill with plants prophesizes her fertility as a mother, able to bear five sons and raise them well. Even the curtain that blows in Clarissa’s drawing room during her party is decorated with birds of paradise, an exotic colorful flower.
The recurrence of flower and plant imagery contrasts with the descriptions of London city living. In an urban landscape, humans live among manmade structures and navigate an environment characterized by dangerous edges and dark corners; this London life of the characters’ present days is often juxtaposed against Peter and Clarissa’s descriptions of country life at Bourton. The motif of nature works with the past, while mere suggestions of this motif offer color and vibrancy to characters and settings.
Related Titles
By Virginia Woolf
