How Virginia Woolf's Own Struggles With Mental Health Influenced "Mrs. Dalloway"

Content warning: suicide

During our discussions of Mrs. Dalloway in class, a lot of people brought up connections between things that happened in the novel and things that happened in Virginia Woolf’s own life. For my blog post, I decided to research her life more in depth and see what connections I could find.

Virginia Woolf struggled with mental health and bipolar disorder throughout her entire life, beginning with the death of her mother when she was just 13 years old. Nine years later, in 1904, the death of her father prompted her first suicide attempt. Afterwards, she was briefly institutionalized and looked over by a psychiatrist named George Savage, who was known in the medical community for his harsh treatment methods. Savage believed that Woolf’s education was the cause of her illness, because it was too much stress for a woman to handle. Woolf was prescribed the “rest cure,” and advised to stay at a mental institution described as, “a private nursing home for women with nervous disorder.” There, she was isolated, deprived of literature or other entertainment, and force-fed. George Savage was obviously a source of inspiration for the character of Dr. Holmes. Both Holmes and Savage were well respected in the medical community at the time, and used unnecessarily harsh treatment methods. Woolf probably understood very well the dislike that Septimus had for his doctors, and how that kind of mistreatment caused Septimus to panic.

Many of the things that happen to Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway also happened to Virginia Woolf in real life. She also lived through World War I, and suffered from hearing voices and seeing things because of her mental illness. In her diary entries, she continuously searched for a meaning behind her illness. In one diary entry she says, "the only way I keep afloat... is by working... Directly I stop working I feel that I am sinking down, down. And as usual, I feel that if I sink further I shall reach the truth" (The Diary of Virginia Woolf Volume 3). I feel like there are some similarities between how Septimus was extremely focused on his work and trying to spread his message to other people, and the way Virginia Woolf used her writing as an attempt to better understand her illness. Both Woolf and Septimus depended on creativity as a way to work through the suffering they felt no one else understood. When their work became meaningless, so did their daily lives.

Before I end this blog post I just want to emphasize the fact that Virginia Woolf was a real person, not a character. I don’t want to make too many assumptions about her life and struggles with mental health, because every person is so complex. Her life should in no way be seen as just an inspiration for her work. One thing that I found while I was researching her was a letter that she left for her husband, Leonard Woolf, before her death. Here’s just an excerpt from the letter that really moved me.

“You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.”

               – Virginia Woolf