World War 1 in Mrs.Dalloway Novel - Research Paper Example

Mrs. Dalloway is a famous novel which has been written by Virginia Woolf that focuses on a five years period between 1918 and 1923. The novels cover several themes but one of the themes that she brought out very well is the World War 1 (V. Woolf 7). One of the characters in the novel, Peter Walsh, returns to the Great Britain during the post war. That was on June 1923 after spending five years in India. Peter allows us to see and reflect on the changes that were brought by the war since he was away from his native land, more so during the First World War period. For example there is one man who are described by the novel who publishes a weekly article on water closet something that could not be possibly done a decade ago. This measure gives us the freedom that was brought by the termination of the First World War. The increase of what was socially acceptable activities without restrictions or fear was a reflection of how change had grew in the society and the increase in the respect on societal values. Virginia also used it to give the difficult situations normally phrased as life and death that was faced by the society at that time. She also used it as a way of criticizing the social system, showing it how it can work under intense period. In the novel, Virginia describes the social system in Britain on how a society’s members starts to scrutinize the Victorian values which included the will power and the manliness. These values that the boy was engrained with from his youth were seriously put into question. The author uses Septimus Warren Smith, a war hero suffering from ‘shell shock’, to describe those values (L. Woolf 51). She also uses it to give out the embarrassment that the solders and the civilians faced during the war. Having herself suffered from bipolar disease, it was important to analyze, the difference between Septimus’s mental illness and treatment compared to Virginia’s. The importance of this comparison was to help us to understand what being mentally ill was. Most of the information about Virginia’s sickness was given out by family members and her close friends. The different between Virginia and Septimus was in their accounts about rest, their attendants, and their thoughts on committing suicide. By analyzing these issues, we could understand what Virginia is trying to communicate more vividly. In relation to Septimus’s suicide, Virginia recognizes that there is death thoughts that were running through the head of her character. Death and war are brought out quickly to the forefront of the character minds. The continuous of the war illusions makes us to understand how disastrous the Great War was on the British society Victorian Ideals and Insanity Virginia Woolf has also given a good information in her novel Mrs. Dalloway and how it affected the British society especially which resulted to the shell shock and psychological maladies. These topics were personal to Virginia as she was suffering from bipolar disease, the mental affliction that is a shell shock for females during the twentieth century (J. A. Mangan 234). During this era, the diseases were diagnosed and treated in what Victoria describes as manliness and will power. That set stage that can reveal how the army and the mentally ill were cured during the First World War and thereafter. During her era, a real British man was the one who had a total control over his thoughts and actions. This exercise was also inculcated into the British public schools which were considered as great school (Best 159). This was during the nineteenth century. Based on this character, there was great wealth that could be gathered resulting to what was latter known as the economic miracle. That economic miracle resulted to the financial boom to the middle class which made it easier for their children to attend the great schools alongside with the elite children. The attribute of manliness and will power driven most of the English youths to engage themselves in sports such as athletics (Mangan and Walvin, "Social Darwinism." In Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940 326). Therefore, it was the role of the England great schools to change the characters and behaviors of the students by storing up their daily habits into the nervous system of the students for them to become active in particular situations. The parents whose students belonged to this school were also supposed to play a part in the development of their children’s behavior by paying for the structures and items that they were using. The students who excelled from the public schools were considered fit to sustain mentally stressful events such as the great world war in comparison with the working class who did not receive the education. The head master of the school at Harrow Dr. Joseph, is perceived to celebrate the manliness of one of his student when he said that in the previous year he saw a boy stood with a dislocated shoulder reduced and never could he move a muscle or utter a sound. The lack represented the values that was expected from the British men. Another trait that is attributed by Virginia in her novel is the respect and royalty of the students belonging to the public schools in England. This trait is defined by the conversation that Hugh, a school student had with Sally. Hugh was mostly worried about his appearance which he could maintain so that he could look to be an attractive English man. He also had respect even to the royal family. Also, any English man who could not govern his feelings was seen as coward. This concept is emphasized by Mrs. Ramsey and Lily Briscoe characters. Mrs. Ramsey pays particular attention to the needs of the men. She believes that the responsibility of men is the tremendous tasks such as ruling the nation and that the women is to reassure men that success. Despite this sentiments, she still have contempt with her husband who needs to be reassured of her support. On the other hand Lily rejects the convectional Victorian gender role that Mrs. Ramsey embraces. It seems that Lily’s needs is so great that he cannot do without his wife. He feels so lowly given the sympathetic atmospheric feeling given by Mrs. Ramsey. He considers Mrs. Ramsey’s neediness embarrassing and ignores his repulsive outcry. Peter Walsh recognizes his effeminacy in Mrs. Dalloway and like Lily and Ramsey, he sees his inaccuracy. Peter acknowledges that one can weep if he or she lacks to see in the sight of an ambulance (Bogacz 227). Victorian themes when applied to the First World War makes us understand how the symptoms of shell lock challenged the British values. This is because most of the soldiers who participated in the war and were mentally ill were considered to be cowards. In some cases of extreme coward were executed. The phrase shell shock emerged from the hysterics that were being displayed by solders after they were concussed by exploding shells. The phrase thereafter was used to mean the diagnosed soldiers who were affected by neurasthenia. This psychological notion challenged the British general values given that the majority of them suffered from the psychological infections. Unlike other physical diseases, the psychological illnesses were thought to be controlled by humans, especially by men who attended the public schools. According to Virginia, the different observed during the war period did not match with the attributes of the schools. Some authors who have carefully read the novel have come to the defense of Virginia’s work while others have heavily criticized her. There may be no direct encounter to Virginia’s work but these authors may have a different view on the happenings of the First World War. Joseph Warren Beach is one of the author who have a lot of interest on Virginia Woolf’s novel and argues that he has never failed to greet each new invention in form and manner. He argues that Mrs. Woolf frequently pointed out at her essay that for people to be concerned about others, they must first believe in them. The author also records other people’s argument on the same. Tolstoy is one of the person who that Woolf has the art of making us believe in ways of living that we had never imagined. She adds that the impression created are so great and of high integrity and truthfulness. The author however claims that there is no much which can be made from the importance of Virginia Woolf in her novel. It is only when it comes to the pampering of the character when the reader can be constrained to record what she mean. Her characters are also seldom seen to know what they want at any time and with passion. In Irina Ana Drobot’s article literary criticism, characters as part of imagination and therefore the novel itself is just made to create an entertainment ground. For example, peter’s vision of Clarissa as Mr. Dalloway’s wife is described as spontaneous and thus part of an imagination. The novel also creates a conventional society which reflects a traditional community that is centered to the idea of a social gathering party in post-world war one. Septimus who is a First World War veteran is focused as to have the shell shock. Before the beginning of the war, he is described as person who was straight and on the course of his career world in an ambitious and ideally way. But he was muddled and it was difficult for him to recollect himself to his former status. Septimus characteristics such as shyness and stammering reflects him as an effeminate man. His boss Brewer worries such that he could not give him the control of his business. Septimus later volunteers during the war and takes it as his duty and responsibility to protect his nation, England. His enthusiastic volunteering for the war was common for the majority of the English and the larger British men. Volunteering and willingness for duty is attributed by Susan Kent to the Victorian ideology which she proclaimed that through war, the effeminate could be removed out due to the manliness character of the British. This volunteering was also seen as chivalry and honor by the Darwinism approach. It proclaims that the First World War was highly romanticized and made highly attractive to young men who were very determined to fight for their beloved nation. There was the disillusionment that became so much widespread as the society became aware of the loss and deaths that were arising from the war. Aside from many solders being succumbing to death during the war, many of them were being sent back home early before the armistice was signed in the 1920s. The report that was released by the Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into the Shell Shock, it indicated that two years after the Armistice, some 65,000 ex-service men were drawing their pension related to disabilities which shows how deep the war had affected the volunteers. Of the 65,000, 9000 were already admitted for medical checks. These number of solders was just a small percentage of the total affected. If the whole number is taken into consideration, it could be a very big one and therefore it means that the number of those who were affected by the shell shock was a big number. To deal with the significant numbers of those who probably perished in the war under the shell shock, the Solders were categorized as returning home. The House of Lords formed a committee that could form the principles for the efficient ways that the shell shocked veterans could receive their treatments. The upper class men were the majority of members who were that beneficiary and the products of the public education. They interviewed about fifty nine witnesses among them were Solders’ officers, psychologists and neurologists who could give a clear understanding of the disease suffered by the shell shock victims. They revealed a greet wide of results of beliefs which were held on regard to the shell shock. A person like lieutenant Colonel Viscount Gort, assured that shell shock was a disgraceful and rarely affected the upper class society. More revelation was given out by Dr. William Halse Rivers. These are rivers which are thought that the shell shock stemmed from notion the stress caused by passivity or inability to protect and defend oneself in a horrendous situations and believed that it was treatable by therapy. The two opposing theories developed a wide range of believes that could define the meaning of the shell shock. They also exposed the challenges the committee encountered in their means to maintain the Victorian ideals of will power and the ability to control one’s mind. As the state of the psychiatry was built on an ideology and natural difference between men and women in 1920’sthe committee and the witnesses majorly attributed the shell shock to organic cause. The reason behind this was because men were perceived to be much more impervious to mental illness as opposed to women. The organic causes lent itself to scientific testing and logical diagnosis. Despite the implications, the committee came up to a middle ground and rubber stamped that shell shock had both mental and physical roots. Still fixed on the belief that men could control their emotions through sheer will power, many witnesses believed the lower classes, such as conscripts, the Irish and Jews, were more likely to succumb to shell shock, since they lacked public school education. Since their recruitment process was not as in depth as that for professional soldiers, conscripts were in fact more prone to hysterics and other neurological manifestations. But due to the fact that many officers and soldiers who were products of British education suffered from ‘shell shock,’ the committee was compelled to conclude that ‘shell shock’ was a non-discriminative disease. This confirmed that men brought up with a sound character could not wield complete control over their will and mental health. According to Virginia, the carnage of the war laid an everlasting guilt on the consciousness of the British. Seeing invalids walk through Westminster directly recalls the war for some individuals, but performing insignificant tasks like preparing for a party also reveals how the war permeates their consciousness in more subtle ways. These lines from Cymbeline remain in Clarissa’s thoughts throughout the day and remind her that she is not alone in carrying the burden of the fallen soldiers. Living with the constant reminder of death is not unique to Clarissa, and although she thinks life is dangerous, she tries to find ways to endure and persevere. Virginia Woolf is regarded as one of the most, if not the most, important women in the modernism movement. She was the nucleus of early twentieth century literary culture in Great Britain, which was most famously represented by the Bloomsbury group. As a writer, feminist, and literary critic, her contributions to literature were impressive and enduring. Her novels, written in the stream of consciousness mode, took James Joyce’s new form of writing, exemplified by his novel Ulysses, and perfected it for the public (Marwick 219). Through Virginia’s novels we get a glimpse of how life was changing in post-war Great Britain. These changes, “This sense of the radical difference between the ‘modern’ world and the ‘Edwardian’ one, or more broadly the world before and after the First World War, became a major theme of Virginias fiction and are not only in Mrs. Dalloway and to the Lighthouse, but also in almost every single one of her works. Works Cited Best, Geoffrey. Mid-Victorian Britain 1851-75. . New York,: HarperCollins Publishers Limited, 2008. Bogacz, Ted. "War Neurosis and Cultural Change in England, 1914-22: The Work of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into Shell-Shock."." Journal of Contemporary History (1988): 227-256. Mangan, J. A. and James Walvin. "Social Darwinism." In Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940. Manchester, UK: Manchester University press, 1987. Mangan, J. A. Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School: The Emergence and Consolidation of an Educational Ideology (Sport in the Global Society). Portland: Frank Class Publishers, 2000. Marwick, Arthur. Britain in the Century of Total War: War, Peace, and Social Change 1900-1967. London, UK: The Bodley Head Ltd, 1968. Woolf, Leonard. A Writers Diary. New York, :. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and company, 1953. Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Richmond United Kingdom. London: Hogarth Press, 1925. Read More