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Unit 29: Virginia Woolf — Mrs. Dalloway: Detailed Study of Text

and rushed home to tell her that he loved her. He had not said it in years. Truly, he thought, Notes
it was a miracle that he had married her. Clarissa had said to him that she was right refusing
Peter. She wanted support from him. He rushed through parks and past homeless women. He
rushed by Buckingham Palace, full of prestige and tradition. Richard felt very happy, rushing
home to profess his love.

Part II Section Two Analysis
The more the reader has learned about Septimus, the more he can see that Septimus is slipping
from sanity. He feels so extremely guilty, confused, and powerless that he has lost the power
to control his emotions. Woolf brings to the fore the ineptitude of the day’s psychiatric help
with the characterizations of Holmes and Bradshaw. These characterizations allow her to air
her grievances, to some extent, against the evils of the doctors whom she has visited throughout
her episodes of mental instability. Bradshaw is capable of noticing the mistakes made by
Holmes in not realizing the severity of Septimus’s problems, but he too takes a forceful and
dominating approach to Septimus.

Woolf imposes an interesting section onto the narrative in which the author appears to speak
out. Though Bradshaw has agreed to help and tells Rezia that he will make all the necessary
plans, Rezia feels deserted and betrayed. Why? Woolf responds to this question in her discussion
of proportion versus conversion. In Bradshaw’s attempt to make his patients adhere to his
sense of proper proportion, he converts them into new, unoriginal form mirroring the doctor
himself. In effect, he takes the life out of them, the agency out of their being. Woolf felt that
many of the doctors with whom she came into contact were more trying to convert her than
heal her. As Johnson notes, “In his compulsion to put people away, Woolf casts Sir William
as an agent of death. For insanity, as she describes it, is isolation from people, from things,
from all the stuff of life—death, in short.” It is not a coincidence that the other doctor’s name
is Holmes and that Bradshaw wishes to send Septimus to a home. As Septimus asks when told
the plan, “ One of Holmes’ homes?” After this realization, Septimus equates Bradshaw to
Holmes. Symbolically, they both are figures of evil that stifle the life out of an ailing human
being. Bradshaw’s country home represents the isolation and the conversion, as well as the
psychiatric insensitivity, forced on the mentally ill of Woolf’s time.
Similarly, the sterile, stolid character of Lady Bruton is developed during this section of the
novel. She too has little interest in the personalities behind the people with whom she comes
into contact. She is not viewed as malicious by the author or the other characters. Yet, Clarissa
senses that Bruton dislikes her, a feeling that is substantiated in the mind of Lady Bruton
during the luncheon she holds with Richard and Hugh. She excludes Clarissa from the meal,
not because she is mean, but because Clarissa’s presence would not have served Lady Bruton’s
desired purpose. The Lady sought advice, suggestions, and help. She wanted Richard’s opinions
and Hugh’s letter-writing ability. Thus, in a parallel manner to the doctors, Lady Bruton uses
her guests as tools to manipulate a conversion. She feels that wives, like Clarissa, distract men
from their proper duties in government and public affairs. Like Holmes, her name is also
symbolic because it refers to the brute force of title, acquisition, and status quo. In short, Lady
Bruton represents England as empire, society as means, and men as dominators. Peter, sensitive
to passion and emotion, senses the changes in London much more acutely than Lady Bruton
ever will. Richard, though swayed by Lady Bruton’s family history, sees beyond the objective
world into the happiness of his marriage. Ironically, however, he is not motivated to buy
flowers for his wife until he is faced with jealousy, caused by the return of Peter Walsh.

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