Reinventing Grief Work: Virginia Woolf's Feminist Representations of Mourning in Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse[1] by Susan Bennet Smith, is an analysis of the ways in which Woolf depicts the opposite experience of grief as a male and female, against the backdrop of post- World War One London. Mrs Dalloway[2] is largely narrated by the female protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, a wealthy woman in a loveless marriage. Smith states that Mrs Dalloway exposes the ways in which the feeling of grief is feminised and medicalised, simultaneously disenfranchising the male experience of bereavement. Woolf displays the ways in which male emotional displays of grief are frowned upon, viewed as feminine and unpatriotic, as shown through the character Septimus. Septimus is a shell shocked soldier, who is portrayed as emotionally paralysed from the trauma he suffered during the war. However, when he does experience an emotional outburst, as stated by Smith he is ‘met with disapproval, not sympathy’[3]. Bennet relates this to the over feminisation of mental illness, arguing that:
‘Because Septimus has internalised an
excess of stoicism in the Great War, he reacts by expressing his grief in
self-abnegation. Men, especially soldiers, do not cry. The authoritarian rest
cure will not help him’ (p.313)
The above statement accurately describes how Woolf portrays
the damaging effects of gender stereotyping in regards to emotion. However, it
is not only males who are oppressed. Clarissa also becomes a victim of a
repressive society. During a bout of illness, Clarissa is subjected by her
husband Richard to the previously quoted ‘rest cure’:
‘There was an emptiness about the heart
of life; an attic room…Narrower and narrower her bed would be…For the house sat
so long that Richard insisted, after her illness, that she must sleep,
undisturbed’ (pp. 45-46)
Smith notes that rest cure was viewed by feminists as a means
enforcing ‘the doctor’s domination over rebellious women’ . The fact that her
husband has taken on the role of a doctor through insisting on her seclusion,
symbolises the way in which Clarissa is to an extent, imprisoned through her
marriage. Throughout the novel, Clarissa’s grief is for the past ‘but she
feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton's face, as if it had been a dial
cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was
sliced’ (p.34). More specifically, for Clarissa’s past love
for her female friend Sally, with their shared kiss being described as the ‘most
exquisite moment of her whole life.’ (p.59) However, within 1920’s society, a
non-platonic relationship between two women is unthinkable, leading Clarissa to
find herself in a practical, yet frigid marriage. The depth of her feelings
towards Sally, and the injustice of being unable to express her honest feelings
could be an explanation for Clarissa’s superficial tendencies, used as a means
of escaping her true self. For example her preoccupation with class and
background, made evident through her less than favourable view of Miss Killman,
a woman from an impoverished background. The way in which Miss Killman is
referred to as a pitiful creature reflects Clarissa’s own arrogance:
Year in year
out she wore that coat; she perspired; she was never in the room five minutes
without making you feel her superiority, your inferiority; how poor she was;
how rich you were; how she lived in a slum without a cushion or a bed or a rug
or whatever it might be, all her soul rusted with that grievance sticking in
it, her dismissal from school during the War – poor embittered unfortunate
creature!
It is argued by
Smith that ‘Woolf tells a cautionary tale of the fatal results of the
feminisation and medicalisation of grief, but offers no viable alternative’[4].
While this is a justifiable and logical statement, it could be expanded upon as
the fact that Woolf’s offers no other substitute implies that this lack of a
viable alternative is deliberate on Woolf’s part, most likely in order to
reflect the rigidity of social rules and values for each gender in 1920’s
England. Through the previous statement,
Smith criticises the text, however I am inclined to believe that Woolf offers
no alternative as part of a literary technique in order to make a social point.
To conclude, Smith sheds light on the social gender
inequalities in relation to expression of grief, through her comparison of
Clarissa and Septimus’s experience of it. Although both characters suffer
differently, Smith draws to the reader’s attention that Clarissa feels a sense
of solidarity and empathy towards Septimus, perhaps because they both face
emotional oppression regardless of living as different genders from different
social classes, and having different life experiences.
Works Cited:
Susan Bennet Smith, Twentieth Century Literature.
Reinventing Grief Work: Virginia Woolf's Feminist Representations of Mourning
in Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse ,
41st edn (New York: Hofstra University, 1995), p. 310-327.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (London: Penguin Books, 2000).
