War Trauma in Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway

Virginia Woolf's novel, Mrs Dalloway, takes place in London in the 1920s and one of the characters, Septimus Warren Smith is suffering from trauma since taking part in the First World War. This paper will focus on how Virginia Woolf relates to and deals with war trauma in Mrs Dalloway. My aim is to examine what attitudes are revealed in the novel and to examine these from varying angles; Septimus himself, his wife, people in general and authorities such as physicians. Through Septimus Warren Smith and people around him the reader becomes acquainted with different aspects of war trauma and how it is looked upon in the novel. In this essay I argue that Woolf puts focus on and criticizes a society that was unprepared and malfunctioning considering understanding and being able to handle the issue of war trauma.