The Blue Room

    The Doctor's Visit by Jan Steen                  Throughout Mrs. Dalloway , the so-called mental health professionals of the time are portrayed in a very negative light. Septimus abhors Dr. Holmes, referring to him as “Human Nature” which Septimus views as inherently evil. Dr. Holmes, despite his assumption that he knows best, does nothing to help Septimus and instead further pushes him over the edge. Sir William Bradshaw, though more helpful than Holmes considering he actually believes Septimus is mentally ill, also ultimately makes matters worse by attempting to force Septimus to live away from Lucrezia. Woolf makes it explicit that the added stress of these looming doctors that ignore the feelings of their patient is part of what drives Septimus to commit suicide, suggesting a deep contempt of the doctors Woolf encountered in her own life.             After finishing the novel, I am curious whether Clarissa may have had personal experience with mental health professionals.

  It has become apparent to us as readers that Clarissa Dalloway seems unsure whether she has made the best decisions in her life. We see this doubt mainly when she reminisces about her past relationship with Peter Walsh, and when she kisses Peter upon his return to England. I believe that Clarissa ultimately would be happier if she had made decisions which led her to a different kind of life. This is not to say that she would have necessarily been happier with Peter, but there are many aspects of Clarissa’s personality and life that suggest deep dissatisfaction. The main indicator of Clarissa’s dissatisfaction is her insecurity about her choice of marriage. She never once thinks about Richard with the same enthusiasm as when she thinks about Peter or Sally Seton. In fact, Clarissa thinks about him so little that we hardly know anything about Richard from just Clarissa’s thoughts. She even explicitly indicates that she has had conscious second thoughts after she kisses Peter and thin

                In my first blog post, I would like to examine the ways that I think Howie’s narration his life fits into Aurelius’ idea of the transience of life, and also the ways that it doesn’t.             We know that Howie disliked Aurelius’ view of life. However, despite Howie’s protests to this view that life is fleeting and trivial, I think that much of The Mezzanine supports this idea. Howie obviously has a strong fixation on man-made products. In his detailed descriptions of various types of machinery or products, he often talks about how they have changed over time, or when they first emerged. Like in the case of milk delivery, he may even reminisce about the end of these products. Additionally, Howie sometimes talks about things that, as readers born in the early 2000s, we cannot relate to because they don’t exist anymore. My favorite example of this occurs when Howie is talking about mechanical feats in bathrooms, and he talks about trying to get a passing glance int