Comparison of Richard (The Hours) and Septimus (Mrs. Dalloway)

 

The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David

In Clarissa’s storyline in The Hours, several characters from Mrs. Dalloway are combined into Richard Dalloway’s character. Richard seems to be an amalgamation of Richard, of course, Septimus, and Peter (or at least Peter’s role as the romanticized ex). Richard’s character in The Hours clearly draws inspiration from Septimus, as Richard is a poetic writer who eventually meets the same fate Septimus does in Mrs. Dalloway—suicide. The nature of Richard’s suicide in The Hours in some ways stays true to the novel, however in other ways, the original points that Virginia Woolf makes in Septimus’s story are lost.

One similarity between the stories of both characters is the fact that they are essentially kept alive by the women in their lives for the durations of their stories before their suicides. In The Hours, Richard is taken care of by Clarissa, and even says that he stays alive for as long as he does “just to satisfy” Clarissa. In Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus talks about committing suicide a while before he actually goes through with it, but Lucrezia is there to keep him from hurting himself and to seek treatment for him. However, in the film, it is made clear that Richard is alive for Clarissa, and I do not think that this point can necessarily be applied to Septimus’s story. Though Septimus is kept alive by Lucrezia, he does not continue living for Lucrezia’s sake, and at one point in the novel even expresses a wish not to be married to her anymore. Thus, Richard and Septimus are prevented from committing suicide (before their suicides) in different ways and have different feelings about living.

The other obvious similarity between Septimus’s and Richard’s suicides is the fact that they both have a debilitating illness leading up to their deaths. For Septimus, this illness is mental, as he has schizophrenia caused by severe PTSD (or shellshock). Richard’s illness is one that takes a physical toll on him: AIDS. However, having AIDS is a traumatic experience that clearly takes a mental toll on Richard in addition to physical, considering he committed suicide rather than letting himself die due to AIDS. Thus, both of these characters, despite having different illnesses, ultimately committed suicide due to mental stress.

Though having AIDS is mentally trying for Richard and ultimately leads him to suicide, the fact that he for the most part has a non-mental ailment causes the connection between Virginia Woolf and his character to become lost. In Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus is a character that strongly reflects Woolf’s own experiences. He is a tool with which Woolf speaks openly about mental illness and the faults within the psychiatric community of her time, and these messages don’t appear in Richard’s story. However, none of this is to say that Richard’s story in The Hours is any less important than what Woolf tries to convey through Septimus. Stories about the AIDS crisis are incredibly important. I even think that Woolf’s perspective could shine through in such a story—especially her negative view on the medical community, since unwillingness from the medical community to help find a cure for AIDS was a huge issue during that time—but the way in which Richard’s story is framed doesn’t allow for Woolf’s voice to appear (except for the actual lines from her suicide note I suppose).

If you saw The Hours, do you think the movie did a good job accurately translating Mrs. Dalloway to film?