Mrs Dalloway Isolation Essay

Isolation, a strong and recurring theme, in Mrs. Dalloway is manifested throughout the character’s lives, specifically in their troubling pasts and their subordinate lives. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of Richard Dalloway and the mother of Elizabeth, lives her life as a stereotypical housewife putting up a facade for her family and friends. Similarly Septimus Warren Smith, a troubled World War I soldier, lives his life being controlled by his memories of the war. Both characters might live surrounded by people, but on the inside they feel isolated from the norms of society.
Clarissa Dalloway, a put together housewife, hides behind her wifely duties to cover the her brewing feelings . She keeps everything locked away inside herself So she cannot
By taking care of Septimus she misses her family back in Italy and just wants normalcy in her life. She feels as though she is all alone. Septimus knows his wife is pushing away from him and even notices her not wearing her wedding ring anymore. From this action Septimus’s isolation only increases as his wife even starts to lose hope in him. Septimus starts to have horrific visions telling him to kill himself. “Kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes [....] Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know”(92). Even with the horrific visions Septimus does not want to kill himself. He feels as though the world wants him to die to get rid of the remainder of the war that is deeply rooted inside of him. As the day moves forward and Septimus’s isolation stirs inside of him, even the most simplistic thing of talking to his wife while she makes a hat and watching the sunlight on the walls does not appease his fear and loneliness. “Miracles, revelations, agonies, loneliness, falling through the sea, down, down into the flames, all were burnt out, for he had a sense, as he watched Rezia trimming the straw hat for Mrs Peters, of a coverlet of flowers”(142). While watching his wife he has a vision of himself bursting into flames. Just sitting in that quiet room watching his wife, he still feels alone and disturbed by visions of death. The visions will not leave him making him even more anxious and