Mrs Dalloway Trauma Narrative Essay

A trauma narrative is written by people who experience some sort of trauma and need to get out and over it. The need to express themselves urges the trauma survivor to talk about their thoughts and memories which they can no longer bear. This process not only helps the person to let out what they have learnt out of the bitter experiences they have undergone; but also organizes their thoughts, helping their memories to become more orderly. Being aware of the fact that Woolf has written this novel and also her medical background in mind, ‘Mrs Dalloway’ can be viewed as a trauma narrative at three different levels. Another fact to keep in mind while looking at the novel as a trauma narrative is the historical background. The novel

The effects being: destruction of perception, the victims lose their faith in themselves and any ideologies that ever existed for them, cause utter confusion, and increase the urge to keep private and isolated in the respective persons. Also such people feel repressed to their past memories and the society. Woolf’s writing style looks at the survivor’s perception of time, for one sees the intermixing of different times—past, present and future. This is evidently seen in the character of Septimus, who is caught up by his past and it still haunts him in his present. His personality is suppressed by the criticism of the society forcing him to lose his individuality – mainly by his doctors. It gives way to the establishment of an identity crisis, turning into a war phobia that further decreases his ability to communicate with the society and express himself out there. However, he is pushed into ending his own life, for he does not enjoy and relief that expressing his inner demons would have given him. It makes his own self eat him inside, and give up on life, but not his individuality and post-traumatic experiences that people did not have any clue of. So, he was the kind of person who did not recover from his trauma, because he has not been given a chance to give way to his thoughts; for he burns all his writings