The Doctors

 

              In this blog post, I would like to examine the role the doctors played in Septimus’s suicide. Although Dr. Holmes and William Bradshaw are both wrong about Septimus’s illness, they are wrong in drastically different ways.  Dr. Holmes represents the old views of mental health, or rather the non-views of mental health at the time. He believes that since there is nothing wrong with Septimus, he’s just being selfish and should just involve himself in some sports to get better. In fact, he seems a bit overconfident and reinforces typical gender roles. During one of his unannounced visits (something that alone demonstrates his arrogance), he said “‘My dear lady, allow me…’” (145) while pushing Lucrezia aside. This demonstrates his disregard for Lucrezia and other women; she had told him that he can’t see her husband, but Dr. Holmes didn’t listen. She was just another woman getting in the way of his treatment. Ironically, Dr. Holmes’s entry was the last straw that drove Septimus to suicide. Before Holmes showed up, Septimus was “perfectly” fine, but it was Holmes’s struggle with Lucrezia that drove him into a panic.

            Sir William Bradshaw, on the other hand, represents the more modern views of mental health. As soon as Septimus showed up at his door, he declared “her husband was seriously ill” (94) to Lucrezia and started making arrangements to put Septimus in one of his homes. From the side, it may have looked like he was helping, but from our knowledge of mental health today, we know that the rest cure did not really work. He had good intentions, but the knowledge of PTSD had not yet caught up. Woolf largely based Bradshaw off of her doctor. She was incredibly against the rest cure, so we can tell that this was the case based off other characters’ reactions. When Clarissa first meets Bradshaw, she strongly dislikes him, and it seems the sentiment is echoed by the other people at the party. Clarissa suggests that it is these types of men that make life unbearable by thinking “they make life intolerable, men like that” (180) after learning of Septimus’s fate.

            Overall, the two doctors are not bad people. Although the book often describes them in negative terms, it is because Woolf wanted to express her frustration with the way doctors treated mental health. However, both doctors seem to mainly misunderstand their patients. A truly telling part of the novel, is when Holmes yells “coward” after Septimus killed himself. He viewed Septimus’s suicide as something selfish, something done because he couldn’t man up and deal with his issues. Bradshaw, even with all his misunderstanding, still cared for his patients. Right after Septimus’s death, he went to Richard Dalloway to discuss creating a bill dealing with shell shock. In fact, perhaps the presence of these two characters highlights evolution toward a better understanding of mental health. It would obviously take a long time for mental illness to be understood, but the presence of two characters during the same time period with such drastically different views may represent change. This would make sense, though, since Mrs. Dalloway is largely a novel about change in society. William Bradshaw even talks to Lucrezia like she is almost an equal, highlighting the difference between Holmes’s and Bradshaw’s beliefs.