Septimus Smith, the War-Shattered Christ Substitute in MRS. DALLOWAY

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKeywords: Christian allusion Mrs. Dalloway Virginia WoolfWorld War I literature Notes 1. Suzette Henke and Douglas Howard have also interpreted Septimus as a Christ figure. 2. That Septimus is so out of place in London suggests that Christ or true Christianity is absent in a world of Darwin, automobiles, and airplanes—a world whose heavens offer not divine messages but skywritten advertisements. Doris Kilman, the only other significant character to express faith in God, is miserable and thought “mad” by a waitress (130). Her name associates “kill man” with Christianity, and her experience, even more than Septimus's, delineates religion's impotency, for the supposed religion of love fails completely to quell the rage consuming her. 3. Seeing a key pun in Holmes's name, Elizabeth Lamont observes that the character symbolizes that one's “home[land]” is frequently not “a place of understanding and safety” (n.p.). 4. Society in Mrs. Dalloway is dangerous. It helped drive Septimus mad with its senseless war. Lady Bruton, whose name echoes Septimus's perception of human nature as a “brute” with “red nostrils” (147), is more concerned with helping herself than her ostensible philanthropic interest in young people or Canada. Peter “scarcely need[s] people any more” (79). Elizabeth Dalloway feels so “burden[ed]” by people that she prefers to be “alone in the country with her father and the dogs” (134, 135).