he had accomplished. Septimus helps his wife create a hat for a friend and then is over come with a sense of pride and thus a feeling of joy. “It was wonderful. Never had he done anything that made him feel so proud. It was so real, it was so substantial, Mrs. Peters’ hat… Yes, it would always make her happy to see that hat. He had become himself then, he had laughed then.” (MD 158) Septimus is also used to demonstrated the way in which Woolf was treated by others. People, even her loved ones treated her as though she was different, as though she could collapse mentally at any moment. Woolf’s husband Leonard was always trying to protect her from her surroundings. In the same way Reiza was always protecting Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway. Reiza is continually giving excuses for why the world treats Septimus as they do, “It is because you talked of killing yourself. -Reiza” (MD 161). There is also a parallelism between Septimus and Woolf on the level of suicide. Woolf continually talked of suicide and in writing Mrs. Dalloway she used Septimus to express her deepest desires. It is possible that Septimus’ suicide may have even been an indication of what was to come in Woolf’s life. Having lived in a time “…systematically incurious about its own social and personal motivation…” (VW 146) Woolf found escape in writing her novels. Her characters gave her a means in which she could describe herself without being categorized or judged for her illness. Not only has she used several novels to express herself but she has also used several characters in each of these novels to express different thoughts, emotions and experiences. In order to create a self-portrait she uses both the novels Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse to creates a setting for this portrait. With the combination of Lily (To the Lighthouse), Clarissa (Mrs. Dalloway), and Septimus (Mrs. Dal...
