The Death of Septimus and Virginia Woolf’s Attitude Towards Rationality

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210313.067How to use a DOI?

Keywords

humanitarianism, rationality, Mrs. Dalloway

Abstract

This paper attempts to deeply explore the death of Septimus from the perspective of the opposition between humanitarianism and rationalism. Different from previous critics who attributed Septimus’s death to shell shock, this paper attempts to argue that Septimus, the symbol of humanitarianism, is forced to commit suicide by Bradshaw, the symbol of rationalism, because the former’s lament for the loss of humanitarianism is interpreted by the latter as symptoms of madness, the whole process of which reveals the transgression of rationalism on humanitarian spirit. By indicating the spiritual identification between Septimus and Clarissa, and employing Clarissa as the incantation of her spirit, Virginia Woolf subtly denotes the spiritual identification between Septimus and herself. Virginia Woolf metaphorically employs the death of Septimus to embody the transgression of rationalism on humanitarianism in her time so as to make a social warning.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Hengliang Zhang
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/03/15
TI  - The Death of Septimus and Virginia Woolf’s Attitude Towards Rationality
BT  - Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Language, Communication and Culture Studies (ICLCCS 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 351
EP  - 355
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210313.067
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210313.067
ID  - Zhang2021
ER  -