Sir William Bradshaw

In Virginia Woolf’s celebrated novel ‘Mrs. Dalloway’, Sir William Bradshaw is a renowned London
psychiatrist. He is introduced to us when Lucrezia seeks help for her insane husband, Septimus,
Septimus’s doctor, Dr. Holmes, recommends Sir William. Sir William believes that most people who
think they are mad suffer instead from a “lack of proportion.” He determines that Septimus has suffered
a complete nervous breakdown and recommends that Septimus spend time in the country, apart from
Lucrezia. The hardworking son of a tradesman, Sir William craves power and has become respected in
his field.

Sir William Bradshaw is a symbol of the oppressive, structured nature of London society at that time
while Septimus Smith represents those who do not fit into this society. The result of the two men’s
interaction with one another represents the dire consequences such a strict and rigid culture can have
on someone who cannot adhere to it. As a strong, wealthy, male figure, Sir William Bradshaw epitomizes
the ideal citizen in patriarchal traditional London. Since Bradshaw fits so well into this ideal societally-
constructed mold, he holds a great deal of power, especially over those who do not fit this mold, such as
Septimus Smith. Bradshaw abuses this power as an ideal by forcing his patients to fit into the culturally-
desired social constructs as well. Bradshaw’s forceful approach at creating a homogenous population of
men like himself has dire consequences for his patients, such as Septimus Smith.

Bradshaw’s is very arrogant about his work with the mentally ill and seems to take it as his own personal
mission to “…not only prospe[r] himself but [to make] England prosper, seclud[e] her lunatics, forb[id]
childbirth, penalis[e] despair, ma[ke] it impossible for the unfit to propagate their views until they, too,
shared his sense of proportion–his if they were men, Lady Bradshaw’s if they were women (she
embroidered, knitted, spent four nights out of seven at home with her son)…”(Woolf 99). This shows
both Bradshaw’s arrogance and self-proclaimed divine right to rid London of its lunatics as well as the
extreme methods he uses to achieve this goal. These methods, which are all strictly adherent to the
societal norms of that time, force Bradshaw’s “patients” into one homogenous mold where men show
no emotion or despair, women stay at home and attend domestic affairs, and individuals are not
allowed to share their beliefs or views or reproduce unless they are normal like Sir William.

Woolf, however, who herself struggled with mental illness, criticizes Sir William’s harsh methods,
comparing him to a predator who “…swoop[s] and devour[s]…the naked, defenceless, the exhausted,
the friendless…he shut people up” (Woolf 102). Following this metaphor, it is clear that like a predator
ultimately kills its prey, Bradshaw also kills his patients in one way or another. Although he tries to
employ his methods of “proportion, divine proportion, Sir William’s goddess…” his methods are not
successful at draining Septimus of his individuality as they did his wife, and Septimus develops a
mounting fear of Sir William as he continues to see him as the embodiment of human nature. Sir William
Bradshaw symbolizes society or human nature as he personifies them as a forceful manipulator who can
only accept one type of person.

While some critics rely heavily on Woolf's own biography for keys to meaning in the text - her self-
professed atheism, her dislike for people with "Causes," her own struggles against mental illness linking
her with a dislike of doctors like Bradshaw, it is not simply her own experience Woolf is writing of here
but the experience of all those who have come under the thumb of the purveyors of Proportion and
Conversion.

The Big Ben

Big Ben is a major London monument, but its role in the novel is complex. It not only suggests tradition,
but it also (with its constant gonging) doesn’t let anyone forget about the passage of time. With Big Ben,
Woolf signals to the reader how important punctuality, schedules, and daily rhythms are to the tradition
of English life.

One can’t help but notice the important role that time plays in the lives of all these characters. This is
particularly true when we hear their memories – both beautiful and haunting. Peter can’t forget the
days of Bourton and his love for Clarissa; Clarissa fears the passage of time and the inevitability of death;
Septimus suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, which prevents him from forgetting what he
experienced and, in a sense, robs him of his future.

Big Ben is a big physical and aural (sound) reminder of all of these issues surrounding time. Clarissa has
lived so long with the clock that she anticipates its "leaden circles dissolv[ing] in the air" (1.5). Big Ben is
almost like a character with a personality: "The sound of Big Ben striking the half-hour struck out
between them with extraordinary vigour, as if a young man, strong, indifferent, inconsiderate, were
swinging dumb-bells this way and that" (2.92). And like a character, Big Ben seems almost to interrupt
the people of London intentionally.

Lily Briscoe’s Painting

Lily Briscoe is a woman artist, and while she captures what she sees around her in paints rather than in
words, her project in the novel is, in many ways, similar to Virginia Woolf's project for To the Lighthouse.
Woolf uses words to sketch the essence of ten years of time's passage for the Ramsay family by focusing
on the slow decline of their house in the Isle of Skye. Woolf works obliquely (in other words, indirectly
and in a wandering manner) to depict the decay of the Ramsay family without ever actually coming out
and showing how the family has interacted over those ten years. And this is really similar to the painting
strategy that Lily uses in To the Lighthouse: “It was Mrs Ramsay reading to James, [Lily] said. She knew
[William Bankes]'s objection— that no one could tell it for a human shape. But she had made no
attempt at likeness, she said…. her beauty—might be reduced, he pondered, to a purple shadow
without irreverence.”

Lily's painting of James and Mrs. Ramsay suggests Mrs. Ramsay's character with a few lines and a bit of
purple shadowing: "she had made no attempt at likeness." Lily attempts to capture something truthful
in her portrait without being too picky about making the painting actually look like Mrs. Ramsay. And in
painting the essence of Mrs. Ramsay rather than her physical form, she's not trying to get only Mrs.
Ramsay; she's also trying to represent something ineffable or inexpressible about "mother and child [...]
objects of universal veneration" .
This sounds a lot like Woolf's work to get the essence of the Ramsay family (and of her own family, and
of family structures more generally; for more on this, see "In a Nutshell") by jotting down moments from
two days separated by ten years. Woolf isn't going the realist route with this novel. Like Lily, Woolf uses
the "simple, obvious, commonplace" to get at really profound issues between mothers, fathers, sons,
and daughters.

According to Glenn Pedersen Lily Briscoe’s painting is both structurally and thematically the voyage to
the Lighthouse. He argues that the entire action of the novel is unfolded symbolically in Lily Briscoe’s
painting. It is also generally believed through observations that Lily’s painting is post-impressionist in
essence and for the picture to be completed along post-impressionist lines, Mrs. Ramsay must become
merely a part of the system of formal relations; and in order to accomplish this, Lily must overcome Mrs.
Ramsay’s ability to dominate her emotionally. Thus, the painting only finishes years later when Mrs.
Ramsay is dead. By having Lily paint a Post-Impressionist picture, one in which she sacrifices nothing " of
those formal relations to the arousing of emotions connected with the outer world," Woolf offers a
means for understanding the significance which Ramsay has for the other characters within the novel.

Ramsay House

The Ramsay summer house is the place where the novel begins. It’s position on the island of Skye
provides the perfect setting for the novel as Virginia Woolf introduces us to the novel’s characters
whose psychic depths slowly unfolds a series of problems and dilemmas. Ramsay’s summer house is also
one of the important symbols of the novel. This is the place where all deed happens. Ramsay’s House is
a place where Woolf and her characters explain their belief and observation. During her dinner party,
Mrs. Ramsay’s sees her house display her own inner notions of shabbiness and her inability to preserve
beauty. The house stands for the collective consciousness of those who stay in it. From the dinner party
to the journey to The Lighthouse, Woolf shows the house from every angle, and its structure and
contents mirror the interior of the characters that inhabit it.

In the second chapter "Time Passes" the house acquires an important meaning, characters and actions
are secondary. The whole chapter provides a description of the disintegration of the house and the
invasion of nature in it. As Cara Lewis states "the absence of consciousness in a space which was
previously peopled by so many perceiving subjects results in a ghostly atmosphere, a house inhabited by
shades. . In “Time Passes,” even the loveliness and stillness that Woolf personifies offer cold comfort:
“the shape of loveliness itself” is, after all, “a form from which life had parted”. This shows the
symbolism of the house to represent the cycle of life. People must die and the time will make them to
decay as the nature has made to the house. The presence of nature in the house means that life
continues, people die and new people are born. As Cara Lewis points out the objects in the house
regards the human inevitability of mortality (442). Relating to this, Katie Gemmil states “the ideas of
mortality and immortality are generally seen as relevant only to humans, but in this case Woolf applies
these larger life questions to commonplace items like wall-paper, flowers, books and letters". In the
house we see the presence of the first symbol, the lighthouse, which is helping the abandonment of the
house to remind that the time is wasting. In the following quote we can see the description of the
disintegration of the house and the presence of nature in it. "The house was left; the house was
deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long
night seemed to have set it; the trifling airs; nibbling, the

clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had rusted and the mat decayed.
Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly, the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself
between the tiles in the larder. The swallows nested in the drawing room; the floor was strewn with
straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls; rafters were laid bare; rats carried off this and that to gnaw behind
the wainscots. Tortoise-shell butterflies burst from the Poppies sowed themselves among the dahlias;
the lawn waved with long grass; giant artichokes towered among roses; a fringed carnation flowered
among the cabbages; while the gentle tapping of a weed at the window had become, on winter's nights,
a drumming from sturdy trees an thorned briars which made the whole room green in summer".

The house is also present in Mrs. Ramsay's thoughts and it serves as a reminder of her when she dies to
Lily Briscoe.