Septimus Smith, or, The First Character I Have Seen Myself In For a Long Time
Warning: Suicide
I would like to preface this post by saying that I do not have any suicidal or self-harm intention. I simply have many intrusive thoughts, and I am receiving treatment. I believe it is important to discuss and destigmatize these topics, and this is my space to do so. If you are sensitive to these topics, please do not read this post. Take care of yourself.
Reading Septimus’ suicide scene was terrifying and exhilarating for me, simply because I can so clearly see myself in his place. I can see myself, backed into a corner, threatened and not even able to choose my method, and beginning the “tiresome, the troublesome, and rather melodramatic business of opening the window and throwing [myself] out.” Septimus talks of killing himself but does not actively take steps towards it. But presented with the opportunity, and threatened with no escape, it seems like his only choice. And so he takes that choice, and it leads to the end of his life.
I don’t believe he desired to die for dying’s sake. I believe he wanted to die as an escape, as a pathway away from Holmes. This is because I view suicide in this way. My ideation is not because I want to die, it’s because I want to leave where I’m at. I feel trapped, whether it be in this universe, this room, or this body, and I immediately jump to suicide as an escape from my own consciousness. Septimus thought about how he didn’t want to die right before he jumped. He thought about life. He waited until the last possible minute to throw himself off. He didn’t want to die, he just wanted to escape.
I wish I could have known Septimus. I wish I could have read his writings and studied his art, even after he left them behind. I, too, will leave behind stacks of papers, countless notebooks, scribbled drawings, and nonsensical writings. I don’t want them to be burned, I want them to be tied up neatly and put away. I know I can’t actually see his works because he’s fictitious. I know we don’t really have anything in common beyond this mentality. But it’s been so long since I’ve really, truly, related to a character, that I wish I could have some sort of connection.
Woolf's striking narrative technique--putting reader's in Septimus's "mind" in the same way she does for Clarissa or Peter--does a lot of important work toward de-stigmatizing mental illness and the suffering of someone like Septimus. There would be such a strong inclination to have readers look *at* him, diagnose him, sympathize with him perhaps, but to still depict him as a "crazy person" who cannot be understood, even if we sympathize. (Consider how Septimus must have come across to people in public, which is why Lucrezia is so painfully self-conscious as she leads him around London.) This novel makes a remarkable attempt to make Septimus visible to the reader, to "put us in his place" to the extent that such a thing is possible in fiction. We don't look at him as a "case," from the outside (the way Bradshaw does, for example); we grasp the terrifying disorientation of his condition from the "inside." At a time when even the medical establishment was skeptical toward Shell Shock/PTSD and other mental illness, it's a truly radical feature of this modern novel.
ReplyDeleteI think you did a really good job outlining the tragedy of Septimus's death: that even in his last moments, he doesn't want to let go of life, but he feels compelled to do so to escape Dr. Holmes. It's the culmination of all the harm that the supposed mental health "experts" have caused him by dismissing his pain, and there's this overwhelming sense that if only the society around him were different, his story might not have ended the way it did. Thank you for sharing this—I imagine it was a pretty vulnerable post to put out into the world. I'm glad you're here ❤
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