Examples Of Foreshadowing In Mrs Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway, written by Virginia Woolf, is full of heavy imagery and challenging passages. The biggest problems in the storyline is when the writing is usually at its toughest. One of the main characters, Septimus, served in the war. This caused him to have post traumatic stress which caused him to lose interest in his favorite things and lose the girl he liked. Throughout the book, he talks about suicide and death frequently which foreshadows what will come. On page 149 and 150, arguably the climax of the book, Septimus commits suicide. After plenty of foreshadowing, this was easily seen. This scene helps to finalize everything that Septimus had been hinting at and impacts the other characters, especially Clarissa, in the pages following. Prior to this scene, a despondent Septimus “had actually talked of killing himself to his wife” (90). His psychiatrist, Sir William Bradshaw, didn’t recognize that the war had affected him and that he was going to actually kill himself. He called it a “funk” (92) and said his thoughts of death were “merely a question of rest” (96). This denial and terrible psychiatric treatment on Bradshaw’s part, …show more content…
Her long, detailed descriptions of the jump out the window and the reactions of Rezia and Holmes serve as a way to understand and feel as if you are there. From the description of the “nice clean bread knife with ‘Bread’ carved on the handle” to the “large Bloomsburry-lodging house window,” Woolf implants a even the smallest of details in the reader's mind to never forget the scene where Septimus killed himself. Raw emotion is conveyed in “Rezia ran to the window, she saw; she understood.” She immediately knows what has happened without having to look. It is sad that she had to live with the fear and thought that he would someday kill himself. Readers are able to picture just how ad the gruesome scene was by Holmes reaction, looking “white as a sheet, shaking all