Woolf did not hesitate to publicly criticize the treatment of mental illnesses in post-war London. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf uses Septimus’ character to show medical professionals who dismissed or ignored the speaking the outcries of mentally ill and shell shocked patients. This was Woolf’s way of publicly speaking about the treatment of the mentally ill in London during this time. Joan Bennett has pointed out : “within the book there is a poetic pattern, probing to that deeper level at which the mind apprehends timeless values, as well as the prose pattern wherein the reader is given a picture of the modern world with its destructive forces of class struggle, economic insecurity and war.
Woolf did not hesitate to publicly criticize the treatment of mental illnesses in post-war London. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf uses Septimus’ character to show medical professionals who dismissed or ignored the speaking the outcries of mentally ill and shell shocked patients. This was Woolf’s way of publicly speaking about the treatment of the mentally ill in London during this time. Joan Bennett has pointed out : “within the book there is a poetic pattern, probing to that deeper level at which the mind apprehends timeless values, as well as the prose pattern wherein the reader is given a picture of the modern world with its destructive forces of class struggle, economic insecurity and war.