Horrified… and yet… proud…
I wrote this paper tonight. I thought of the idea this morning. It took me four hours. I wrote this basically off the top of my head. This is why I’m a nerd and need a classroom:
Psychoanalytic Literature: Dostoevsky to Woolf
Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mental disorders and diseases began to play a more detailed and significant role in world literature, as information and understanding about the role of these subjects became known. Perhaps the most commonly recognized example of this shift is seen in the work of psychologists such as Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, who advanced this understanding through the development of the psychoanalytic theory. Despite this “household” recognition of psychoanalysis and human behavioral study, this school of psychologists had literary sources upon which to draw, and long after their initial clinical exploration, authors continue to examine the essence of the human psyche through the development of fictional characters.
In 1865, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” was published, and is today recognized as the one of the world greatest works of literature, and the first “psychological” novel, revealing the murderer Raskolnikov not through the clues he leaves behind, but through the killer’s inner monologue. Freud himself recognized Dostoyevsky’s influence into the field of psychoanalysis. “Dostoevsky’s great works, considered individually or holistically, though fictional, established him as one of the forefathers of psychoanalysis, and a predecessor to Freud. Indeed Freud himself acknowledged that “the poets” discovered the unconscious before he did, stating further in a letter to Stefan Zweig, “Dostoevsky ‘cannot be understood without psychoanalysis- i.e., he isn’t in need of it because he illustrates it himself in every character and every sentence.’” (Cantrell) Nearly sixty years later, Virginia Woolf would approach the character Septimus Warren Smith using many of the same methods as Dostoevsky, influenced by the Russian author, as Freud had been. She said of the author in her essay The Russian Point of View, “There is something proud and superb in the attack of such a mind and such a body upon life. Nothing seems to escape him. Nothing glances off him unrecorded… And what his infallible eye reports of a cough or a trick of the hands his infallible brain refers to something hidden in the character, so that we know his people, not only by the way they love and their views on politics and the immortality of the soul, but also by the way they sneeze and choke.” Despite Woolf’s appreciation of these talents, and the similarity of her method, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov and Septimus Warren Smith embody two very different facets of mental disorder and its effects upon the individual, born of the experiences of their creator.
No doubt influenced by Dostoevsky’s experience with the penal system in Russia following his incarceration in a Siberian labor camp in 1946- a result of his involvement with political liberalism - the author first wrote “Crime and Punishment” as a serialized novel published in The Russian Messenger, later compiled into its familiar novelized form. It follows the descent into madness and criminality of Rodion Raskolnikov, a Petersburg student plagued by the debilitating effects of paranoid schizophrenia. Raskolnikov, laboring under delusions and hallucinations, murders a pawnbroker and her half sister with an axe. The novel focuses on Raskolnikov’s formulation and execution of the crime, his subsequent self-involvement in the ensuing criminal investigation, and his eventual confession, incarceration, and redemption. Although rife with themes from a modern-day detective novel, the primary focus of Crime and Punishment is the mental and emotional state of the main character, and the moral and religious implications of his actions.
In 1925, Virginia Woolf’s publication of Mrs. Dalloway delved with equal aplomb and tenacity into the intricacies of emotional and mental health. Woolf’s novel introduced of Septimus Warren Smith, a young soldier irrevocably damaged by the debilitating effects of mental disorders, a subject largely influenced by Woolf’s own battle with mental illness over much of her adult life. Woolf suffered bouts of depression and mood disorders, which degenerated into more serious symptoms such as auditory hallucinations in the last years of her life. Fearing this degeneration of her mental state and its effect on her marriage and writing, Woolf committed suicide by drowning in 1941. Similar to the manifestations of Raskolnikov’s illness, Septimus Warren Smith exhibited bouts of prolonged agitation, hallucination, and delusional thinking. The similarity ends there however, as the results of their respective illness both on the world and on their own lives, differ considerably.
The first major area in which the two characters differ is the mitigating circumstances of their illness. Septimus’ catalyst is clearly defined in the novel: A soldier in the First World War, Septimus saw firsthand the atrocities of the battlefield, chiefly in the death of his friend, Evans. Returning from the war, shell-shocked and despondent, an already deteriorating Septimus marries Lucrezia while living in Italy after the war, and returns with her to England. Even in this early stage of what would now be called Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD,) Septimus lacks emotional response.
“Even taste (Rezia liked ices, chocolates, sweet things) had no relish to him. He put down his cup on the little marble table. He looked at people outside; happy they seemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing, squabbling over nothing. But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the tea-shop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him-he could not feel. He could reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easily (”Septimus, do put down your book,” said Rezia, gently shutting the Inferno), he could add up his bill; his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then-that he could not feel.”
This lack of feeling is not present in most of Raskolnikov’s private thoughts. To the contrary, his emotions reel from the most tender feelings of affection (for Sonia, for his old schoolmate Razumihin,) to rages and moments devoid of care.
In Raskolnikov, there seems no clearly defined catalyst for mental breakdown, but for the extreme poverty that plagues him. Before the opening of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov had been a student at the university, but because of money and social issues had dropped out, becoming so poor as to have little with which to feed or clothe himself. While not so pronounced a reason as Septimus’ war experience, the onset of schizophrenia is often precipitated by some change or stress in the life of the sufferer. Whatever the cause, Raskolnikov’s deterioration into homicidal thoughts is present from the first chapters of the novel, and in fact the character spends much of the opening of the book preparing to murder the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna, visiting the woman on the pretext of pawning some items as a way to examine the scene of the future crime.
Where Septimus presents a more acute public face of “madness” (talking to oneself, insisting upon the presence of unseen figures and unheard voices) Raskolnikov manages to remain high-functioning throughout most of the story - a fact of course out of step with the functioning ability of most paranoid schizophrenics. Where Septimus rambles and collects his thoughts in incoherent missives (either self-written or dictated to his wife,) Raskolnikov collects his thoughts and formally presents his belief of the “Ubermensch” theory to the world, through a publication submitted while he was still a student. Although their level of sophistication in collecting these thoughts varies, it is in this instance where the two characters find their greatest commonality. The idea that they are of a class of human above the common man is a theme that features heavily in the delusions of both men. Raskolnikov meditates heavily upon the idea of the Napoleonic figure, the individual who once in a generation moves beyond moral and legal bounds to achieve greatness (Interestingly, Woolf visits this idea in To the Lighthouse, with Mr. Ramsay’s meditation upon “reaching Zed.” Although this refers to intellectual, not moral superiority, the emphasis upon its rarity is the same.) Increasingly, Raskolnikov comes to believe that he is one of these “great men,” and in fact ultimately admits that his murder of the old woman was an act to “prove” that he could progress beyond morality and law, believing “if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood.”
Septimus, on the other hand, presents a much less formal characterization of his human superiority. He seems to be guided by the apparition of Evans, continually concerned with “saving” others (most likely an idea ingrained in him during his service.) Here there ”Now for his writings; how the dead sing behind rhododendron bushes; odes to Time; conversations with Shakespeare; Evans, Evans, Evans-his messages from the dead; do not cut down trees; tell the Prime Minister. Universal love: the meaning of the world. Burn them!’ he cried.” Here the reader gains a full perspective on the level of incoherence present in Septimus’ fractured reality. Where Raskolnikov is calculating, cunning and works to maintain control over his reeling emotional state, Septimus gives completely over to the delusion. His assertions of superiority come to nothing, however, as his actions, as explored in the following, are primarily self-concerned.
Perhaps the largest divide between the two characters is in their ultimate fate. Where Dostoevsky’s aim in creating the figure of Raskolnikov is to move a figure from a state of moral decrepitude to one of redemption, Woolf uses Septimus (semi-autobiographically) as a symbol of emotional separation, lonliness, and the pervasive influence of mental illness upon the sufferer. Raskolnikov ultimately is liberated from the darkness of his mental illness by his involvement with, and eventual confession to Sonia Arkadeyevna, the prostitute who took pity on the murderer, loving him and even following him to Siberia to wait out his penal servitude. Here Raskolnikov is not saved by medicine (for medicine had not yet begun to explore the causes and remedies for organic mental defect) but by absolution. He becomes aware of the nature of his crimes, and through confession and penitence, is redeemed to a new life after his servitude. Themes of redemption played heavily into Dostoevsky’s work, chiefly due to his return to religious orthodoxy during his own servitude.
The fate of Septimus Warren Smith is not so bright. Haunted by apparitions, terrified and abused by the doctors who attempt to “cure” him with the slapdash practice of medicine, Septimus ultimately succumbs to the weight of his illness, leaping from a window to escape the perceived assault by the “enemy” doctors. Septimus’ fate is largely a commentary on Woolf’s own views of mental illness, and her struggle against them. Woolf, like Septimus, would eventually succumb to the weight of her mental disorders. It is perhaps for this reason that she is able to produce a character, while so obviously disturbed, is also pitiable, walking the fine line between our aversion to madness, and our deeper fears of living under such a state. We do not think less of Septimus for his end, and in fact understand the weight of such a burden through his inner monologue. Absolution for Septimus comes not from those around him, but form the reader.
To look at these two characters is to appreciate how, in the hands of a master craftsman, the same tools and materials can produce vastly different results. The influence upon Woolf’s work is clear, and her understanding of the human soul on terms with Dostoevsky.
Sources:
1. Cantrell, Dan. “Dostoevsky and Psychology”. Accessed June 27, 2009. http://community.middlebury.edu/~beyer/courses/previous/ru351/studentpapers/Psychology.shtml
2. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. (1866) “Crime and Punishment” Translated by Constance Garnett (2004) Collector’s Library. London.
3. Woolf, Virginia. (1925) “Mrs. Dalloway”. Harcourt. London.
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