Thomas Mann’s novella Tristan (1903) and Virginia Wolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) both depict mental illness as a way to condemn the reality of their respective main characters. The precariousness of their surroundings is further emphasized by the economies of desire and exchange, which culminate in the coexistence of health and illness within the same liminal space. This coexistence ultimately blurs the lines between the two, emphasizing the idea that perhaps the sufferers are the speakers of truth in a time of meaningless societal systems. This can be seen through the role of the female characters, who both accentuate and are subdued to a system which has clearly repressed the sick in favor of the healthy.
Thomas Mann was a German author who was greatly praised for his literary insights into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. In some of his early tales he portrayed the aestheticism of the 1890s through the lens of influential philosophers like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and the composer Wagner, who will play a major role in the analysis of Tristan. Hence, in many of Mann’s works, the dichotomy between spirit (geist) and life (leben) echoes in his central figure, who exists in a world of make belief which blurs the boundary between artist and charlatan.
On the other hand, Virginia Woolf was an English writer who, still to this day, is considered one of the most modernist writers of the twentieth century due to her bold statements on society, gender roles and psychological conditions, which she mainly expressed through a “homeric technique of the rhapsode carefully stitching fragments together just as Clarissa sews her dress” at the beginning of the text. This can be seen in Mrs. Dalloway, a novel which explores a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in Post First World War England. In the span of a day, where Clarissa begins the preparations for a party that she and her husband Richard will host that evening, the reader is transported across inward journeys of different characters, as the story travels forwards and back in time.
Before we explore the narrative alignment between mental illness and the economies of either desire or exchange, it is important to decipher how and through what means mental illness is portrayed and treated in these two texts.
Mental illness plays a pivotal function in Mann’s Tristan. The story, based largely on the 12th-Century Romance Tristan by Gottfried von Strassburg, is set in Einfried, an Alpine sanatorium, and narrated by a voice which allows the characters to evolve while maintaining an ironic distance. The plot revolves around three individuals: Anton Klöterjahn, a businessman from northern Germany, Gabriele Klöterjahn, his tubercular wife, and Detlev Spinell, the ambivalent artist. While the mental stability of Spinell drifts in ambiguity throughout the whole narrative, the troubled relationship between him and Gabriele showcases the effects of mental illness in the thrilling and yet physically intoxicating exchange between the two. Hence, although the reader is given indications of the underlying presence of mental illness in the narrative, there are no clear statements that allude to a specific ailment. In fact, the reader is never given an explanation as to why Spinell is in the sanitarium, apart from his apparently unconcerned comment “oh, I’m having a little electrical treatment”103. He is described as a “tall, well built man in his early thirties, with dark hair […] beginning to turn distinctly great about the temples, and a round, white, […] puffy face”. His “large carious teeth”, big feet and clear and innocent face had led one of the other patients to refer to him as the “putrefied child”. We are also told that he is moved by beauty, and that he wrote a book which he keeps on his desk, “permanently on view to anyone who entered his room”. He also wrote many letters, “though the odd and amusing thing was that he himself very rarely received any”. Such characterization of Spinell’s presence in the narrative allude to a form of sickness, whether it is one brought on by boredom, loneliness or existential crisis. Nonetheless, one could argue that mental illness is not specific to Spinell but is rather a sort of aura encapsulating the entirety of the text, from the characters in it to the narrating voice, which through its ironic and yet omniscient tone and closeness to the character’s mental conditions, could perhaps be seen as another manifestation of a sort of illness.
Mrs. Dalloway, on the other hand, mental illness is epitomized by the figure of Septimus Warren Smith, a First World War veteran suffering from deferred traumatic stress after having witnessed the death of his friend and officer Evans. In the span of the day moves from hallucinating experiences in Reagents Park to a psychiatric hospital, where he eventually commits suicide. Similarly to Spinell, Septimus Warren Smith perceives the world differently, after having witnessed the brutality of the world. He is “aged about thirty, pale-faced, beak-nosed, wearing brown shoes and a shabby overcoat, with hazel eyes which had the look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too”. Hence, in the same way Spinell’s outer appearance mirrors his internal turmoils, also Septimus’ looks convey a sense of disarray which evoke a feeling of perdition. Similarly to Tristan, in Mrs. Dalloway mental illness lives in the uncertainty of people’s lives, and therefore in the ambivalence of the characters. However, while Spinell’s presence echoes a condition that prevails over every aspect of the text, from the setting to the narrative voice, in Mrs. Dalloway it is a private matter which people pretend not to understand. Nonetheless, Mrs. Dalloway brings to light these internal struggles through her “stream of consciousness narrative form” which corresponds to the effect of trauma on the individual. “The survivor’s traumatized minds apprehends the traumatic event as ever-present, as his memories of the event often exist in the present consciousness as encapsulated images and fragments of thoughts”. Furthermore, while for Spinell beauty could be seen as his mechanism for survival which keeps him afloat in the sterile environment of the sanitarium, for Septimus it becomes part of a distant past, where he was an aspiring poet who read Shakespeare and loved Miss Isabel Pole.
This leads to the understanding that, in both texts, the connotation of one being mentally ill is attributed to the overarching structure the characters are engulfed in. If Spinell’s collocation in a mental institution brings the reader to assume he has some sort of mental illness, the juxtaposition between Septimus’ emotions and the seemingly mundane demeanor of certain characters in the novel allows us to view him as different, alienated from society. At the same time, Woolf allows the reader to see both sides of each character, allowing us to empathize with the honesty of Semptimus’ psychological state.
These two apparently unstable characters communicate and relate themselves to the world through the main female characters. However, while Spinell’s relationship with Gabriele is one of open communications and exchanges, Septimus’ effect on Clarissa Dalloway happens from a distance, emphasizing his inability to communicate feelings and emotions in a society which represses negativity in favor of the mundane.
“Whenever Spinell is deeply moved by an aesthetic experience, his response is one of internal rapture”. The encounter with Gabriele defines the first of many moments of ecstatic responses which pull the two closer together into a swirling void of creative expression. Throughout the narrative, Spinell often exclaims “what beauty!”, commenting on either a moment, a movement or a sound, as if almost overwhelmed by it. He sees grace in the fragility of Gabriele, whose “beautiful pale hands”, “brown hair […] brushed smoothly back and gathered in a knot low down on her neck” and “well marked eyebrows […] across the clear unblemished, almost translucent surface of her forehead” contrast “the little blue vein [which] disturbingly dominated her whole oval face”. This blue vein becomes a motif in the narrative symbolizing her physical weakness, together with the act of coughing blood which alternates with days of health. Furthermore, whenever Spinell is overwhelmed by art, beauty or aesthetics, he either states it verbally or manifests it physically by either inclining his head to the side or contorting his body. This can be seen, for instance, in the moment when Gabriele recounts of when she used to sit in her garden with her friends for hours, crocheting and gossiping. The sound of such beautiful and pure act brings Spinell, the man who seems to be rotting from the inside, to a state of ecstasy. ““How beautiful that is!” exclaims Herr Spinell, “with his face quite contorted”. He subsequently adds: “a little golden crown […] gleamed in you hair””. Hence, Gabriele begins to symbolize the apparition of an interlocutor to Spinell’s otherwise lonely life, through which he is able to feel emotions and interact. Her “artistic personality, which is totally incompatible with that of her husband, complements that of Spinell”, and as their relationship strengthens her health seems to recover. However, despite this euphoria which leads both characters to divorce themselves from their own degrading reality, glimpses in the narrative bring the reader to perceive the underlying social and physical malady. When in company of Spinell, Gabriele “[laughs] so heartedly that the little blue vein over her eyebrow [stands out] alarmingly”, and when Spinell smiles, he inevitably shows his “carious teeth”, which epitomizes his inner illness. This affliction is further enhanced by the weather. As the two enjoy each other’s company, “the pervasive snow and coldness (representing [Gabriele’s] underlying malady) remains”. However, through Spinell’s words, we come to realize that this illness is the catalyst for creation, and is almost seen as the collateral effect to achieve creative greatness. “The sun has disappeared”, but “too much sun […] glares with such obtrusive clarity on everything, whether beautiful or vulgar” observes Spinell, stressing the idea that darkness, and therefore pain and suffering, is actually a medium to achieve spiritual upheaval. In fact, “for Mann, and for Wagner, night symbolizes love as well as death”. Hence, through the way Spinell interacts with Gabriele, we can discern how they both become each other’s saviors in their “knowledge of [their] own uselessness”, transcending their degrading condition as an impetus for creative freedom.
Through this concept, the role of music comes into play, which represents the culminating moment where the concealed illness soars together with an “enthusiastic command of rhythmic nobility verged on the fantastic”, to which Spinell reacts by sitting “motionless, without saying a word”116. As Gabriele plays Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde ???, urged by Spinell’s desire to hear her play, “she lacks the intellectual perspicacity needed to understand the conceptual aspect of the music she intuitively so beautifully plays”, which is complemented by Spinell’s appreciation of art. Hence, in this pivotal moment, illness, beauty, health and awe briefly exist on the same spectrum, detached from reality but at the same time anchored to it in the moment where her health worsens and she eventually dies, as “she cannot adjust herself to the [bourgeois] existence”.
Similarly to Spinell, Septimus’ and Clarissa Dalloway complement each other in the narrative, although their relationship is one which is assessed from the reader, for they never truly interact. They both question their life choices, and they paradoxically share similarities in terms of appearance, such as their beaked noses. However, Clarissa’s duality allows her to maintain a level of decency in the public eye, whose “personality begins to emerge as a relative quality, determined by who observes her rather than by what she is”. On the other hand, Septimus’ memories overwhelm his present moment in time as well as his troubled relationship with his Italian wife Lucrezia. “His characterization […] illustrates […] the need [for the victims of War] to give meaning to their suffering in order to recover from trauma”. However, while in Mann’s novella the mentally and physically ill are removed from society and enclosed in a “white and rectilinear” architecture, Septimus’ illness is not fully acknowledged by any of the characters, preventing him from exchanging communications. Instead, his trauma merges with his surroundings, making him feel detached from any form of human relation. This can be seen, for instance, in the moment where a car backfires while Clarissa is in the flower shop. In that moment, where the many people surrounded by this modern industrial world suspect that the cars might be carrying the queen or a high-ranking government official, Septimus blames himself for the traffic congestion caused by the passing cars. He showcases no interest in the rapidly moving world which constantly engulfs him, and his wife senses and is almost embarrassed by this. This inability to communicate is also visible in Spinell’s letters, including the last one he ironically sends to Gabriele’s husband when they are both in the same building. Even the doctors have “no very high opinion of the writer”, which accentuates his inability to convey his inner self to the outer world. However, the difference between Septimus and Spinell in terms of human exchanges lies in the female characters. While Gabriele becomes a reliever to Spinell’s sufferings, through her graceful sickness and her passion for music, Septimus is left to his miserable self, misunderstood from the trivial society he lives in. By the end of the novel, only Clarissa seems to acknowledge his ability to embrace the moment and act for his own sake, but this realization takes place in such a cheerful environment that it just becomes one of the many thoughts she hides from the public eye. Hence, “from the moment Septimus was conceived, the crucial test of his character would be not war, but a lush world constantly soliciting the attention of his senses”.
Another important point of comparison between the two texts is the role that doctors play in preventing communications from occurring. In Tristan, doctors appear as hovering presences who constantly control the patients. Dr. Leander, Dr. Müller and Fräulen von Osterloh are the three physicians at Einfried, who appear as ominous entities throughout the novella. We are told from the very start that Dr. Müller is the one dealing with “those cases which are not serious at all and those which are hopeless”, which will become an important element in the plot when Gabriele is transferred to his care by the end of the narrative. Although they maintain a level of distance from the main characters, their voices are discerned from those of the patients. For instance, when Gabriele exclaims that her “family doctor and Dr. Leander have both expressly forbidden [her] to play” the piano, or when we are told that “medical science” has determined she needs a “little piece of ice, morphine [and] complete rest”, we come to the understanding that doctors are the disablers, they are the ones who prevent artistic expression and who synthesize the patients to their illness. This is further emphasized by the narrator’s description of Dr. Müller as a “quiet, pale, insignificant, sad-looking man”, which in turn transforms Spinell and Gabriele as captives of an oppressing system.
In the case of Septimus, while Dr Holmes thinks he is just "in a funk" Dr Bradshaw diagnoses that he "lacks proportion" Neither acknowledges the fact that the War has impacted Septimus and they fail to acknowledge his traumatic illness. His ensuing death therefore symbolizes “his inability to communicate his experiences to others and thereby give those experiences meaning and purpose”. “He [gives] in”, and in so doing, he perpetuates the form of escapism that characterizes every character in the play, which we are given access to through the third person omniscient narrator. By the end of the novel, as the Breadshaws enter Clarissa’s party and relate that Septimus has died, we are once again brought to the realization that trivial subject predominate the social landscape that Woolf has decided to depict. This can be seen in Clarissa’s interrogation “what business had the Breadshaws to talk of death at her party?”. However, we are told from the very start that Clarissa’s “only gift was knowing people almost by instinct” and thus being able to empathize with others, which brings her to realize that “death was defiance” and “an attempt to communicate”. This symbolizes the intersection between mental illness and exchange in the novel. Through Septimus’ story, Clarissa is reminded of her own existence and that “life is made intolerable” by people like Bradshaw. She examines her own life choices, and acknowledges “the profound darkness” which forces her to stand at a party in an evening dress. However, despite Septimus’ ultimate act of escapism has touched Clarissa’s conscience, the ensuing description of the trivial party she has hosted represents Woolf’s depiction of a society which lives joylessly in the insecurity of its own uselessness.
The way mental illness aligns with the narrative in both works therefore symbolizes a form of escapism which the reader is compelled to acknowledge and reflect on. Juxtaposed to the other secondary characters, illness becomes a synonym for truth, one which acknowledges a holy beauty in the case of Spinell, and an immeasurable darkness in that of Septimus. In relation to these ailments, doctors appear as the one’s preventing exchanges, shoving the victims of their ‘care’ even deeper within their own damned condition. The main female characters, who in part facilitate the outbursts of the mentally ill, are ultimately unable to fully convey their observations to the rest of the world, caving into their own weaknesses. Furthermore, both works end on a hopeless note. Where Spinell sees in Gabriele’s healthy son and husband a “sheer animal […] spirit” which brings him to “inwardly [run] away”, Clarissa returns to the party knowing that she will not fulfill her long lost chances to be happy with either Peter or Sally, epitomizing an eternally unfulfilled and trivial existence.