The Treatment of War Experience

in Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway and Ian McEwans Atonement:

From Make it New to Read and Write it in a New Way

By Bianca van de Water

War literature has an extensive cultural history, extending far back into epic and romance traditions

(Rutherford 194). This subject matter was sequentially treated by nineteenth-century literary realism,

which, according to Andrew Rutherford, provided a corrective to naive, unconvincing heroic texts

which had merely tenuous connexions with real-life battle experience (Ibid.). Contrarily, Rutherford

argues, realist novels excel in recreating war and war experience imaginatively allowing readers to

perceive what it was like to fight, survive or die on the battle field (204) due to this genres

documentary nature, particularity of description, social exploration and verisimilitude regarding

outward circumstance (194). Accordingly, realist authors described war experience in objective,

directly-observable minutiae, such as the depictions in the late nineteenth-century novel The Red

Badge of Courage, set in the American Civil War. This texts omniscient narrator reports for instance:

A shell screaming like a storm banshee went over the huddled heads of the
reserves. It landed in the grove, and exploding redly flung the brown earth. There
was a little shower of pine needles. Bullets began to whistle among the branches
and nip at the trees. Twigs and leaves came sailing down (Crane loc. 1073).

This passage provides a credible and vivid description of the sights and sounds of a battle scene thus

allowing readers a vicarious war experience. However, realist texts comparable to the excerpt above

neither provide insights into combatants conscious thoughts nor disrupt assumptions that fiction

faithfully represents historical fact. In doing so, literary realism maintains the illusion that reality is

something innocently given (Nicol 13) to the readers in the form of a complete, accurate and

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plausible representation of the real world (18). Subsequent modernist and postmodernist fiction

critiqued the hegemony of realist fiction offering new literary conventions to represent reality

and the world (Childs loc. 154). In the context of war literature, it could be argued that modernist

fiction re-invents realist war fiction, in that Woolfs modernist text Mrs. Dalloway focusses on

inner realism rather than exterior reality as experienced by a non-stock character, namely an

anti-hero veteran mentally-disfigured rather than edified by war experience. Furthermore, it

could be argued that postmodernist fiction reinvigorates as well as undermines war fiction, in

that Ian McEwans metafictive historiography Atonement combines multiple genres to expose

the limitations, constructedness and politics involved in creating war novels. Comparing and

contrasting Woolfs and McEwans novels demonstrates that modernist texts depict war

experience in a new way, whereas postmodernist texts propose new ways of writing and reading

about fictional war experience.

The First World War in Mrs. Dalloway

The canonical modernist text, Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway, is set in London in the middle of

June 1923, five years after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, when, according to the minor

character Peter Walsh, people looked different and newspapers seemed different (Woolf,

Dalloway 78). In contrast to classic realist novels such as The Red Badge of Courage, war is

predominantly an absent setting, in that the text contains no descriptions of World War I battle

scenes. Nonetheless, the conflict is a central theme, evidenced in frequent references. For

instance, Clarissa Dalloway reminisces in a fragmented inner monologue that The War was over

. . . thank Heaven over (4-5). More importantly, the conflict has been problematized, whereby

the juxtaposition of dissimilar war experiences highlights a social injustice. For instance, Mr
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Brewers limited war experiences as a British civilian have been parodied - they culminate in

laughable consequences such as a smashed plaster cast of Ceres, a hole in the geranium beds

and a cook with utterly ruined nerves (94) - and juxtaposed with Septimus Warren Smiths

actual war experiences and ensuing mental injuries as a veteran of trench warfare. Furthermore,

the text demonstrates that civilian characters care little for the loss and continuing trauma of

others. For instance, Mrs. Dalloway is blissfully affected by the merry ambience in post-war

London, whereby her stream-of-consciousness demonstrates kaleidoscopic, hallucinatory

imagery, strongly reminiscent of panning techniques in recently-introduced motion pictures:

there was a beating, a stirring of galloping ponies, tapping of cricket bats, whirling young men

and laughing girls . . . dancing all night and discreet old dowagers . . . shooting out in their

motor cars (5). By contrast, this exuberant vision is preceded by a brief reflection on Mrs.

Foxtrot and Lady Bexborough, who have both lost a son in the war. Nonetheless, their fate

evokes no pity in Mrs. Dalloway. On the contrary, she was going to give her party to kindle

and illuminate that very night (5). Likewise, Sir William Bradshaw attends Clarissas soire, as

he had not been able to resist the temptation (200), even though his patient Septimus Smith,

had just committed suicide due to his inability to cope with shell shock and unsuitable treatment

plans. The omission of war zone descriptions combined with the juxtapositions between

characters unscathed and characters scarred by the First World War, demonstrate that the

battlefields may no longer be observable but have nonetheless lasting effects on society, in the

form of continuing trauma as well as societal indifference towards war victims. In doing so, Mrs.

Dalloway critiques post-war Britain in the aftermath of the World War I and questions the role of

society in caring for its war veterans.

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The text is particularly innovative in its characterisation of a severely traumatised war veteran

Septimus Warren Smith, who is representative of Woolfs adult characters, as they typically live

out the historical and social crisis of the early twentieth century (Scott 373). Smith suffers from

shell shock, i.e. PTSD (DeMeester 652), and thus represents a considerable cohort of World War I

veterans. The amount of soldiers experiencing comparable psychological injuries culminated in a

significant and visible public health problem (Church 53) as approximately 80,000 British

soldiers were in treatment for war neurosis during the conflict and thousands remained in lunatic

asylums throughout the interbellum, some even for the rest of their lives (Reid 92). By

featuring an injured war veteran, a victim both of war experience as well as societal indifference,

Mrs. Dalloway interrupts hegemonic depictions of the veteran as a battle-hardened warrior in

a culture which tends to glamorise military heroes (91).

Through several innovative literary techniques, Septimus Smiths inner realism has been

explored, emphasizing the dark places of psychology (Woolf, Modern Fiction loc. 48763).

Smith is represented multi-dimensionally by showing him from a variety of embedded

viewpoints (Showalter XXI). This is achieved through indirect presentations, namely other

characters thoughts and spoken words regarding the veteran. For instance, Rezia, is preoccupied

with a recurring memory of Dr Holmess viewpoint of her husband, whereby Holmess utterance

there was nothing the matter with him (Woolf, Dalloway 23) has been repeated nearly exactly

and consistently numerous times throughout the text. This perspective contrasts starkly with

Rezias own observations, in that she remembers him reporting that people were talking behind

the bedroom walls (72) and arguing with her about killing themselves (73). Thus, she

concludes that her husband . . . was mad (102), an impression confirmed by Dr Bradshaw in

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that he diagnoses him as very seriously ill (105). These multiple perspectives on Septimus Smith

add to the texts psychological realism, as real people are likewise the sum of multiple

perspectives upon them, the ways that a variety of others perceive them (Showalter XXI).

Furthermore, Dr Holmess perspective exposes a social injustice, namely the marginalisation of

shell-shocked soldiers, who were sometimes vilified and often ignored (Reid 91).

Additionally, Smiths characterisation explores the workings of Henri Bergsons then-recent

concept of psychological reality, which postulates that experience of time in the mind differs

from the linear, regular progression of clock-time (Childs loc. 1232). The texts chronological

setting constitutes just one day, whereby the characters Septimus and Rezia Smith spend half an

hour socialising in Regents Park and walking to Dr Bradshaws office, from precisely half-past

eleven according to the tolling church bells of St Margarets (Woolf, Dalloway 54) to twelve by

Big Ben (103). However, in Septimuss mind, the past merges with the present, whereby his

conscious flits between the here-and-now as well as fragmentary flashbacks of impressions made

several years ago. The analepses range from hallucinations of his late fellow-combatant Evans,

the dead man in the grey suit (77) to auditory memories of Rezias speech uttered at different

moments in the past. These latter memories are narrated through free indirect discourse

passages, merging the omniscient narrators explanations, namely that Rezia told him (99)

about her wish to have children, with Septimuss actual thoughts, namely his memories of her

words that she could not grow old and have no children (Ibid.). These depictions of Septimuss

fragmented thought processes demonstrate that his psychological time neither concurs with

chronological time nor progresses in a linear manner. On the contrary, they return to traumatic

and challenging events in the past, from the death of Evans to Rezias confessions, culminating in

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Smiths present sense of guilt that he felt nothing when Evans was killed and considered the

business of copulation filth (Ibid). In sum, the exploration of Smiths psychological time

approaches the workings of a real mind, demonstrating how the past intermingles with the

present, whereby traumatic war experiences in the past can cause negative emotions and

attitudes in the present.

Lastly, Septimus Smiths psyche is explored through extensive stream-of-consciousness passages,

consisting of non-linguistic thoughts such as imagery as well as linguistic thoughts consisting of

illusionary speech and inner monologues. These depictions provide unmediated access to Smiths

mind and highlight his psychological injuries. For instance, he perceives visions of a

transmogrifying dog, which was turning into a man! (Woolf, Dalloway 74), an image that

caused an agony of fear, as it was horrible, terrible (Ibid.) to behold according to his inner

monologue. On another occasion, he experiences visions of his own body so macerated until

only the nerve fibres were left, whereby it was spread like a veil upon a rock (Ibid.), involving

the red flowers on his bedroom wallpaper to extend and grow through his flesh (75).

Meanwhile, he hears sounds unlikely to occur in reality, namely the voices of birds and the

sounds of wheels which chime and chatter in a queer harmony (Ibid.). Additionally, he

experiences auditory hallucinations of Evans, who speaks to him, as a consequence of the dead .

. . [being] with him (102). Perhaps more disturbingly, Smith also hears illusory exhortations,

whereby the whole world was clamouring: Kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes (101). This

frightening command is sequentially tempered by a linguistic monologue, whereby Smith

questions why he should kill himself for their sakes? (Ibid.). In conclusion, Smiths

characterisation demonstrates how the mind amalgamates imagery, sounds and words.

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Furthermore, as one of the most notable representations of shell shock (Church 56), his

characterisation demonstrates that traumatic experiences, such as war and loss of a loved one,

can result in mental injuries. In doing so, Mrs. Dalloways evidences a new means of describing

war experience as an alternative to traditional war literature focussing on external events, in that

the stream-of-consciousness passages provide direct access to a mind processing rather than

merely perceiving traumatic incidents. In doing so, the text provides insights into the

psychological realism of veterans suffering from shell shock.

The Second World War in Atonement

The postmodernist text, Ian McEwans Atonement, constitutes a historiography, in that Part Two

and Part Three are concerned with the Second World War. The former section has been

interpreted as a critique of unhistoricized and intrinsically . . . solipsistic modernism, for its

careful reconstruction of the historical Dunkirk retreat (Robinson 474). Atonement, in contrast to

Mrs. Dalloway, contains detailed descriptions of the sights, sounds and smells of a war zone. The

road to Dunkirk has been described as follows:

From the backs of receding lorries the conscious wounded stared out blankly. There
were also armoured cars, staff cars, Bren-gun carriers and motor bikes . . . The air was
grey with diesel fumes, and straggling wearily through the stench . . . were hundreds of
soldiers, most of them carrying their rifles and their awkward greatcoats a burden in
the mornings growing warmth. Walking with the soldiers were families . . . The only
human sound . . . was the crying of babies (McEwan 203).

This passage provides a strong sense of chaos and humiliation through detailed, multi-sensory

descriptions of setting, rendering the fiction strongly reminiscent of factual documentaries. The

horrific external reality of war has been enhanced by adding horror elements to the descriptions

of locale. Further along the road towards Dunkirk for instance, there are dozens of bodies of
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soldiers and civilians decomposing in the gutters and on the pavement emanating a cruel

stench, insinuating into the folds of his [Robbies] cloths (213). These depictions of abject

bodies convey the horror of war and appropriately enhance the external reality of war. In sum,

Atonement evidences literary techniques characteristic of traditional realist war fiction by

describing external reality in scrupulous, sometimes horrific, detail. As this way of describing

reality and the world has been sustained throughout the novels second section, Atonement

could be interpreted as a homage to traditional realist war fiction and a critique of modernist war

literature.

Nonetheless, the text also demonstrates a modernist concern with consciousness (Robinson

491), focussing on the inner realism of Robbie Turner, the war hero-cum-victim trying to cope

with the horrors of the Dunkirk retreat. His characterisation demonstrates striking similarities

with Septimus Smiths characterisation in Mrs. Dalloway. Robbie Turner likewise experiences

flashbacks of a casualty of war, namely an unnamed dead child. This unexpected incidence of

savagery would not let him go (McEwan 179) and thus recurs several times in his

consciousness. This is demonstrated in free indirect discourse passages, merging the narrators

commentary and the characters consciousness. For instance, the narrator states that Turner was

trying to push . . . away his memories unsuccessfully, which is then elaborated upon in direct

access to Turners mind in the form of imagery of a French boy asleep in his bed (182). This

incident recurs in his consciousness in fragmented imagery, consisting of pieces of burned,

striped cloth, the shreds of his pyjamas (247), and, a limb in a tree (189). This imagery

constitutes his memory of seeing the childs dismembered leg, pale and smooth but cruelly

severed cleanly above the knee and wedged in a tree trunk twenty feet up (180). In addition

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to the intrusive memories, Turner demonstrates a certain emotional numbness comparable to

the alienation described by Septimus Smith. Benumbed, Turner confiscates a map and revolver

from a dead captain. The omission of any emotional reactions suggest that he experiences

neither compassion nor sorrow. This interpretation is enhanced by the characters inability to

remember where the late captain rests in peace, suggesting his death had made barely an

impression. Turner demonstrates a similar emotional paralysis when witnessing the death of a

mother and son in a nearby crater. Likewise, his emotional state of mind is demonstrated

through omission rather expression of numbness as in the characterisation of Smith in Mrs.

Dalloway. Instead, the narrator merely reiterates that his business was to survive (223). Thus,

Atonement, like Mrs. Dalloway, explores inner realism through the characterisation of its main

male protagonist, which is achieved through a similar as well as a dissimilar literary technique. In

doing so, the postmodernist text creates a pastiche of classic realism describing observable

people, places and events, and innovative psychological realism. Hereby, Atonement creates a

more comprehensive impression of war experience.

However, Atonement simultaneously undermines realist war literature through unreliable

narration and self-reflexivity. The first literary device involves an unreliable narrator, whose

opinions have been voiced through a focaliser, namely Robbie Turner. He expresses incredulity

that fiction can faithfully represent fact and opines that striving for accuracy in historiography is a

meaningless and pointless pursuit. As such, it was impossible to tell whether the pile of rubble

in front of the protagonist once constituted a village or the suburb of a small town (McEwan

213). Turner elaborates that it is unlikely anyone could ever describe this confusion, and come

up with the village names and dates for the history books (Ibid.). Additionally, he questions if

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anyone would ever care about factuality. This passage constitutes a disruption of both Turners

characterisation and the development of the plot. Turner evidences no interest in writing fiction

elsewhere in the text and his disruptive thoughts play no role in the plot development of the

Dunkirk evacuation. Instead, they foreshadow the self-conscious passages on the limitations of

realist war fiction elaborated on in the epitaph, London, 1999. This section complicates the

texts generic pastiche further, as it constitutes a self-reflexive Knstlerroman, self-consciously

reflecting on its own construction as a work of fiction concerned with war history. Here it is

revealed that Briony Tallis constitutes the novels implied author, its unreliable narrator as well as

a main character and one of the focalisers. In direct contradiction of to Turners and

presumably the narrators opinion she professes a passion for this pointillist approach to

verisimilitude (338). This contrasting viewpoint further undermines the novels credibility as a

truthful and accurate depiction of the Dunkirk evacuation. By extension, it questions one of the

main tenets of literary realism that phenomena should be rendered faithfully and accurately.

More importantly, Briony discusses her work methods as an author, delineated as comprising

research of source documents held at the War Museum and fact-checking of draft versions,

which is conducted by a former colonel of the Buffs (33). Firstly, this information highlights the

gap between the real past and representations of it (Nicol 102). Secondly, it exposes that

significant stakeholders control access to source documents and participate in, and potentially

influence, the production of fiction. In doing so, Atonement suggests that war literature is

unlikely to culminate in an objective reconstruction of the past, but may instead amount to either

a highly subjective document or, worse, an instrument for the advancement hegemonic

viewpoints. In sum, Atonement reveals what remains hidden in non-metafictive texts, namely the

constructedness, limitations and political machinations inherent in the production of historical

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fiction. This new awareness may in turn encourage readers to engage with war literature in new,

potentially more critical ways.

Conclusion

In sum, Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway and McEwans Atonement share several commonalities in the

depiction of war experience. Both novels feature a non-archetypical protagonist, namely a

soldier-victim who constitutes the antithesis of the stock warrior-hero of traditional war

literature. Additionally, both texts focus on interior realism, employing imagery to demonstrate

the effects of war experience on the psyche, which results in alienation and fragmentation for

the protagonists in both texts. However, Woolf appears predominantly preoccupied with

rendering war experience in new ways, eschewing extensive descriptions of the exterior world in

favour of conveying this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever [its]

aberration or complexity (Woolf, Modern Fiction loc. 48731). This is achieved through

innovative stream-of-consciousness passages, focussing on mental processing rather than

sensory perception of war experience. These innovations have been orchestrated to provide a

social critique, in that the text demonstrates war veterans unrelenting suffering and societys

concurrent indifference. Contrarily, Atonement critiques the development of war literature, in

that it constitutes a complex pastiche, combining classic realism, modernism, and historiography

in a self-reflexive Knstlerroman. In doing so, it simultaneously reinvigorates and undermines

existing genres by raising awareness of the complexity involved in reading as well as writing war

fiction. In conclusion, modernist war literature demonstrates an urge to write about combat

experience in new ways, whereas postmodernist counterparts advocate writing and reading

about this subject matter in new ways so as to develop awareness of the nature of fiction and

literary politics.
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