Contexts for Mrs. Dalloway

Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917)Mourning and Melancholia Mourning  [T]he reaction of the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as one’s country, liberty, and ideal, and so on” (243).  Symptoms—apart from decreased self-esteem—same as melancholia  As with melancholia, involves denial of loss and intense remembering of loved object.  Prolonged clinging to lost object, but eventually “respect for reality gains the day” (244), one recognizes loss and can emotionally attach to new object.  “When the work of mourning is completed, the ego becomes free and uninhibited again” (245). Melancholia  Same cause as mourning.  Symptoms include (244): “profoundly painful dejection,” “cessation of interest in the outside world,” “loss of the capacity to love,” “inhibition of all activity,” and decrease of self-esteem, tendency to self reproach which can “culminate in a delusional expectation of punishment” (244). “The patient presents his ego... as worthless, incapable of any achievement, and morally despicable...” (246).  Melancholic may not consciously perceive full extent of what has been lost.  Melancholic incorporates lost object into own ego. Self-accusations may actually apply to lost object.

World War I  Scope 32 nations divided into Triple Entente (England, Russia, France) and Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary) powers Estimated $186 billion total cost Troop deaths estimated at 37 million, civilian at 10 million (Great Britain and colonies experienced 35% death, wounding, imprisonment or MIA of troops)  Technologies of chlorine gas, tanks, planes, more destructive shells and weapons Photo of mustard gas victim courtesy of: The Soldier’s Reality (S. Davies WWI History Course) The Soldier’s Reality

WWI, Cont’d  Battle of the Somme (July 1916) Battle of the Somme 3M shells launched at German trenches over one week July 1 ground attack resulted in 20,000 killed and 40,000 wounded out of 100,000 British and French troops  Trench warfare  Military Service Act (Great Britain 1916) Military Service Act Photo of soldier at Battle of the Somme courtesy: WWI Research Project at The Learning CenterWWI Research Project

Shell Shock  Fatigue  Insomnia  Inability to concentrate  Headaches  Irritability  Physical symptoms: blindness, twitching, limb dysfunction  Hallucinatory flashbacks to war experience

Sources and Further Reading  “The Battle of the Somme.” The Great War and the Shaping of the 20 th Century. PBS.The Battle of the Somme  Bourke, Joanna. “Shell Shock in World War I.” BBC: World Wars in Depth.Shell Shock in World War I  Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV  Matthews, Stephen. Modernism: A Sourcebook. New York: Palgrave,  “The Medical History of WWI: Psychiatry.” WWI: The Medical Front.The Medical History of WWI: Psychiatry  Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into Shell Shock (1922) Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into Shell Shock