In the section of Mrs. Dalloway that we read for yesterday, Septimus and Rezia were shown in their home away from the chaos of London. It was the first present tense instance where Septimus was functioning normally (although, normal seems to be a very subjective and descriptive word). If the narrative had just jumped to him for the first time, I don't think that any readers would have been able to tell that he had gone through so many traumatic experiences in WWI.
The idea that on his own, or at least almost on his own, Septimus is a very different person, reminded me of the first time that I saw Mrs. Dalloway on her own. When she was out and about, she didn't seem to be anyone other than a content, upper class, woman planning a dinner party; but when she got home and went up to the room where she had been spending her time when she was sick, a different person seemed to emerge. She sunk into a deeply reflective state and all the assumptions that I had made about her on the surface were challenged, and I had to rethink my initial impression of her.
During this last section with Septimus, I found myself doing the same thing. I had thought that I had a good understanding of his character, but after seeing him alone with Rezia, I started to see him a little differently. Before this section, I felt really bad for him; he went through a war and watched one of his close friends die, which would have been bad enough, without the scars of those experiences affecting his present state of mind. Seeing him as he would have probably been, had he not gone to war, almost made me more sympathetic towards his character; it was easy for me to think that he had been deeply affected by a traumatic experience, but this section showing how things could have been for him made the fact that they weren't almost worse than it already was.
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