질병 공간 담론에서 개인의 신체 의미 : 영국의 정신의학 담론과 버지니아 울프의 『댈러웨이 부인』

Abstract

This paper explores psychiatry and psychotic treatment in early twentieth century Britain in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway , and discusses the physical meaning of an individual at the boundary of the closure, separation, and movement of private and public spaces caused by illness. Traumatic neurosis, which was coined in the nineteenth century, appeared in World War Ⅰ soldiers suffering from shell shock, now called post-traumatic stress disorder or, PTSD. To illustrate the unexplained symptoms, medical officers conspiring with the ruling powers called cowards or the weak for a number of patients who had no injuries but felt physically aggressive. During the war, military officials had to find a pretext to return the afflicted soldiers to the battlefield. After the war, their symptoms were also not acknowledged because of compensation problems. Each time, those symptoms were only a matter of an individual. In other words, it was not because of the war, but rather the nature and personality of the individual. This forced many soldiers and veterans to experience additional mental and physical pain beyond the impact of the shell shock. In Mrs. Dalloway , Septimus Warren Smith is suffering from trauma neurosis after returning to work after the war. It is also a painful and heterogeneous experience for Septimus to re-enter everyday life in London. However, the ruling powers, who have been devoting themselves to postwar reconstruction, require the people to live as individuals to fit for the goal of national reconstruction. Such a push is only another example of violence to Septimus. The state regards individual inadequacies as a threat to society and leads to his personal separation, detention, and control. Ultimately, he cannot be considered a healthy individual at the national level, so Septimus commits suicide. He escapes the situation of being imprisoned in a sanatorium and throws himself out the window. Unlike some assessments of the trauma neurosis based on Woolf’s own personal experience, Mrs. Dalloway criticizes the eugenic lineage of British society and the medical profession that coincides with the power class, revealing the problems of an individual, nation, and a race.