Why is everyone so lonely

A few days ago I was reading The Sun Also Rises and trying to figure out why both it and Mrs. Dalloway feel vaguely depressing. I thought maybe it had something to do with the post-war atmosphere. After thinking about it, I realized that the main characters of all the books we've read have felt so disconnected from the people around them.

Although Jake, Brett, Clarissa, and Septimus are constantly interacting with and thinking about their friends/family/etc., they all share a sense of disconnect. For example: Clarissa has a husband who loves her, but they have a distant relationship and she often feels lonely. She doesn't connect with her daughter. She spends about half the book thinking wistfully about the time in her life that she felt truly connected to others, when she was young at Bourton. Septimus's emotions are messed up from his experience in the war - he tried not to feel emotion when his best friend Evans died, and he married his wife in a desperate, unsuccessful attempt at healthy human connection. Later, he is unable to effectively communicate what he's going through, and feels like the entirety of human nature is against him.

Jake lives among a group of people that seem very exciting on the surface, but deep down he feels like he isn't really one of them. Perhaps some of this is due to his injury - all around him he sees people in relationships/affairs but he can never be in one of his own. All of Jake's friends drink constantly and rarely speak sincerely, which makes it hard to form real connections with them. His conservative views (re: gay people, black people, Jews, etc.) distance him from the liberal Paris culture around him. Like Septimus, he's had life-changing experiences in WWI that his friends haven't had and don't understand. Brett has so many relationships, but doesn't treat them seriously and pushes Jake away even though she claims to love him - she also emotionally distances herself from others.

As we've mentioned many times in class, some of this alienation comes from the post-WWI atmosphere. Jake and Septimus have both come away from the war with wounds, physical and mental, that separate them from others. The culture of irony in The Sun Also Rises that makes it difficult for Jake to form real bonds with his friends also comes from the war, with people resorting to jokes and alcohol instead of facing their emotions.

The Terrible Twosome

As I was reading Mrs. Dalloway, the portrayals of Holmes and Bradshaw stuck out in comparison to most of the other characters. For most of the book, Mrs. Dalloway doesn't seem to concern itself with large generalizations of "good" and "evil". The characters think contradicting thoughts, and it shows that the same person can have cruel impulses and kind ones, even at the same time, without their entire character being defined by them. Frequently, the book shows the same person through different points of view. For example, Clarissa is seen as an elitist snob by some and a lively, charming woman by others.  On the other hand, all of the major characters who interact with Bradshaw and/or Holmes (Septimus, Rezia, Clarissa, Richard) have the same opinion: they give them a deep sense of revulsion. In most cases, Woolf presents these different sides and allows you to draw your own conclusions about a character. I would argue that Holmes and Bradshaw are the embodiments of the bad side of human nature.

Even when Woolf is describing these characters, she doesn't narrate from their point of view - Bradshaw's life is told from a more detached narration style than we normally get, and Holmes is only described through Septimus's point of view. They both ascribe to a narrow view of what is "normal" and don't try to understand the thoughts and wishes of people who don't fit that mold, assuming they know what's best. Holmes dismisses Septimus's obvious PTSD as cowardice and basically tells him he just needs to get out more and get over himself. When Rezia and Septimus try to defy him, he doesn't listen. When Rezia tells him he's not welcome in their house, Dr. Holmes physically pushes her aside and goes on up to Septimus anyway. Dr. Bradshaw (thinks he) has a better grasp of psychology, but he treats Septimus's mental illness the same way that Holmes treats his physical illness: he makes automatic, one-size-fits-all assumptions and brushes the Smiths aside.

Although Holmes and Bradshaw are very different in terms of social status, knowledge, and mannerisms, I think they are meant to represent the same thing. When they appear in the book, they nearly always appear in tandem: Rezia goes to Holmes, and then goes to Bradshaw within two pages. Bradshaw is about to show up to take Septimus away, and then Holmes appears. Since they are such one-dimensional characters, they can almost seem more like embodiments of abstract concepts rather than people (which is very striking in contrast with all the other characters in the novel). They are the closest thing Mrs. Dalloway  has to villains. At one point, Septimus compares Holmes to human nature itself. Later on, when he is about to kill himself, he says something to the effect of, "Holmes and Bradshaw are upon me. Human nature is upon me." By "human nature", Woolf seems to mean the human tendency to want to be in control of a situation, to think that we know better than others. She could also mean more general human society, with its often-misguided opinions. Holmes and Bradshaw are in positions where they can exert their wills on other people, and they're obviously used to dismissing their patients as ignorant or too insane to know any better.