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Why did Septimus Warren Smith commit suicide in Mrs. Dalloway?
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Septimus Warren Smith commits suicide in Mrs. Dalloway due to severe PTSD from World War I, manifesting as delusions and hallucinations. His condition is mishandled by insensitive doctors who prioritize their own ambitions. Unable to endure his mental anguish and to avoid being institutionalized, he jumps out of a window.
Septimus Smith is a sensitive young man who fought in World War I. As a result of that experience, he has PTSD, or, as it was then called, shell shock. He experiences delusional and suicidal thoughts that frighten his wife. He can't shake his memories of Evans, his friend who died in the war.
As Mrs. Dalloway is preparing for her grand party, Lucrezia, Smith's wife, is trying to arrange for doctors to help Septimus. Both Dr. Holmes and the important mental health specialist, Sir William Bradshaw, are insensitive to Smith's real needs. Bradshaw wants to shut him away in an asylum. Bradshaw cares more about his career ambitions than his patients.
To avoid his doctors and because he can't bear life any longer, Smith jumps out a window and dies. This makes Bradshaw late for Mrs. Dalloway's party. When Mrs. Dalloway hears the news of the suicide, she feels...
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a shock.
Some critics have contended that Bradshaw is a portrait and indictment of insensitive society doctors who treated Virginia Woolf for mental illness. Woolf seems to be communicating in the novel that death is preferable to their "cures."