Space and Privacy

As one reads further and further into Mrs. Dalloway, the technological references seem to be growing. The book has an airplane fly over the head of Mrs. Dalloway. The city architecture has become more efficient than ever. But along with these physical accomplishments that are occurring at the time of Mrs. Dalloway, there are also the accomplishments in the field of science, specifically psychological counseling. All these changes in technology in Mrs. Dalloway seem to be changing the structure of society at the same time. Atleast with what we see in London when comparing the books Emma and Mrs. Dalloway, this shift in the culture changes the way people interact. This appears to finally lead to a change in what is considered privacy.

Privacy is the state of being free from intrusion, and we probably see the best example of this in Mrs. Dalloway with Septimus. Septimus served in the war and has come back a mental wreck. He is guided to see a new doctor of sorts by his current one that has not been able to help with Septimus’ problem. After seeing Sir William Bradshaw, Septimus is diagnosed as being on the verge of a mental breakdown that could happen any minute. He is sent to the country where he will rest and be isolated from the community. Septimus feels tortured by Sir Bradshaw but goes along with it just as his other patients have.

Conversely, the audience seems to see very little intrusion of privacy in Emma. The best example of the fact is that the audience never sees Emma in her bedroom. She lives in a very large house and only has but a few people living in it, with servants she never sees. People do not walk into other peoples bedrooms during this time. We do not see Emma’s bathroom. Anything near the lavatory would be out of the question. But these were just the customs of the times, or the norms.

As time passed and the audience switched back to Mrs. Dalloway, London has grown exponentially. Of course this was in part due to the technological advances of travel, buildings, and science. With the growth in London, the city has become denser in the process. This is the first time we get the sense that space is limited. In Emma, it is all rural living. She lives on the outskirts of London in the country. Space seems infinite. People communicate with each other in the most polite of ways and never probe too far into the sensitive personal lives of others. This differs greatly from Mrs. Dalloway, where the doctors that can’t get into the minds of their patients seemingly just send their patients into isolation. Just like the military forced their way on Septimus, the doctors seems to be doing the same thing. Their patients have to conform to the conventions the doctors think are correct, and if the patients can’t, then they are labeled as different. There is obviously minimal privacy during the time of Mrs. Dalloway, but this lack of privacy seems to be the result of a lack of space. When people are drawn into closer quarters with each other: hundreds of people living within a block, the difficulty to keep items private becomes most difficult.