A Modern Gothic: Septimus Smith Haunts the Streets of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

Calculating to a mathematician is simply plugging more numbers into a machine; calculating to a serial killer like Jack the Ripper is seeking out the marginalized groups of society-like prostitutes-to ensure the lowest risk of incarceration; calculating to a shell shock-riddled veteran like Septimus Smith is gazing down at a river and imaging what it would be like to jump. [...]fascinate" and "fantasy" are two words with a great deal in common. According to critic Paul Saint-Amour in his essay "Perpetual Suspense," a true gothic prompts the reader to inquire, "'what is that?'-"a question that returns us to the deixis of terror" (Saint-Amour 96). When, like Septimus, these distraught men returned from war, it was as if society wanted to close the doors on what had just occurred, sweeping the losses under the rug and casting white linen sheets over the remaining psychological casualties, as if boarding up an old Victorian house for the next season.