Trauma, Silence, and the Divided Self: R.D. Laing’s Legacy in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in the Age of Mental Health Awareness

Abstract Book of the 11th International Conference on Modern Approaches in Humanities and Social Sciences

Year: 2026

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Trauma, Silence, and the Divided Self: R.D. Laing’s Legacy in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in the Age of Mental Health Awareness

Dr. Erinda Papa

ABSTRACT:

This study examines the way mental health issues are presented in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Drawing on R.D. Laing’s concept of the “divided self,” it analyses how both works reflect attempts to cope with isolation and connect personal pain with deeper questions about life. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf highlights society’s neglect of mental health through the figure of Septimus Warren Smith, a war veteran experiencing trauma. Using free indirect discourse, the author gives us access to his troubled thoughts and shows how social indifference intensifies his pain. Beckett presents psychological struggles as a universal human experience. Through fragmented dialogue and repetitive scenes, he reflects on the uncertainty and lack of meaning in life. Woolf’s modernist style and Beckett’s absurdist perspective offer different, but complementary, approaches to understanding psychological pain. Through a qualitative analysis of the text, this study highlights how literature combines psychology with cultural studies to address issues of mental health. By connecting Woolf’s and Beckett’s perspectives to contemporary debates about mental health, it highlights the role of literature in reducing stigma, fostering understanding, and promoting empathy. It also suggests that future research might examine how literature engages with issues of mental health across time periods and styles.

Keywords: Absurdism; Empathy; Isolation; Modernism; Stigma