Lucrezia, also known as Rezia, is a young Italian girl who married Septimus at the end of the war. In the course of their four- or five-year marriage, Rezia left her family, her country, and her livelihood to be with Septimus, and she yearns for a comfortable and intimate relationship with him. Septimus, however, is unable to give this to her due to the shell shock, or PTSD, he has as a result of the war. The reader even learns that the only reason Septimus proposed was out of fear that he was losing his ability to feel emotions. 

With this contrast between his motivations and her hopes as a backdrop, the feelings of frustration and loneliness that Rezia expresses throughout much of the novel seem justified. The only person she knows in London has become a stranger to her, and his atypical behavior makes it difficult for her to connect with anyone else. The fact that she feels ashamed of people seeing her with Septimus in public suggests that, similarly to Clarissa, she feels pressured to uphold a particular social image regardless of circumstance. Rezia goes back and forth between experiencing resentment and a deep sense of care and responsibility for Septimus, and it is almost as if she is trying to prevent herself from becoming disillusioned by focusing on upholding her duties as a wife. Her presence in the novel highlights the fact that everyone’s lives feel unstable and uncertain in the wake of the war, regardless of how directly one participated in it.

Although Rezia never fully comes to understand Septimus, she begins to grow closer to him as the novel progresses. The driving force behind this shift is Sir William Bradshaw’s suggestion that Septimus live at one of his homes in the countryside without Rezia. Although their separation would alleviate the social pressures she feels, she refuses to leave her husband. Rezia comes to distrust the doctors almost as much as Septimus does, and this change indicates that she still feels some connection to him, however hidden it may be. This link becomes even clearer as they happily work on creating a hat together, a moment which symbolizes what their lives could have looked like were it not for the war’s influence. Although this sense of peace quickly disappears as Septimus commits suicide, Rezia’s flood of positive memories suggests that her love for her husband ultimately outweighs her resentment.

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