Virginia Woolf and Her Madness
© John McManamy
A telegram arrived at the HMS Dreadnought, the flagship of the British home fleet, advising the Admiral of a visit by the Emperor of Abyssinia and four of his entourage. The dignitaries were given the red carpet treatment and the visit went off without a hitch, except for the fact that the real Emperor happened to be back in Addis Ababa. One of the "Abyssnians", decked out in flowing robes and dark greasepaint, turned out to be a youthful Virginia Woolf.
The media and political storm that broke out in the wake of the hoax did little for Virginia's mental equilibrium. She had already experienced one breakdown and was well on her way toward another. All her life that beast/companion we know as manic depression would stalk both her and her family, and finally claim her. One cold day in 1942 - her body wasting from neglect, her thoughts racing, and hearing voices - she wrote:
"I am certain now that I am going mad again. It is just as it was the first time ..."
Then she walked down to the river bank, filled her pockets with stones, and left her walking stick on the ground. Children would discover her body three weeks later. Following an inquest, the verdict was announced as: "Suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed."
Virginia Woolf has no shortage of chroniclers, many who know far more about literature than they do about mental illness. Her childhood traumas, sexual frigidity, and lesbian flirtations may have been the stuff of Freudian psychodrama, but it was the storm and fury of manic depression that truly governed her life. In any event, only one biography appears to have tackled her madness head on, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Manic Depression and the Life of Virginia Woolf" by Peter Dally (St Martin's Press, NY, 1999).
The title pretty much says it all. According to Dally, who is a psychiatrist: "Virginia's need to write was, among other things, to make sense out of mental chaos and gain control of madness. Through her novels she made her inner world less frightening. Writing was often agony but it provided the 'strongest pleasure' she knew."
The Bloomsbury crowd and the literary highlife fed her hypomanic surges, but it was from the depths of depression that she seemed to dredge up her best inspiration. When she started a novel, according to Dally, she was excited but relaxed and stable, only succumbing to exhaustion and depression
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