Writing Weaponry

Throughout her life Virginia Woolf suffered from manic depression. 'Mania' is defined as violently excessive reaction. In Greek mythology, Mania was the personification of insanity. In Roman and Etruscan mythology, Mania (or Manea) was the goddess of the dead. Depression is defined as a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity. Definitions combined, Woolf's condition could be compared to a female deity of disorderly lethargy. In the biography The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Manic Depression and the Life of Virginia Woolf by Peter Dally it is asserted that, "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." This suggests that Woolf depended on writing as an artificial act to avoid being captured by the chaotic realtiy of her mind.

In 1941 she wrote in a letter to her husband:

"I feel certain now that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time ..."

She then walked to the river bank near her house, weighted her pockets with stones, and submerged her self in water. Her suffocated corpse was discovered by children three weeks later.

I've always thought of mania as a fickle companion...a looming presence that permeates it's self into it's habitat. The closer one becomes to their companion, the deeper it permeates. I think that the concept of drowning is interesting to consider in Woolf's case. The process of suffocation via water is reminiscent of a need for silence, a need for sedation, the contradiction to Woolf’s companion.

My hypothesis is this: In writing fiction, Virginia Woolf strived for a contradiction. She used fiction as a method of stifling her companion and organizing the chaos that she sensed increasingly as she aged. The last work of fiction that Woolf produced, The Years, was written at a time when her condition was beginning to usurp her self constantly. To prove my hypothesis I am going to read the work and attempt to trace her process.