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IS VIRGINIA SANE OR INSANE?


Virginia Wool, by L.M. Cutta (CC BY-NC 2.0) by courambel

"My Madness saved me" 

Virginia's illness and ill behavior always raised a question on her mental status. Whether she is sane or insane? Woolf was declared mentally ill at quite an early stage in her life and this intense seized the whole issue of sanity and insanity.

Woolf’s life was a bag of horrible experiences; she faced all the traumas from such a small age, sometimes with the serial deaths of her family members or sometime with the sexual torture by her step Brother. These tragedies, traumas, pains and its after effects which lead her to insanity can be easily seen in her works. Like in her novel Mrs. Dalloway the concept of sanity and insanity are majorly discussed. Virginia meant to show the world from both aspects, to compare how individuals perceive the same events and surroundings in different ways. The judgment whether somebody is mad or not often comes from on exterior source based on norms and moral values in society.

 It can be seen through her novels that Virginia’s own issues inspired her greatly, as she herself suffered since her tender age. She is often described as a ‘mad genius’ as she was declared mentally ill in early stage of her life. This drastic and troubling life style off erratic nervous breakdown  coupled with her substantial involvement in the Bloom's bury group in the early manifestations of the Freudian psychiatry led to a close scrutiny and a new way of looking at the issue of madness.

"All that summer she was mad".  

Consequently, the death of her near and dear brother Thoby Stephen from typhoid fever in November 1906 had a similar effect on Woolf, to such an extent that he would later be re-imagined as Jacob in her first experimental novel Jacob's Room and later as Percival in The Waves these were the first of her many mental collapse that would sporadically occur throughout her life, until her suicide in March 1941.

Woolf's mental illness was periodic and insane and recurrent, her madness was provoked by life altering events, notably family deaths, her own marriage or the publication of a novel. According to Hermione Lee the symptoms of Woolf's conform to the profile of a manic – depressive illness or bipolar disorder Leonard her dedicated life-long companion, documented her illness with scupulousness.

Throughout her life Woolf consulted at least twelve doctors, and consequently experienced, from the Victorian era to the shell ,shock of World War I, the emerging medical trends for treating the madness. 
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  1. Unknown4 February 2017 at 19:16

    In my opinion if a person says that my madness saved me,showes that sanity and insanity are the two faces of the same coin.hook,s law is applicable here also.within elasticlimit,stress is directly proportional to strange.as such insanity is the status of the extreme condition of sanity.i would opine that Woolf was never insane,but a victim of circumstances.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown4 February 2017 at 19:23

    Strange may be read as strain*

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