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VIRGINIA WOOLF AND HER BIPOLAR DISORDER


"Virginia Woolf /Through the Looking Gla"(CC BY -SA 2.0) by Christiaan Tonnis

“She suffered from major onslaughts of the illness and in almost all (possibly all) of these attacks she attempted to kill herself.” 
(Lee, Hermione)

She had ample problems starting from depression, anxiety or a sudden faint, headache, back ache, an attack of influenza or a high temperature. A reluctance to eat and severe weight loss was one of the most extreme symptom out of these physical problems. 

Her first breakdown took place in the year 1895 after Julia’s death. The treatment and remedies which she has provided in later life severely affected her personality, nature, behaviour, writing and politics. Ultimately her illness has become her language.

 Later it was came to know that her physical condition was badly torturing her soul and mind. She tried to kill herself by jumping out of the window.  She started hearing horrible voices after her first nervous breakdown. She started suffering from hallucination.  Her condition was getting worse day by day. After her mother’s death she fell somewhere between life and death like a dead body. Those two years between her mother’s and Stella’s death there was no excitement, no happiness in her life she lived that period with physical distress. 

“In the manic stage she was extremely excited; the mind raced; she talked volubly and, at the height of the attack, incoherently; she had delusions and heard voices... she was violent with her nurses. In her third attack, which began in 1914 this stage lasted for several months and ended by her falling into a coma for two days. During the depressive stage all her thoughts and emotions were the exact opposite of what they had been in the manic stage. She was in the depths of melancholia and despair; she scarcely spoke; refused to eat; refused to believe that she was ill and insisted that her condition was due to her own guilt; at the height of this stage she tried to commit suicide.”

                                                                                 (Lee,Hermione )

In the manic stage Woolf was extremely excited, now this time she had delusions too. She became very violent was  not in control of anybody even of nurses who were there to take care of her. She started attacking them whenever they offered her medicines. Her third attack pushed her into the state of coma for two days. When she was in depression, her symptoms and mental conditions was just opposite and different than with manic stage. She was in lamentation, despair, she rarely speaks to anyone, always refused to eat and consequently she tried to commit suicide. 

 It was becoming difficult for her to make a balance between outside world and her own world with her mind. From 1912 onwards Leonard became her close observer. Leonard decides to focus on Virginia’s illness. Her illness became one of his works. He analyses and observed her nearly thirty years. 

There was a great difficulty for Virginia to explain what she was going through and experiencing madness. She doesn’t know what to do with those horrible experiences. She only heard about Freud’s interpretation of dreams and consequently applied the tool of psychoanalysis in her novels.

The sense of loneliness and isolation is the most horrible feelings. Woolf’s madness isolates her from all human relationships. She made a painful discovery that human beings have neither kindness, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.




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  1. Unknown10 February 2017 at 18:31

    Very nicely explained the ingrained feelings,that Woolf was facing at the stage of melancholia.she was violent with her nurses,shows that she might be referred to physio/psychiatric but invain.

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