[Vwoolf] Speculative recuperations of Woolf's suicide

Sun Jun 17 10:54:29 EDT 2012

I hate to be the fly in the ointment here but I find the tendency of this
conversation to be extremely troubling.   In all of this talk of the death
of the author there seems to be utterly no acknowledgement of that major
theorem of twentieth-century critical theory, “the death of the author,”
and none either of its corollary “the intentional fallacy.”   The first one
should make us wonder whether Woolf’s suicide should be brought into the
literature classroom at all.  Indeed, if it were not, this would certainly
solve the problem of identifying Woolf too much with that final act and of
either romanticizing or pathologizing it.  Assuming for a minute that we do
bring it in, that second theorem of the intentional fallacy should make us
very cautious about ascribing too much authority to Woolf’s note.  As the
poet has pointed out here, we do things for many reasons, and not just the
reasons that we consciously express.  Indeed, we often do things “against
ourselves,” a phrase which, of course, has additional resonance in this
context of suicide.  The theme of last year’s Woolf conference was, many on
the list will recall,  “Contradictory Woolf.” We need a more complicated
working notion of human subjectivity here, and we should be wary of any
particular personal politics (here the politics of “mental illness,” a
category that has gone unquestioned here) foreclosing on other perfectly
legitimate lines of inquiry.  We can read human acts in all kinds of ways.

There is an additional problem here, however, and that is that Woolf
herself thematized both mental illness (though often cloaked in other
 kinds of illness) and suicide in her fiction from the start (i.e., The
Voyage Out), at which point she turned them into literary concerns (and not
simply in order to re-present them), as of course had many authors before
(at least from  the earliest representations of Ajax on).  The suggestion
implied in the conversation that we cannot or should not inquire into
either except as medical problems to be solved is, to me, outrageous, and
an offense against literature.  (See Ulysses on the way in which the modern
medical profession has threatened to appropriate the functions of the poet
and “cure” the soul (i.e, Buck Mulligan v. Stephen Daedalus); or see Mrs
Dalloway, where Septimus’s illness and suicide have all kinds of
psychological, philosophical, political, and even poetic  value--Septimus
does after all solve (as a literary construct) a number of representational
problems for Woolf and (as a character) both psychological and political
problems for Clarissa.)  As soon as Woolf thematizes these issues, they
acquire all the complexity of any other aesthetic/imaginative object  and
are up for all kinds of analysis but particularly literary analysis,
especially if we are teaching the literature for its literary value.  To
some extent, if people read her own suicide in these ways, it is because
she herself mobilized such “readings” in her writing.

Julian Barnes (with a full awareness of Woolf it seems to me) has deftly
treated the linked problems of biographical/authorial suicide and fictional
suicide (including the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of separating
them) in both Flaubert’s Parrot and The Sense of an Ending in ways that
might illuminate and complicate this conversation.

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 9:39 AM, Detloff, Madelyn M. Dr. <
detlofmm at muohio.edu> wrote:

> Yes, we'll said, Anne-Marie.
>
> Madelyn
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jun 17, 2012, at 8:32 AM, "Steve Posin" <steve_posin at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Brava Anne.  Well said
>
> Sent via IPhone
> Steve Posin
>
>
> On Jun 16, 2012, at 2:09 PM, Anne-Marie Lindsey <amtonyan at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Here's where I* *have to jump in to back up Brenda; I left official Woolf
> scholarship in part because I was not handling my mental illness during
> graduate school. I am uncomfortable with comparisons to periscopes and
> references to mythology. I am not comfortable with the idea that suicide is
> poetry or poetic and beautifully mysterious. Mental illness really is what
> Woolf talked about in her last letter, and we all know that most attempts
> at treating her mental illness had been utter failures. It's not romantic;
> it's horrific. We cannot get inside her head, and we have no reason to
> assume that she did not tell Leonard the truth in her letter. Yes, there is
> context. Fear and anxiety were major components of Woolf's illness, and the
> threat of a Nazi invasion is not exactly conducive to calm.
>
> All the same, mental illness in general and suicidal thoughts or plans are
> medical issues. It does us all a disservice to romanticize suicide. There
> is nothing romantic about coming to the conclusion that the only way to
> make it stop, whether it's hearing voices or grief or anxiety, is to end
> one's own life. I know from personal experience that it most often takes
> careful treatment by doctors who are well-trained to bring anyone back from
> that place. We do not do anyone any good by holding up Woolf (or Plath) as
> having met romantic ends. I remember learning that Woolf was a good
> swimmer, and that it must have taken enormous will power not to fight
> drowning. Maybe that sounds romantic to someone, but it sounds truly
> terrifying to me. My point is that Woolf's suicide is biographical event
> that resulted from a horrifically painful mental illness. It is not a
> statement about politics or The Abyss or World War II. When she wanted to
> make statements, she did so in writing. I want to see classrooms and texts
> present her suicide as the result of a mental illness without either
> shaming that illness or romanticizing it.
>
> Anne-Marie
>
> On Jun 16, 2012, at 4:17 PM, Laurie Reiche wrote:
>
> Do I dare jump into this brilliant conversation, being nobody really
> except an unknown poet/writer who is a Woolf worshipper and new to speaking
> in this company of Woolf scholars? Well, of course, I'm going to take the
> leap, if only to say this: the reasons for Woolf's suicide (or anybody's
> for that matter) was, obviously, an accumulation of multifaceted anguishes.
> One emotional, psychological, political, or physical event usually won't be
> the trigger propelling one to choose to die. Can you imagine (I suppose we
> could never) being a fly on the wall of Woolf's brain and listening in on
> the conversations taking place in her mind---not the thoughts she wrote in
> her diaries but the one's she couldn't catch in her net of words---during
> the months before she died? I imagine (having felt suicidal depression
> myself over the many long years of my life) her brilliant mind being like a
> periscope observing the whole vast and tumultuous sea of existence, making
> notes, philosophical declarations, artistic comments, political utterances
> while simultaneously noticing her own body and the way it, too, was
> reacting to her thoughts: nerves pitching upward or plummeting
> down---Thantos luring her into the darkness at the same time as Eros (all
> the loves in her life and passions) beckoning her to stay in the light of
> life? I don't know if I'm making myself understood? I'm just trying to say
> that Woolf's reasons for suicide cannot be fully understood; finding one
> particular factor is wrongheaded. Anyway, I don't think she'd approve of us
> taking one path to understanding her motivation! She was a multifaceted gem
> of a woman and her death was a reflection of that blinding (?) complexity
> and---yes---effulgence. But her suicide can't help but make me think of
> Paul Celan's---so many years after the Holocaust---throwing himself into
> the Seine; or Plath's ritualistic toying with death---every ten years
> trying it then finally losing the roulette game---and the reasons? Always
> so many…and always so mysterious. I wrote a poem a while back called
> "Points and Slopes" which was, literally, a portrait of Woolf. The last two
> lines of the sonnet sums up the conundrum we face when trying to understand
> her suicide, (and her life:) "...What do your eyes see that your mouth does
> not?/Such pain in the glass of your eyes or is that light gladness?"
> Warmly,
> Laurie Lessen Reiche
>
> On Jun 16, 2012, at 9:20 AM, Brenda Helt wrote:
>
> This is exactly the type of thing I’m talking about.  Woolf was specific
> in her suicide letter as to why she took her life, and when her
> contemporaries began to hypothesize that she committed suicide because she
> feared Nazi invasion etc, Leonard quoted the letter publicly in order to
> stop that nonsense—which it seems to me is an unfortunate thing to have to
> do when your partner has just died.  Mental illness is the main reason most
> people commit suicide, and it’s why Woolf committed suicide.  She
> specifically said so and did not mention other reasons.  The “carefully
> considered choice” is just another form of the romantic madwoman (or
> genius) throwing herself into the abyss—an attempt to recuperate as
> “altruistic” something that is the result of mental illness.  That is a
> dangerous direction for Woolf scholars to go, in my opinion, because we
> seem then to throw the weight of our authority as Woolf scholars (and
> teachers/professors) behind a recuperative attitude towards suicide that
> does not encourage our students, readers, or audience members who might be
> fascinated with her suicide because they themselves contemplate suicide to
> get the *medical* help they need.  I think we would have been better off
> to have another thirty or so years of writing from Woolf; her suicide ranks
> as one of those horrible things that happens in life that it’s too bad
> Leonard or someone didn’t see coming and manage to stop.  I can’t
> recuperate it.  I wouldn’t want to try.  And I prefer the facts.****
> ** **
> Brenda Helt, PhD****
> ** **
> *From:* vwoolf-bounces+helt0010=umn.edu at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
> [mailto:vwoolf-bounces+helt0010=umn.edu at lists.service.ohio-state.edu] *On
> Behalf Of *jeannette smyth
> *Sent:* Saturday, June 16, 2012 8:42 AM
> *To:* Woolf list
> *Subject:* Re: [Vwoolf] Apocryphal lines & Woolf's suicide****
> ** **
> Thank you for this excellent Orr information; I know Sir Leslie's
> financial anxiety was formative in Woolf's life, as well as Virginia's and
> Leonard's natural asceticism and frugality.****
>  ****
> Another factor in her suicide, as I understand it, was the imminence of a
> Nazi invasion. I think this is mentioned, rather brutally, by Vanessa, in
> one of her letters to Virginia -- the prospect of being an "invalid"
> or raving lunatic at such a time, with both Leonard and herself on Hitler's
> to-kill list.****
>  ****
> Finally, as I understand it, Adrian Stephen, a physician, had provided
> them all with a suicide pill in the event of a successful Nazi invasion.**
> **
>  ****
> These factors, along with the Bloomsberries' longstanding atheism and
> Leonard's carefully cultivated stoicism (via Montaigne/Seneca), would have
> made Virginia Woolf's suicide the altruistic, logical, long-contemplated,
> communitarian and sane decision -- the absolute opposite of a romantic
> madwoman's hurling herself into the abyss -- that it seems to have been.**
> **
>  ****
> Thanks.****
> Jeannette Smyth****
> ** **
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Neverow, Vara S."
> Sent: Jun 14, 2012 8:36 AM
> To: "helt0010 at umn.edu" , Woolf list
> Cc: Wayne Chapman
> Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Apocryphal lines & Woolf's suicide
>
>
> ****
> With regard to Woolf's suicide, I would recommend that Woolfians also
> consult the monograph *Virginia Woolf's Illnesses* by Douglass W. Orr <
> http://www.clemson.edu/cedp/cudp/pubs/orr/main.htm>. Orr argues *very*convincingly
>
>
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-- 
Michael F. Davis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Associate Chair
Department  of English
Le Moyne College
Syracuse, NY 13214
USA
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