[Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

[Ellen Moody]

I would like to know how others in classroom respond to students saying as
a (somewhat settled diagnosis) that Virginia Woolf was 'bi-polar."

When I resisted partly because since age 9 I have known depression,
anxiety-attacks, panic and a whole array of mental problems let's say and I
find each new fashionable set of terms from schizophrenic to bi-polar
unconvincing. Too simplistic, too reductive.

But I listened and what I seemed to hear was this diagnosis of "bi-polar"
made Woolf into a "sane" person who had deep mood swings - from say
productive, cheerful and "strong" to some snakepit of breakdown, despair,
suicidal impulses. As used, it seemed a normalzing tool, as if were to make
Woolf more acceptable

They said they found it in a New York Times article which was trying to
sell Cornwall as a place to go through the association with To the
Lighthouse. On this I remarked that literally To the Lighthouse is situated
in the Hebrides (I see a connection and memory of Johnson and Boswell here
too), another place on the edge of the British mainland...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/travel/virginia-woolf-cornwall.html

How do or would others handle this.

Ellen Moody
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