[Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

Wed Mar 7 13:19:55 EST 2018

I agree with Brenda and Anne completely. I emphasize to students that words like “bi-polar” are diagnostic labels and they do not in anyway capture the experience of an individual on whom such a label has been slapped. We know how cynical Woolf was about doctor’s, labels, and diagnoses. I work hard to steer students away from fetishizing Woolf’s illness, and the labels that have retrospectively been applied to it, and ask them to concentrate instead on her words, the amazing capacity of her imagination, and her desire to render language a material, mobile expression of the sensations she and her characters experienced. A good place to start regarding Woolf’s stance on illness is, of course, her essay “On Being Ill.”

All Best-
Kim

**********************************************
Kimberly Engdahl Coates, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
Literature Program Coordinator
Affiliate Faculty Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies/American Culture Studies/Honors Program
Office: 403 East Hall
Bowling Green State University
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kimbec at bgsu.edu
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Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+kimbec=bgnet.bgsu.edu at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf-bounces+kimbec=bgnet.bgsu.edu at lists.osu.edu>> on behalf of "Brenda S. Helt via Vwoolf" <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>>
Reply-To: "Brenda S. Helt" <helt0010 at umn.edu<mailto:helt0010 at umn.edu>>
Date: Wednesday, March 7, 2018 at 11:46 AM
To: 'Ellen Moody' <ellen.moody at gmail.com<mailto:ellen.moody at gmail.com>>, Woolf list <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

What would be the problem with understanding Woolf to have suffered from bipolar disorder, exactly?  There’s good evidence for that, which you can easily find in the serious Woolf scholarship (not just in a recent news article), and saying so shouldn’t negatively affect how we understand/view Woolf and her work.  Possibly it will impact how students understand the suicide—possibly in a way that’s helpful, even.  As someone with bipolar, I can tell you that although the words used to define it have changed (when I was diagnosed in my early 20s it was “manic-depressive, for example), the disorder has been aroun a long time and a lot of very productive, very creative, very intelligent people appear to have had it.  It will help students who have it or know someone who does for their teachers not to shy away from saying “Yes, there’s a good chance Hemingway, Woolf, Plath et al were bipolar.”

That’s my two cents.  It’s what I always did with my students and I personally found only positive consequences to have come of it.  You should, though, read up on bipolar before you do that.  It sounds like you might accidentally stigmatize Woolf and bipolars generally with the attitude towards this disability I’m perceiving in the below.

Best,

Brenda Helt

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From: Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu] On Behalf Of Ellen Moody via Vwoolf
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2018 8:24 AM
To: Woolf list
Subject: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

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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