[Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

Wed Mar 7 13:46:23 EST 2018

I may not be being entirely clear.  If we talk in the classroom about
"bipolar" as a "label" that has been "slapped" on someone, we will
inadvertently reinforce the stigma against bipolar disorder.  It's a
condition, a "disorder," but appears to have been shared by some of the
greatest minds and talents whose work we now idolize.  It could even have
encouraged some of the positive traits these creative people shared.  I
imagine the next "trend" in psychiatry will be to drop the word "disorder,"
but it's what psychiatrists call it at the moment.  It might have made Woolf
more insightful about some things, more perceptive-her perspective
different, "slanted" in the Dickinsonian sense.  There is in fact good
evidence that folks with bipolar disorder share some positive mental traits
linked to perception and creativity.  In the classroom, I emphasize this,
because it's true, and because although we cannot become writers like
Virginia Woolf or poets like Plath by somehow "becoming" bipolar, it helps
those who have bipolar "disorder" to realize they share that with Woolf and
Plath.  And it helps their peers.  

To relate this convo to another we've long been having in the Woolf-world,
we don't want to totalize Woolf as a lesbian or as lesbian in a constrictive
defining and limiting way, but nor do we talk about fearing we might "slap"
the "label" of lesbian on Woolf, right?  Or of "queer."  We can talk
meaningfully about her queer perspective (in her work, in her letters, in
her diaries, in what we know of her life) and how it seems to have empowered
and enriched her life and work without knowing exactly what she did sexually
with Vita or Leonard.  Nor do most of us now say in the classroom that Woolf
would not have called herself "lesbian" or "bisexual" or "queer" and
therefore we can't use those terms to understand her or her life of her
writing today.  We can talk about Woolf and bipolar disorder in positive
ways in the classroom without "labeling" or "identifying" her or anyone "as
bipolar."  The things we struggle with in life can also enrich our lives and
work-that might be a good direction to go with this topic in the classroom
if it doesn't sound too naive.

Is this clearer?  I've probably made things worse . . .

Brenda

Brenda Helt

Co-editor Queer Bloomsbury

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-queer-bloomsbury.html

Fine artist

http://www.brendahelt.com <http://www.brendahelt.com/>  

From: Kimberly Coates [mailto:kimbec at bgsu.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2018 10:20 AM
To: Brenda S. Helt; 'Ellen Moody'; Woolf list
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

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

Bowling Green, OH 43403

kimbec at bgsu.edu

419-372-9189

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

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

Co-editor Queer Bloomsbury

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-queer-bloomsbury.html

Fine artist

http://www.brendahelt.com

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

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/attachments/20180307/4b0c1e0d/attachment.html>