“That odd whir of wings in the head”: Illness, Treatment, and Virginia Woolf’s Modernism by Anna Eve Harvey Thesis Advisor: Paul Armstrong Second Reader: John Readey Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts In the English Honors Program in the Department of English At Brown University April 9, 2020 1 I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. I authorize Brown University to lend this thesis to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. I further authorize Brown University to reproduce this thesis by photocopying or by other means, in total or in part, at the request of other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. __________________________ Signature 2 Brown University requires the signatures of all persons using or photocopying this thesis. Please sign below, and give address and date. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor, Paul Armstrong, for believing in this project from the beginning and for graciously describing my writing as “Woolfian” when it just had too many commas. Thank you to my second reader, Jon Readey, for long conversations over four years and for teaching me (finally!) how to cite correctly. This thesis is, at it its core, about finding a home in one’s body and in one’s mind. It is about breaking down and putting oneself back together again, one word at a time. It is, in the end, about finding joy in places you never thought it could be. To the women of 206 Power— Abby Haber, Amanda Madigan, and Virginia Schilder—who showed me just how much happiness a small space can hold when the right people are in it. In coming home to you, I learned how to come home to myself. I am a better woman every day because of you three. Finally, this work is for my family. To my grandpa, Monte, for sparking my interest in medicine. And to my parents, Linda and Mark, for making sure I always had a steady supply of books. I love you. 4 Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….5 Chapter 1: Writing the Rest Cure in Mrs. Dalloway……………………….……………17 Chapter 2: Essaying the Sickroom in “On Being Ill” …………………….……………..33 Chapter 3: Transforming Illness and Inventing the New Novel in The Waves………….50 Epilogue………………………………………………………………………………….68 Note on Abbreviations Diaries and letters are abbreviated by volume and page number. For example, a citation for page 100 of Diary, Volume 1 would be written as (D1: 100). In in-text citations, all of Woolf’s works are abbreviated according to the first letters of the title. For example, Mrs. Dalloway is abbreviated as MD, “On Being Ill” as OBI, and The Waves as W. 5 Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the Culprit—Life! - Emily Dickinson I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am, I am, I am. - Sylvia Plath 6 Introduction I’ve had some very curious visions in this room too, lying in bed, mad, & seeing the sunlight quiver like gold water, on the wall. I’ve heard the voices of the dead here. And felt, through it all, exquisitely happy. (D2: 283) On the ninth of January, 1924, London was frigid and grey, but Virginia Woolf, having just signed a lease to move back to the heart of Bloomsbury (to 52 Tavistock Square, to be exact) could not feel more alive. “London thou art a jewel of jewels & jasper of jocunditie—music, talk, friendship, city views, books, publishing, something central & inexplicable, all this is now within my reach, as it hasn’t been since August 1913,” she wrote in her diary (D2: 283). The past decade had been “a series of catastrophies which very nearly ended my life,” prompting a move away from the city, alternating between Asheham in Sussex and Hogarth House in the London suburb of Richmond at the behest of her doctors, who believed the city’s frenetic pace would wreak havoc on her frayed nerves (D2: 283). Between the ages of 13 and 33, Virginia Woolf experienced five major breakdowns, two of which resulted in suicide attempts. Yet, during this period, she wrote and published three novels, dozens of critical essays, and a selection of short stories, in addition to keeping a regular diary and maintaining meticulous correspondence with friends all over the world. She married Leonard Woolf in 1913, and in 1917, after the £19 purchase of a hand-press (which they set up at their dining room table), they jointly founded the Hogarth Press, which published work by Katherine Mansfield, T.S. Eliot, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and other eminent modernists throughout its tenure. “I ought to be grateful to Richmond and Hogarth…” Woolf wrote on that January day in 1924. “Nowhere better could have suited better all those years…Moreover, nowhere else could we have started the Hogarth Press…” (D2: 283). 7 In a postscript to this diary entry—the passage that begins this introduction—she elaborates further, musing on her “curious visions,” the “quiver” of morning light, and the “voices of the dead” she heard during her convalescence, all of which made her feel, “through it all, exquisitely happy.” Life and death collide in this observation, crashing into each other like waves on the shore as she lies prone, “mad,” in bed. The breath of ghosts feels no different than the whisper of sunlight on the pillow; both enter the sickroom like old friends and exit positively buzzing with imaginative potential. Virginia Woolf’s life, like her writing, does not take kindly to neat categorization. She was skeptical of the easy illness narrative—diagnosis, treatment, cure—recognizing that her constitution was prone to variation and her condition chronic. Leonard, who kept a detailed diary of Virginia’s health throughout their marriage (coded in Tamil and Sinhalese, lest anyone read such intimate accounts), wrote in his autobiography, Downhill All the Way: It was a perpetual struggle to find the precarious balance of health for her among the strains and stresses of writing and society…The threat was almost always a headache, which was the warning signal of mental strain; the ‘illness,’ if it came to that, was the first stage towards breakdown. We knew exactly what the treatment should be; the moment the headache came, she had to go to bed and remain there comatose, eating and sleeping, until the symptoms began to abate. (49) As her biographer Hermione Lee notes, Woolf frequently uses the word “apprehensive” to describe her state of mind around a breakdown, implying an awareness of the “awful fear” at the constant possibility of the recurrence of madness (Lee 175). Woolf was no soldier, her body no battlefield—she did not set out to conquer her illness as one conquers an enemy. Rather, she was concerned with moving “through it all,” with living daily under the shadow of apprehension and living anyway. 8 As a woman who was often ill, and therefore prescribed long periods of rest, Woolf was frequently at the mercy of her own body (in which I include her brain) and the recommendations of her caregivers. And yet, she did not put her life on hold—in fact, she used these experiences to illuminate and inform her very mode of being. Her diaries are full of entries that muse on the circumstances of illness—a continued process of thinking through, rather than seeking to elide or explain. After an emotional lunchtime visit to her sister Vanessa in 1919, for example, during which she considered both her childlessness compared to Vanessa’s “overflowing household” as well as Macmillan’s decision not to reprint her second novel, Night and Day, for the American market, Woolf decided to “say something about these queer spiritual states,” which “interest me, even when I’m the subject” (D1: 298). She continues: The interesting thing is that one does, normally, keep up a kind of vibration, for no reason whatever. Equally for no reason whatever, the vibration stops. Then one enquires why one ever had it, & there seems no reason why one should ever have it again. Things seem clear, sane, comprehensible, & under no obligation, being of that nature, to make one vibrate at all. Indeed, its largely the clearness of sight which comes at such seasons that leads to depression. But when one can analyse it, one is half way back again. I feel unreason slowly tingling in my veins. If I could have a good morning’s work! (D1: 298) Many people feel themselves plunged into the choppy waters of depression; sometimes “for no reason whatever,” as Woolf writes, “the vibration stops.” Medicine can sometimes explain the cause of a mental break, a searing pain, or a blistering rash, and sometimes it cannot. How, after all, to measure the “tingling” of “unreason” in one’s veins? Via blood test? CAT scan? MRI? Sometimes people surface from the deep, and sometimes they do not. This is a fact. Virginia Woolf’s mental illness and eventual suicide are facts of her life, making up just one part of a story whose facets have been illuminated through the decades. I address both here only insofar as to say that I will not spend any more time speculating about how or why they occurred. Rather, I will focus on Woolf’s interior, day-to-day experiences of illness and 9 treatment, but more importantly, of recovery, and how all three influenced her creative process and shaped her self-conception as a writer.