Deborah, I believe the question you posed to us about the Virginia Woolf letter and diary entry is whether or not we can connect them to each other, hoping to date the undated letter. Here is my response to that question as well as my own reactions to the letter and journal:
There are definite similarities between the letter and the diary entry, which lead me to believe that either they were written around the same time, or Virginia Woolf was having these feelings of depression and hopelessness for quite a long period of time. Both may be true. In her letter to Molly, Woolf appears exhausted with the regularity of her life, feeling old and worn down by its static predictability. She refers to herself as an "old maid," which might lead us to date this letter later in her life. I, however, have no trouble believing that her feeling old was more of a product of her boredom and dissatisfaction with her life's position rather than her actual age. For example, in the journal entry dated 1922, when Woolf was 40 years old (and would still live for another 19 years), Woolf expresses similar feelings of dissatisfaction. She says in the journal that she is "suffering inwardly, stoically," and that her life seems "a little bare sometimes." These feelings of emptiness and staleness of life echo the feelings she expresses in her letter to Molly, even though she was still relatively young, having only lived 2/3 of her life at this point.
So, on the one hand, it could easily be made a case that the letter and the diary entry were written around the same time; In both pieces Woolf seems to be feeling similar emotions and going through the struggles of dealing with her aging and apparently static life. If these were not written at the same time, however, I would argue that the letter to Molly precedes the journal entry. In the letter, Virginia Woolf's struggles must be extrapolated from the text, rather than them being plainly stated. She seems to be beginning to fall into a state of crises, whereas in the journal entry she is clearly deep in it. In the journal entry she says she is in one of her "moods," making it clear that she has been suffering for some time, enough so that the people around her can recognize her struggles. At least in the letter Woolf is still able to discuss topics other than her own misery, telling Molly about a play she saw and some of the actors in it. In the journal entry, on the other hand, Woolf is completely consumed by depression, trapped in a marriage in which she has no courage, feeling old and in a gloomy mood. She thus appears further along in her course of sadness in the journal entry than in her letter.
I would though like to address the difference between the forms of these two pieces. The fact that the journal entry is a little more telling as to how Virginia Woolf is truly feeling than the letter is not particularly surprising. Even if Molly was person Woolf felt she could completely confide in, there is quite a difference between writing something for someone else and writing a journal entry in private. Woolf may very well have written these both around the same time and merely chosen not to fully disclose the extent of her depression to Molly, whereas she could safely do so in her journal without conjuring up a reaction from an audience. The difference between what one might reveal in a letter versus what one would reveal in a private diary then makes it hard to distinguish exactly if these pieces correspond to similar dates.
Finally, I would just like to comment on my own reaction to both Woolf's letter and journal entry, for they deeply affected me. It is hard for me to picture Virginia Woolf, who I have always viewed as revolutionary and an important role model for women, struggling so much and feeling so depressed and weakened by her age and place in society. Especially since the journal entry was written nearly forty years before she killed herself, it is apparent that she struggled for an extremely long time, even at the height of her literary career. I was surprised to learn how she struggled in her marriage, not being able to find courage to go against the will of her husband, as I had always figured that the author of A Room of One's Own must have been in control of her own life and unwilling to relent to a man's suppression. The letter and journal entry do make Virginia Woolf more human in expressing her struggles, struggles that many middle aged women face. But I cannot help but be more deeply saddened by them than I would be by someone else with less fame, as I had always had the impression that Virginia Woolf, at least at the peak of her writing career, would have been able to find empowerment in her knowledge and successes.
Becky, I probably forgot to mention in my introduction that Woolf suffered from what many who have studied her believe to be bipolar disorder. During her lifetime, she suffered many "breakdowns" during which she heard voices and lost touch with reality. The first of these happened when she was 22, in 1904. Between breakdowns, she often experienced deep depression. Her husband, having experienced her breakdowns and a suicide attempt she made early in their marriage, was concerned to keep her life quiet and stable. This was sometimes a source of stress between them. Overall, though, it is clear from Woolf's writing that she experienced her husband as kind and supportive, not as a jailer.
ReplyDeleteFor me, knowing that Woolf accomplished all that she did while dealing with a very debilitating mental illness makes me admire her all the more. She was clearly strong and dedicated, in addition to being a brilliant writer.
I think what impresses me about the letter as well as the two diary entries is how they both show Woolf's creative intelligence. We said that the letter is virtually devoid of imagery, or at least of the metaphorical excess that makes her letter to Molly such fun. But even when Woolf writes something that is intended for her own eyes only, her narrative power, her gift for self-deprecating irony, are on full display: "Let the scene open...."; "Middle Age then. Let that be the text..." (as if she were writing a sermon). Note also how she makes fun of our own attempts at dating her: "If I were a dissembler I should date this the last day of 1922." Life doesn't adhere to calendars, yet when we write diaries we need dates. Note also her description of her husband Leonard as seeing things so clearly that he cannot swim or float. And note how she ends her first diary entry by classifying, ironically, the genre she has just used: "a note of interrogation." It is this ability to give words to something that would crush others that always leaves me breathless with wonder when I read Woolf (note, too, how corny my own metaphor is here--something that would not have happened to Woolf).
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