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Crazy Is As Crazy Does Virginia Woolf's Bi-Polarity as Expressed In the Novel Orlando

"Fiction was good therapy for Woolf because it too deals with subject-object transactions that make a whole, a meaning that ratifies the integrity of both self and text...Fiction is intrinsically good ground for exploring manic-depressive illness: in both, making interpretations is the crux of the problem." (17) Thomas C. Caramagno In his January, 1988 Modern Language Association essay, "Manic-Depressive Psychosis and Critical Approaches to Virginia Woolf's Life and Work," Thomas C. Caramagno explores bipolarity, otherwise known as manic-depressive psychosis, and the role it played in the world of Virginia Woolf. It was a world in which critics worked long and hard to prove their contention that her work, if it was in any way connected to her illness, was a product of this neurosis, as well as a demonstration of her fear of life. It was not; it was a tool assiduously used by the writer to her own therapeutic advantage, as well as to the occasional delight of her readers, as seems to be the case in her novel, Orlando. In his essay, Caramagno tells us: "Woolf learned early on to acquiesce to family influences and yet blame herself for losing control of her emotions." (11) This response to her condition almost certainly resulted from her own confusion, a perplexity that likely reflected generations of family lore; Virginia Woolf's ancestry was replete with mental illness. Caramagno points out that her half sister, Laura, was institutionalized for a life-long psychosis; her cousin, James Stephen, was institutionalized for intense mania until his 1892 death by self-starvation; and her uncle, Fitzjames Stephen became mad and died in 1894. On manic-depressive psychosis, Caramagno again: "Because at least one of the primary genes seems to be transmitted by the X chromosome (the female sex chromosome), the illness is passed from father to

daughter or from mother to sons and daughters but rarely from father to son...Virginia most likely inherited her manic-depressive disorder from Leslie..." (13) Development of her work as a therapeutic tool began early on. Of her early adulthood, Caramagno writes: "At this time she was already exploring her illness through her fiction, seeing provocative connections between madness and modernism." (11) But Caramagno cites little critical evidence to support his contention. Instead, he cites notable examples of those who would deny Woolf the benefit of the doubt, mentioning numerous critics who dismissed her as a likely victim of childhood trauma in the form of sexual abuse at the hands of her half-brothers. Or as the archetypal madwoman disparaged as a defective person, "a case study in female failure." Brian Phillips, in his Hudson Review essay, "Reality and Virginia Woolf," gives us a glimpse of critics' problems with Woolf: "Woolf herself saw experience as 'a semi-transparent envelope, or luminous halo'...the notion of Woolf as a writer of grotesques and odd details is interestingly corrective, for these elements, though not central to her work, are present in her work. We tend to ignore them, but we are wrong to ignore them. There is a sense in which we have lost the habit of reading Woolf through." (419) What else do we ignore in the writings of Woolf? Do we ignore the more creatively ephemeral details characteristic of her work simply because the critics infer we should, or because they don't happen to even mention them? In following the herd are we missing an essential part of Woolf's essence? Thus far, it seems the mark of the archetypal madwoman who just happens to be self-aware is the criteria by which all her work is not measured, but studiously ignored by way of clich for the sake of more traditional, or perhaps comfortable, role projections: feminist,

critic, biographer, etc. Is the therapeutic infusion of "madness" in her work an untouchable notion, something best left to those of Caramagnon's eccentric persuasion? Much of Caramagno's argument is, by definition, speculative. As tempting as it might be to entertain the notion that a busy sub-conscious was injecting itself into her work, precious little, if any critical evidence is likely to be found to support that conclusion. Conversely, yet in the same vein, equal reluctance is found to ascribe conscious intent to inject her own experience with her madness into her work. Her Critics, when discussing Orlando in particular, may correctly focus on it as a love letter reflecting Woolf's intimate relationship with Vita Sackville-West. They may also discuss its revolutionary role with respect to women's suffrage, its tongue-incheek artifice and the farcical nature of its temporal conceit in portraying a life lasting over three hundred years. What they rarely discuss, if ever, is the lens through which we catch intimate glimpses of the mania an often playful Ms Woolf came to know throughout a good portion of her entire life, a life that nevertheless tragically ended in suicide at the age of 59. This dearth of critical evidence, in itself, constitutes proof of nothing; on the contrary, it allows the close reader, otherwise hobbled by critical convention, the freedom to interpret Woolf in newer and more creative ways. Her novel, Orlando, seems an exercise in exactly that, the delicate use of a particularly revealing, self-aware "madness," literary expression through the infusion of her own bi-polarity into her subject, thus ironically proving her own theses with regard to new biography and identification with the subject, in this case, Orlando. Or a reassertion of Carmagno's "ratification of both self and text."

The novel, Orlando, introduces us to a disembodied presence Woolf calls the "Spirit of the Age," likely a tongue-in-cheek reference to William Hazlitt's 1825 book of the same name, a

book that, by virtue of that name, purported to represent prevailing opinion among influential "men" of his era. In the final chapter of Orlando, she begins with a nine-paragraph section preceding a double paragraph break in which we are introduced to the notion that this disembodied presence is a now a conscious audience before which Orlando indulges herself in an internal debate over whether or not her ring truly represents a marriage. Woolf first presents a seemingly immature affectation: "'The wedding ring has to be put on the third finger of the left hand', she said, like a child cautiously repeating its lesson, 'for it to be of any use at all.'" (130) Thus, she playfully begins the final episode in the centuries-long life of our protagonist, Orlando, by exposing her character's interiority as that of a demonstratively imaginative child: "She spoke thus, aloud and rather more pompously than was her wont, as if she wished someone whose good opinion she desired to overhear her. Indeed, she had in mind, now that she was at last able to collect her thoughts, the effect that her behavior would have had upon the spirit of the age. She was extremely anxious to be informed whether the steps she had taken in the matter of getting engaged to Shelmerdine and marrying him met with its approval." (130) For the first time in this novel, the disembodied presence, "the spirit of the age," is directly addressed by Orlando. Could this be mania observed? And if so, is it mania put to good literary use, presented by one intimately familiar with mania's characteristics, the author? In his essay, Thomas C. Caramagno writes of Woolf's attempts to blend her bi-polarity into her work: "Woolf sought to achieve this integration...by fusing two modes of perception, manic and depressive, wedding her ability to "imagine" to a lucid recognition of reality in epiphanal moments when her inner being and outer world cooperated with each other, each ratifying the existence, integrity, and worth of the other." (16)

In other words, she is accomplished at using her intimate knowledge and understanding of her own disability to artistic advantage. While ascending the heights of the "new biographers'" highest aspirations, creative conflation of author and subject, it is even more imaginatively done by way of an intermediary, the "biographer," conveniently serving as the one with the bird's eye view. Writes Woolf of the biographer's observations: "Orlando ...was in an extremely happy position...yet remained herself." (131) In the hands of a writer not known for Woolf's disability, such phraseology would not be suspect. In the hands of Woolf, not so. She remained herself? As opposed to whom? The author? The biographer? And what is the implication here; that she often does not remain herself when extremely happy? And what does that mean? It means the author, Woolf, is well acquainted with the loss of "self" in moments of extreme happiness. It also means Woolf cares less about what the reader requires in terms of ready answers, more about general interpretations. Caramagno goes on: "To describe the elusive contact between self and world, she used symbols and images...to create more ambiguity and incoherence than they resolved: 'I am sure that this is the right way of using them--not in set pieces, as I had tried at first, coherently, but simply as images; never making them work out; only suggest' (Diary 4: 10-11)." (19) Woolf wants the reader to be free. She also wants a venue in which to experiment, to interact with, rather than simply direct, the reader. Caramagno asserts: "The strong emotions of mania skew perception, creating an obscure solipsistic symbolism, a pathetic fallacy the perceiver is completely blind to...Woolf's manic episodes ran the gamut ...When mildly manic, she felt energized and creative, and invention came easily to her: 'my body was flooded with rapture and my brain with ideas. I wrote rapidly till 12...'" (14)

In the case of Orlando, the implication that she is unaware is belied by her subject. The first section of Chapter six ends as follows: "Now, therefore, she could write, and write she did. She wrote. She wrote. She wrote." (131) And what did Orlando write? "It was now November. After November, comes December. Then January, February, March, and April. After April comes May. June, July, August follow. Next is September. Then October, and so behold, here we are back at November again, with a whole year accomplished." (132) The biographer claims this oddly ritualistic form is a necessity occasioned by "the predicament into which Orlando has now put us..." (132) All well and good, assuming we are in for an explanation of this predicament, but it remains unexplained in the text, therefore to exist solely in the imagination of the author, by way of the biographer, if it exists at all. Its lack of substance confirms it as merely ornamental, a relic of the affliction the fiction slyly realizes. In other words, it is a "suggestion" confirmed as such by the fact that its existence is not at issue as far as the author, or biographer, or even Orlando are concerned. Woolf's fiction focuses us on her own symptoms as personified in the character Orlando while playfully encouraging us to speculate as to Orlando's identity: man/woman, poet/adventurer, even biographer/subject. Which "self" will we encounter at any given time? Caramagno on Woolf's adaptive dramatization of symptoms: "This helped her accept not only her illness but her wellness too: the sane and the insane, differentiated yet one, the one Virginia Woolf." (22)

But bi-polarity is just that: a duality, an expression of extremes not just to be toyed with in terms of identity, but in one's very perception of reality, as well. Woolf also knew this. Her Orlando biographer continues to describe what seems like a hypo-manic trance:

"Orlando sat so still that you could have heard a pin drop. Would, indeed, that a pin had dropped! That would have been life of a kind...Or suppose she had got up and killed a wasp...Where there is blood there is life...the merest trifle compared to killing a man, still it is a fitter subject for novelist or biographer than this mere wool-gathering; this thinking; this sitting in a chair day in, day out, with a cigarette and a sheet of paper and a pen and an inkpot. If only subjects, we might complain (for our patience is wearing thin), had more consideration for their biographers!" (132) As noted earlier, Woolf is keenly aware of her disability. She is thus keenly aware of her own episodes, those events most symptomatic of her illness and the key, dissociative elements that identify them: in this case, they are exemplified by the wasp, blood and murder. Her move to "wool-gathering" and all those activities and accoutrements peripheral to it (incessant sitting with a cigarette and inkpot) only serve her purpose: to emphasize the condition, the "gestalt." We are then treated to selfish impatience: "If only subjects, we might complain (for our patience is wearing thin), had more consideration for their biographers!" (132) From here we get no paragraph break, we don't even take a breath; we simply find ourselves staring at Woolf, the manic-depressive herself, as if through a one-way mirror: "What is more irritating than to see one's subject, on whom one has lavished so much time and trouble, slipping out of one's grasp altogether and indulging--witness her sighs and gasps, her flushing, her palings, her eyes now bright as lamps, now haggard as dawns..." (132) Is this Woolf recalling her own image as she gazed into a looking glass at the crest of mania? What else? Caramagno's discussion of fiction as therapy, a way to discover "self" within the context of disparate experiences leads him to contend that Woolf wondered if "self" was merely an illusion, certainly a reasonable concern for a manic-depressive. In his Hudson Review essay, "Reality and Virginia Woolf," Brian Phillips claims:

"To extend herself into her characters she must escape her own personality, but the result of the extension is to question whether such an escape is possible. The contradiction may be resolved, perhaps, by pointing out that Woolf's characters are not real people but only inventions of her own subjective consciousness, and hence mere demonstrations." (424) Mr. Phillips' ambivalence fails to take into account the fact that Woolf does not need to escape her own personality; she merely seeks to understand it, direct it, use it. Whether it is fiction, biography or farce with which she wrestles, she seems to understand the importance of making her characters less inventions, more extensions of her subjective consciousness. This is especially true of the chapter six Orlando, a character immersed in fantasy and manic activity punctuated by periods of reflection, if not outright moroseness. In other words, this is a manicdepressive character. But it is not in her characters one finds Woolf consciously revealing her madness; if it is anywhere, it is in her retreat from, and subsequent objectification of them: "If then, the subject of one's biography will neither love nor kill, but will only think and imagine, we many conclude that he or she is no better than a corpse and so leave her." (133) And so the author/biographer leaves Orlando that she might peer out a window and indulge herself in dissociative observation of sparrows, starlings, doves, rooks, a worm and a snail. Since one can never read her mind, one can only be intrigued by the likelihood that such reflections are likely a product of conscious intent, more likely the self-aware Woolf teetering on the edge of a Caramagno's "blindness to pathetic fallacy." Chapter six accelerates at a pace eerily similar to the escalation of a manic episode. We find ourselves amid more fluttering birds, passing clouds (both thin and thick) not to mention philandering servants, all this in a single paragraph that ends:

"One's mind begins tossing up a question or two, idly, vainly, about this same life. Life, it sings, or croons rather, like a kettle on a hob, Life , life, what art thou? Light or darkness, the baize apron of the under footman or the shadow of the starling on the grass?" (133) Life, life, what art thou? Light or darkness? Pardon the reader for blinking more than twice at the grandiosity, at the extremes. What is the difference between a manic writing, and portrayals of manic prose? Woolf is not, of course, the only writer who produced manic prose. She undoubtedly is not even the only manic writer. She may, however, be the only writer so scrupulously aware of her own illness that she successfully used it to such a didactic purpose: to explore the blending of author and subject in the realm of her treasured genre, biography. This section of the chapter continues to the next double paragraph break, the point after which I contend Ms Woolf intentionally emphasizes intentionality: "At this moment, but only just in time to save the book from extinction, Orlando pushed away her chair...She was almost felled to the ground by the extraordinary sight which now met her eyes...All the time she was writing the world had continued." (134) Much, I suspect, as the world continued when Woolf was enduring one of her episodes. The interjection of self into the character continues unabated: "Such was the intensity of her feelings that she could even imagine that she had suffered dissolution, and perhaps some faintness actually attacked her." (134) Is it possible to escape the personality of the Virginia Woolf that imagines Orlando? Orlando is, of course, not real. Is Virginia Woolf, in her own imagination, real? Phillips goes on:

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"Woolf's mystical impulse is often noted; her occasional apprehensions of a pattern behind reality, typically coming before or after times of mental instability, her sense that her episodes of madness were in some way transcendental (a whirring of wings in the brain, she called it, and said that it had done for her instead of religion), and her famous comment about 'the mystical side of this solitude'--'how it is not oneself but something in the universe one's left with'...."(425) Of course, it is not clear when Woolf's "times of mental instability" occur with regard to when and how she writes about Orlando. We can only infer. For a manic-depressive with Woolf's inclinations, it opens a whole new world of possibilities. Phillips, again: "The great risk, of which Woolf was aware, is that it is also a longing for death. For the desire to escape one's personality and be diffused in a wider reality, whether the world of objects of the pages of a novel, is partly a suicidal wish (she drowned herself in the river! the subheads cry)." (426) Perhaps Woolf thought she was the only one who could safely cross the threshold from insanity to sanity through that 'semi-transparent envelope, or luminous halo' of experience. The chance she took in trying to prove it may well have been her undoing, as well as that which defined her.