Talent Development Resources.....................Virginia Woolf

 

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.  Virginia Woolf   / quote from Jan Phillips' Museletter janphillips.com

*related page:**collaboration.......

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"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Virginia Woolf  [1882-1941] - from her book A Room of One's Own    ~ ~ "Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame." .. .[from "Mrs. Dalloway"]

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..   .. Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf   I thought, 'This woman is such a magnificent person.' ... The way in which she had this enormous intellect and then this extraordinary fragility and to combine the two creates almost a kind of chemistry and you put it together and it just bubbles.  I'm fascinated by her - and I think everyone is. ... Her literature is so powerful, as was her mind, perceptions and ideas, and they all resonate. Nicole Kidman  [DarkHorizons.com interview, Jan 17 2003]

Growing up in Australia, Nicole Kidman had sampled Woolf's works but found them dense and oppressive. "I'd run away from her. As a schoolgirl, you run toward the Brontes, you run toward Austen," Kidman said.  "Discovering her in my 30s was when I needed to discover Virginia Woolf. Because I think you need to have some experiences in life, you need to have an intellectual capacity to handle Virginia, which you don't necessarily have -- well, I didn't have -- as a teenager," said the actress, who prepared for "The Hours" by reading Mrs. Dalloway and other Woolf novels, along with diaries, letters and biographies. ...  Kidman came to Woolf and "The Hours" at a suitably dark time in her own life, after a miscarriage and amid the breakup of her marriage to Tom Cruise last year. "I was pretty nihilistic in terms of my view of what it was all about," she said. "Where we were going. Why I was existing in the world, really. Why, was the big question. So it was sort of the perfect time to encounter Mrs. Woolf. Because you're raw, emotionally raw. Your ability to understand with compassion somebody else's struggle is just there. ... It's cathartic, because it means you're not alone." ......[CNN.com Dec 30, 2002]    ~ ~ ~

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The Hours    Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman

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.. The Hours.. conveys this sense that inner space is as vast, dramatic and surprising as outer space. Of course, the impulse to keep thinking about this movie owes something to worry about what it leaves out.  For example, I worry that viewers, especially those who can't empathize with the self-erasure that goes along with living a derived life, may demonize Laura for leaving her family to save her life.  Some male moviegoers have emerged bewildered about why Laura wasn't happy with just her nice house, nice marriage and nice son -- as if they would've been.

Even more, I worry that the absence of even a hint of the sexual abuse and isolation that left Woolf with childhood flashbacks and a lifetime of trauma -- beyond what society was willing to talk about then, but inexplicably left out of Cunningham's novel and this film -- may make her depressions seem a personal fault.  For example, there is a reference to the suicide of one of her "Mrs. Dalloway" characters, yet not to the fact that he was a traumatized veteran of World War I to whom Woolf herself would have felt personally linked. Because the film's prologue shows Woolf's own suicide 18 years later -- yet gives us no clue that the march of fascism and the beginning of World War II were part of what pushed her over the edge -- I worry that her radical act of self-determination is deprived of its context then, and its resonance now.  If the response of the New York Times' reviewer is any measure, I'm right to worry. Though he praised the film, he attributed Woolf's suffering to the "faulty wiring" of her brain. from article: 'The Hours' captures the merit and suspense of introspection and the importance of living in the present - by Gloria Steinem ... [LA Times, Jan 12 2003] the film is based on the book: The Hours by Michael Cunningham

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Virginia Woolf was constitutionally depressed, lost her mother at 13, had lived with a depressive, histrionic father (Leslie Stephen) for about 10 years thereafter, and had had suicidal episodes in her earlier life.  At the age of 59, with the prospect of Nazi invasion of England in view, her London home having been bombed, and hearing enemy air incursions nightly over her Sussex home, and having prepared for suicide by poison with her husband in the case of Britain's defeat in World War II, and in physical pain, Virginia Woolf ended her life in 1941 when she thought she was going mad. Dianne Hunter, Professor of English, Trinity College, Hartford CT  [posting 8.27.03 in list of PsyArt: An Online Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts]

*related page:**depression.......

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"Nothing exaggerates the torture of childhood. People say children are happy. They forget the terrible revelations.. the sudden shadows on the ceilings."  - Virginia Woolf, incest survivor - from article: Cognitive Accommodations to Childhood Sexual Abuse by Douglas Eby   ~ ~ "It is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex. Yet, it is the masculine values that prevail." Virginia Woolf - quoted in article Internal barriers, personal issues, and decisions faced by gifted and talented females

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"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." So begins one of the great novels of the 20th century, Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway." As a scholar who has taught Woolf's fiction for more than 30 years and has read virtually every word she wrote, I'm troubled by Nicole Kidman's creation of her character in Stephen Daldry's new film, "The Hours." ...  No matter how imaginatively (and respectfully) the author and director have approached their subject, "The Hours" creates a false Woolf. Even with her much-commented-upon prosthetic nose, Nicole Kidman is not Virginia Woolf -- not even close. In endeavoring to present a more personal view of the writer, Daldry's film -- even more than Cunningham's novel -- ultimately domesticates, even trivializes, his subject.  Kidman's portrayal, whatever its virtues, conveys someone other than Woolf, who struggled not simply with depression but with the very limits of language to express her unique vision. from article: To the Litehouse - Somewhere Between Biography and Fiction, A Literary Giant Became Smaller Than Life - by Roberta Rubenstein, The Washington Post, January 26, 2003. Roberta Rubenstein is professor of literature at American University and the author of Home Matters: Longing and Belonging, Nostalgia and Mourning in Women's Fiction

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.. .. Nicole Kidman's prosthetic nose isn't the only thing about the new film ''The Hours'' that seems false to Vara Neverow.  Neverow, an English professor at Southern Connecticut State University and president of the International Virginia Woolf Society, says the new Paramount film, based on Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, inaccurately portrays British writer Woolf, who died in 1941, as an invalid madwoman.

''Feminist scholars have been fighting this image'' of Woolf ''for years,'' says Neverow, and Cunningham's portrayal - which Neverow finds a tiresome backslide into old, narrow stereotypes of Woolf - does a disservice to the legacy of the writer, who Neverow says was ''politically aware and deafeningly feminist.'' Woolf committed suicide at the age of 59, but the reason behind her action wasn't simply her mental instability, as is popularly believed. World War II was raging in Europe at the time.  Woolf's husband, Leonard, was Jewish, and both Virginia and Leonard were outspoken socialists and intellectuals, and they had decided that if the Germans invaded their town they would kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner and sent to concentration camps.  When her home began to be threatened by German fighter planes, Virginia ''just couldn't keep it together,'' says Neverow.  She didn't want Leonard to have to worry about taking care of her any longer, particularly under such conditions, so she filled her pockets with stones and walked into the river. New Haven, Conn., Jan. 22, 2003 boston.com / AScribe Newswire

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A prominent aspect of having exceptional talents is a uniqueness of being that makes finding peers difficult.
Gardner notes that innovative dancer Martha Graham, along with biologist Barbara McClintock, anthropologist
Margaret Mead, writer Virginia Woolf "and other pioneering twentieth-century women... had to create her own
paragons, her own role models.

from article Eccentricity and Creativity  by Douglas Eby
 

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In a magazine article, Jane Fonda noted that the "shutting down" of expression may start early in life: "Girls lose their original spirit in early adolescence," she said. "The bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, powerful girls shrink down to the size of a thimble... other women around us... send us the message that to survive as a woman, you have to quiet that voice. "Virginia Woolf called it 'the angel in the house,' Fonda continued. "She would sit down to write from her core, and the shadow of the angel would cast itself over her page to say, 'I'm not sure you want to say that. People aren't going to understand that. You should be nicer, a little more feminine.' ... Hide your intelligence. Hide your power." from article Gifted Women: Identity and Expression by Douglas Eby

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.. excerpt from article The Madness of Virginia Woolf by Nicole Ward Jouve [Editor introduction:] Virginia Woolf's life holds a fascination for admirers of English literature, not least because of her suicide in 1941. Daughter of the pre-eminent Victorian Leslie Stephen, the history of her mental health provides insights which go beyond her work, into the culture and society of which she was a product. In this extract from The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, Nicole Ward Jouve looks at the concept of psychoanalysis in relation to Woolf's madness. There are diverging versions of the severity, frequency and nature of Woolf's mental illness, and even of what the diagnosis should be: manic depression? Cyclothymia? Hysteria? Schizophrenia?  Should words like 'madness' or 'insanity' be used or are they crude and inappropriate? In her vigorous biography, in what is clearly a rebuff to hard terminology or the search for single causes, Hermione Lee states: 'Virginia Woolf was a sane woman who had an illness ... Her illness is attributable to genetic, environmental and biological factors. It was periodic, and recurrent' (H. Lee, Virginia Woolf, 1996, p. 175).

.. .. The rest of her 'Madness' chapter is devoted to a rich description of the intricacies of the case. That it was a major element of Woolf's life, and a component of her talent is difficult to dispute. Virginia Woolf had her first bout of insanity after her mother's death when she was thirteen in 1895.  She broke down again after her father's death in 1904, then in 1910 after years filled with family trouble (including her brother Thoby's death), after she had been working on her first novel, The Voyage Out.  And then again after a year of marriage to Leonard Woolf. Further breakdowns followed, which have often been linked with the strain of working on, or completing, a work of fiction, but not always and not only. In almost all of these attacks, she tried to kill herself. They are dramatically signalled by periodic interruptions in the Diaries. There is no clear evidence to connect them with any one cause. photo: Virginia Woolf with her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, 1902

.....related pages:.....depression......depth psychology

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*articles:*

Are Creativity and Mental Illness Linked?  [from Today's Science On File]

The Madness of Virginia Woolf  by Nicole Ward Jouve
 
 

**sites:

A Room Of Her Own
"provides innovative art patronage for women writers and artists ... educates the community about the work of
women writers and artists and the impact their work has on society ... is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization,
organized and operated to further the vision of Virginia Woolf and bridge the often fatal gap between a woman's
economic reality and her artistic creation.

International Virginia Woolf Society

**books:*.............
 

  by Virginia Woolf :

A Room of One's Own.............Melymbrosia [with Louise A. Desalvo, Editor]

Mrs. Dalloway.............Orlando : A Biography.............To the Lighthouse

related books:

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf  by Sue Roe and Susan Sellers

The Creative Mystique : From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and Creativity by Susan Kavaler-Adler
[Booklist review:] 'Object-relations psychotherapy is the theoretical basis for Kavaler-Adler's approach to how women may develop healthy creative selves. Expanding on ideas examined in The Compulsion to Create, Kavaler-Adler highlights the lives of such outstanding artists as Camille Claudel, Virginia Woolf, and, more recently, Diane Arbus. Suzanne Farrell and the ballerina's relationship with George Balanchine is cited as a successful "fantasy of union with a muse," in contrast to the destructive tendencies of others in the study who were never able to overcome "an unstable sense of self . . . from early trauma." From an analytical viewpoint, perhaps most fascinating is a critique of Anne Sexton's therapy with various doctors; Kavaler-Adler speculates on care that might have helped rather than hindered the poet, who eventually capitulated to the suicidal demands of her darker self. Compelling reading for all who remain curious as to why gifted artists often suffer the worst despair."

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Sounds from the Bell Jar: Ten Psychotic Authors - by Gordon Claridge et al.
"A unique collaboration between an Oxford psychologist and two literary critics. It explores the lives and works of ten authors, among them Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, who embody both serious mental illness and great originality of thought. Drawing upon personal diaries, historical archives, clinical records and literary productions, this book examines modes of thinking which psychosis and creativity share."

Virginia Woolf  by Hermione Lee

Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work by Louise A. DeSalvo

Virginia Woolf: A Beginner's Guide by Gina Wisker
This title is an introduction to the life and works of Virginia Woolf. It covers her greatest works "To the Lighthouse" and "Mrs Dalloway". It explores Woolf's ideas about gender, and writing and power, and considers the way these ideas have provided insights into the lives of men and women.

Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis  by Elizabeth Abel, Catharine R. Stimpson

Virginia Woolf: Emerging Perspectives: Selected Papers from the Third Annual Conference On Virginia Woolf, Lincoln University, Jefferson City, MO - by Mark Hussey, Vara Neverow

Writer's Writing  by Lil Brannon, Vara Neverow et al

Writing a Woman's Life  by Carolyn Heilbrun
[NY Times review: "Drawing on the experience of celebrated women, from George Sand and Virginia Woolf to Dorothy Sayers and Adrienne Rich, Heilbrun examines the struggle these writers undertook when their drives made it impossible for them to follow the traditional "male" script for a woman's life. Refreshing and insightful, this is an homage to brave women past and present, and an invitation to all women to write their own scripts, whatever they may be."

Writing as a Way of Healing : How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives by Louise DeSalvo
 

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