The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by Peter Dally Page A

previously been quiescent stirred into activity and ‘switched on’ the mental disease that was to influence Virginia’s life so profoundly over the next forty years.
    Manic depression exists in every known society. It was well described by early Greek physicians, but only during the last century has it been defined and separated from other mental illnesses.
    The condition showed itself in a yearly cycle of mood changes: depression in late winter and early spring, and then again in September; elation in the summer, sometimes in November. By the time she was 19 Virginia had come to recognise the pattern and told her cousin, ‘My Spring Melancholia is developing into Summer Madness.’ 1
    Virginia’s fluctuations of mood between depression and high spirits are known as cyclothymia. At first the mood changes were comparatively mild but, when she was 22, after her father’s death, she became mad and for almost a year was disabled by manic depression. She recovered but in 1913, following her marriage to Leonard Woolf, she had a second, more violent and prolonged attack of madness.
    The distinction between cyclothymia and manic depression is one of degree. Any marked shift of mood results in changed feelings and perception. When Virginia was depressed she saw herself as a failure; a failed writer, a failed woman, dwarfed by her sister, Vanessa. She believed she was old and ugly and impotent. She felt people laughed at and ridiculed her. She became afraid of strangers and filled with anxiety. When ‘high’ or hypomanic, Virginia felt ‘a great mastery over the world’, 2 and she ‘scarcely wanted children’; she had ‘an insatiable desire to write’, to show herself off, to socialise, gripped by the ‘Spirit of Delight’. 3
    The deeper the mood swing, the more exaggerated the distortions, and eventually fantasy came to replace reality. In severe depression, when this occurs the cyclothyme becomes insane, or mad, and is diagnosed as having manic depression. The depression which Virginia developed without fail between January and March was potentially the most dangerous. Depression at other times was unpleasant, often incapacitating for many weeks, but never led on to hallucinations. All Virginia’s breakdowns into insanity had their origin in the New Year period.
    Patterns of illness vary individually, but Virginia Woolf had the classic form of the disease: alternating swings of mood occurring with the seasons. Treatment today has improved since her day, but for long-term stability there still remains the need for a trusted understanding partner who can assume temporary command of the patient’s life at critical times; a need all too often misunderstood by Virginia Woolf’s biographers.

Chapter Seven
    Gender and Sexuality
    Quentin Bell was born on 19 August 1910. There were no complications but Vanessa was tired and depressed and glad of the customary month in bed, relieved that Virginia would be in Cornwall for most of the lying-in period. Throughout the pregnancy she had watched her sister slipping towards madness, comforting her one moment and having to defend herself against abuse and ‘uncontrolled passion’ the next. Clive, although recognising that Virginia was ill, had done little to support his wife and relieve the pressure. His tolerance for stressful problems was low, and Vanessa’s only ally in the struggle had been Dr Savage.
    A month of rest and relative quiet gave Vanessa time to reflect on her current life. She saw it was unsatisfactory; she had too little time to paint, Clive did not provide the companionship and support she wanted, and, above all, the strain of Virginia was becoming almost unbearable. Much as she loved Virginia she could not continue to mother her at the cost of her own family and career. But she could see no solution and, characteristically, displaced her worries onto the new child, convinced he was failing