Customer Reviews

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Manic Depression and the Life of Virginia Woolf

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I was window shoppping at Amazon.com as I often love to do when I came across a book that I have treasured for some time. I was dismayed to see that Peter Dally's magnificent tour de force was not being recognized as such. Frankly, it is beyond comprehension that this would be so! One cannot understand the scope and depth of Virginia Woolf without reference to the marriage to which she so desperately needed in order to achieve the balance and stability necessary (given her illness) which resulted in our watershed of wonder in having such Masterpieces to read and enjoy today! Also, Dally's most compassionate view of her bipolar disorder provides to anyone who has had real experience with this disease profound insight into a curse, really, for so many artists that surely would have resulted in her suicide far sooner had it not been for Leonard Woolf. Surely, he is not perfect. No one is. But Dally provides that all-important insight into the need for all of us to accept the fact that no man or woman is an island unto themselves and in the absence of another upon whom we can rely in times of trial and trouble -- we are all lost. Given the unimaginable low price for this book, if you love VW -- you will not be disappointed!

The author is a retired English psychiatrist who became a Virginia Woolf fan after reading "Mrs Dalloway."

For a reader new to Virginia Woolf, this could serve as a pretty good biography of Woolf. It's relatively short, provides a good overview, and would encourage the reader to explore all Virginia Woolf has to offer.

For a Virginia Woolf fan, it fills in the gaps, connecting the dots between Virginia's episodes of insanity and depression with events in her life.

In addition, Dally does an outstanding job analyzing the romantic and sexual relationships among the Bloomsbury bunch.

Dally includes a Stephen family wiring diagram identifying those with mental illness.

(Incidentally, of the dozens of books I have on Woolf, Dally's book is the only one I have that has a photograph of Vanessa that reveals a stunningly beautiful woman. Virginia was considered as beautiful, if not more so, but the photographs of Virginia must not do her justice. She is pretty in her younger years, but even so, Vanessa seems stunningly gorgeous.)

It never ceases to amaze me how different people can arrive at such different conclusions from the same set of facts. This book is a great example of that. With nearly every page I found myself marveling at the unsupported conclusions, the questionable assumptions, and the moralistic (and misguided) value judgements left right and center. I found myself editing as I read, deleting whole paragraphs of blather as I went along. There is a set of facts about her illness, and you must arrive at your own interpretation of those facts. But some conclusions come nearer the truth than others -- and if you ask me, this one misses by a mile. If you want a book about Woolf's illnesses, read Caramagno's book "The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf's Art and Manic Depressive Illness".

Interesting title, promising subject. But the book is a huge disappointment. If you are looking for a brief biography of Woolf that touches on her bipolar disorder, then this may be what you want. If you want any real discussion of the disorder and a decent analysis of how she developed it and how it manifested itself, go elsewhere.

Dally is a psychiatrist who came of age in the 1950s. He is particularly interested in "manic depression" and anorexia nervosa, and he found both in Woolf. He used her extensive diaries to divine what troubled her, and his own background to determine why.

Dally has a tendency to trot out theories and present them as facts. From the beginning he describes Woolf's illness as genetic and attributes it to her father's side of the family. His "proof" is a family tree that shows that some members of her father's family suffered from various nervous disorders and he could not find as much evidence of such illness on her mother's side. He offers no proof of the genetic basis but merely proclaims it. In the appendix he notes that the genetic basis has not been proven "but it is only a matter of time".

Yet, in his own description of Virginia's childhood, he offers a much more potent and believable basis for her later depressions. Her mother did not want her, essentially rejected her, and always considered her of less value than the males of the family. There was nothing Virginia could do to win her mother's approval, yet she continued to try. As is typical with those with depression, she could not outright reject her mother or blame her for her own pain, and as a result her anger turned inward. This seems a far more plausible reason for her bipolar disorder than some vague genetic predisposition.

He also provides absolute treatment prescriptions, as if he were prescribing an antibiotic for a bacterial infection. Manic-depressives need quiet. They need to be kept from becoming excited. They need people around who will support them. They need to be protected from stress.

Is this true? Would Virginia have not killed herself if she had never had to face stress, if she were kept in the country, if nobody ever offered her any excitement? Even though she herself craved excitement, social interaction? Would she have truly been better off without the parties, the various stresses of everyday living? I was not at all convinced.

Dally's assumptions don't stop with Virginia and Leonard. He proclaims that Virginia's lover, Vita Sackville-West, was incapable of forming long-term intimate bonds. By what means did he make this diagnosis? He never met the woman. He can't possibly know if she was outright "incapable", and he certainly offers no basis for this assertion.

I found the book offensive for these reasons. He has reduced a writer of amazing creativity to a creature with a genetic disease, and has offered no substance for his simplistic analysis.

This is far and away the least insightful, least knowledgeable, least useful book I've ever read about Virginia Woolf. If I ever come across a book by this doctor again, I will shun it like the plague. Here are a few of the many, many ways he went wrong:

1) The "family tree" in the back of the book that supposedly supports his claim that Woolf's mental health issues were genetic is totally incomplete. So far as an informed reader can tell, he only named and "diagnosed" immediate family members of Leslie Stephen and family members who he could identify as having some kind of problem related to Woolf's. Another problem is that he doesn't appear to have presented his evidence for having determined that these people even suffered from the same difficulties one to the other, let alone to Virginia Woolf's manic depression.

2) He constantly undermines the evidence given by women (Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell -- Bell is supposed to have not even known whether or not she had a miscarriage in 1911) while bolstering the evidence given by men. He promotes the causes of George Duckworth and Leslie Stephen, and belittles the evidence that George at least may have committed some serious offenses against his half-sisters. In the spirit of humility and a recognition that he was not there and did not know these people, Dally should at least have indicated that the evidence might be sketchy and presented the evidence for his views as *possible*. His attitude towards women is, at best, outdated. Given that, I don't think he should have undertaken to write about one.

3) Dally "diagnoses" medical conditions of people for whom he has extremely limited information without defining his terms. What is cyclothemia? Well, I could look it up in a book, but what it means to Dally or how he came to his conclusion, I'll never know.

4) Dally uses only published sources for his book. Yes, some of them may have been out of print and quite difficult to find, but that doesn't change the fact that he allowed himself to be limited to published sources. There are a lot of documents (Leonard Woolf's letters, for one) that were not published or were published only in part at the time that Dally's book was written. But many of these resources are readily available at university libraries. How he can presume to diagnose and criticize based on an incomplete record -- well, it's an astonishing act of arrogance, and if he were practicing REAL medicine would probably get him sued.

I could say a lot more about Dally's characterizations of Woolf's motivations, his overlooking the importance of various people in her life, his lack of understanding of the period about which he wrote, his utter lack of sympathy for the values of Bloomsbury -- but I don't have enough space.

Bottom line -- this book is junk and although it could have been a terrific addition to Woolf scholarship, any half-competent graduate student could have produced something really useful and far more insightful than this exercise in medical chauvinism. It's exactly the sort of thing Virginia Woolf would have expected from a doctor.

I never did figure it out or finish it. It might be a fine book but it bored me to sleep every night for weeks until I just tossed it on the shelf for good.