It just so happens that I randomly Googled Virginia Woolf. I wanted to know more about her since we were analyzing "A Room of One's Own" so intensely. Come to find out, Woolf was crazy, certifiably so...a little out there! Legit manic depressive! She committed suicide and was believed to have a failed attempts even before the successful one. She was believed to also be schizophrenic by today's standards. That could have easily gone unnoticed because she could've just seemed super creative. It's weird to think about how many artist/ writers were tortured and seemingly drew off of pain for inspiration. For example: Sylvia Plath (probably most famous for "The Bell Jar"), we saw how tortured she was in the poem "Daddy" killed herself by turning on the gas and sticking her head in the oven. Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms: a great book by the way!) shot himself in the head and was also manic and bipolar. So...are genius and insanity one in the same? It sure looks that way!
I didn't know anything about Virginia Woolf at all, but she seemed to have had a pretty interesting life even though she ended up going insane, mad if you will. I also learned that she was molested by one of her step brother and later on in her life, she had some type of homosexual relationships(mind you she was married, to a man). Woolf, Hemingway, and Plath are all pretty well known, great writers and all three were extremely disturbed. Even St. Teresa of Avila was epileptic! I once wanted to be a writer, but I just don't think it would work for the reasons given: 1. I'M NOT CRAZY ENOUGH to muster up their type of ingenuity 2. nothing extremely traumatic has happened to me, so I can't filter the pain through my fictional undertakings 3. I'm not suicidal and I couldn't be payed to hurt myself, knowingly 4. I've not been formally diagnosed with some sort of psychosis (not yet anyway, it's still early) 5. Lastly, I'm just too boring to write (yeah, right)....I'm not boring, I just don't have voices telling me what to say!
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I'm so glad someone looked that up! I was wondering if Woolf went nuts and killed herself...she seemed kind of like the type. Haha. Thank you so much for writing it down. I thought it was interesting how you related her to Hemingway and Plath.
PS I love A Farewell to Arms too.
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