Author: Lexi Hartley

I wanted to blog / facilitate this week because I wanted to dive more into Virginia Woolf, who is one of my favorite historical figures. I was first drawn to Virginia Woolf and her life story in high school when I first experienced depression, but I find her work from the 1920s to be particularly interesting in this current social moment and given the parallels between the 1918 flu epidemic and today’s pandemic.  Given the current mental load that we are all experiencing as a result of the pandemic and current events, I traced how some of our authors this week–specifically Virginia Woolf, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and the women of the Combahee River Collective–explore mental illness in their construction of feminism. In class, I will be leading us through a short history of First Wave feminism and a shared annotation activity.

There is a long and potent history between supposed mental illness and the feminist experience. We can dive into a variety of historical examples–for example, suffragette Alice Paul being institutionalized–and I will be going through some of these examples in class as we explore the history of First Wave feminism and how it relates to Woolf. However, since we are drawing connections between the past and the present–I’d like us to consider a common meme on social media– a list compiled of causes of mental illness in patients admitted to a West Virginia asylum. Regardless of the accuracy of this meme, the number of complaints specific to women (ie “imaginary female trouble, marriage of son”) is a sobering reminder that those who defied gender norms–and in rejecting them, could be called early feminists–were frequently labeled as “mentally ill.” This meme is particularly potent and shared widely to this day–and I think a big reason for that is the propensity for doctors to still dismiss women’s complaints as psychosomatic, an effect that is amplified for women of color.

Woolf explores this phenomenon in a different light in A Room of Her Own, explaining that women frequently experience mental distress upon recognizing the conditions of their oppression. In the fable of Shakespeare’s sister, she notes that “any woman born in the sixteenth century certainly would have gone crazy…” (898). What I find most interesting about Woolf’s characterization, however, is her discussion of “genius” and how interplays with class, race, and ability.

In the essay, Woolf notes that genius “is not born today among the working classes”–which seems at first glance to be an incredibly classist statement. However, she validates this statement with the remark that “How could it have been born among women…whose work began… almost before they were out of the nursery?” (897) While this does recognize that ability can be found in individuals of all genders and class backgrounds, this formulation is still limited by the assumption that “genius” is restricted only to skills developed in formal education. She recognizes the potential for genius among women in lower classes, but infantilizes these women, claiming that as a result of their upbringing, they are now incapable of producing great works. Would Woolf have recognized the “genius” of folksongs or handcrafts? Additionally, I am intrigued that, with a rather limited definition of what “genius” actually is, she laments that “any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would have certainly gone crazed” (898). What would Woolf have thought of a woman who, with no “great gift,” still recognized the conditions of her oppression? (Or would that recognition be in itself an indication of a “great gift?”) In Woolf’s formulation, mental unrest in response to oppression is a natural response for those with superior ability. 

Woolf’s formulation of mental illness demonstrates both her class background and the experience of white Britons in an age of empire. I’ve always been fascinated by Virginia and Leonard’s relationship and collaboration, so I was interested–but not entirely surprised–to learn that Leonard had begun his career as a colonial administrator. Ever since I read Mrs Dalloway in high school, I’ve also been fascinated with how Woolf addresses immigration–in that text–through the character of Lucrezia, an Italian immigrant married to a World War I veteran suffering from PTSD. Yet, in her short parable, she makes no mention of race or immigration–which is not surprising. Like many other white female feminists of her time, Woolf’s life and actions were incredibly radical, yet also worked within the traditional system and centered the experiences of upper-class, white females in the Western world. 

In contrast, the Combahee Women’s Collective directly addressed both issues of empire and issues of mental health–for ALL women, not just the “mad,” gifted few. As Taylor notes in her introduction, the CRC had an internationalist focus, making this important distinction to demonstrate “solidarity with women in countries that were often suffering because of the policies and military actions of the US government” (12). While this might seem radically ahead of Virginia Woolf’s time, it is important to note, as Taylor does, that in the early 1920s (the same time that Woolf was selling A Room of Her Own to the wealthy, well-read white women of the British Empire), Lenin was identifying and recognizing the levels of oppression that minorities faced in addition to the class struggle (as a side note: this is something that I don’t know a lot about, but I’m interested in learning more about!)

The connections between the CRC statement and mental illness are less obvious than in A Room of Her Own, but are nevertheless potent. As Taylor notes, the CRC itself and Black feminists, in general, rallied around causes of reproductive justice, especially ending the forced sterilization programs that were rampant in the 1970s (I’m going to pause here to let that fact sink in for anyone who was unfamiliar with this–when I learned about these programs as an undergrad, it blew my mind that women of color were being sterilized against their knowledge in my mother’s lifetime and I was horrified that we had never talked about this in school). However, these sterilization programs began in the early 20th century as a way of reducing mental illness (classified as “feeblemindedness”) in women–both of color and white–who were institutionalized. As the infamous Supreme Court case of Buck vs Bell shows, women who were working class, mentally ill, and considered “promiscuous” (but were often the victims of rape or sexual assault!) were more likely to be targetted for sterilization early on. In fact, the very experiences of women who were targetted by sterilization schemes demonstrate the interplay of class, sexuality, gender, and ability. However, by the 1970s, these efforts had been more secretive and more targetted on women of color–a move that also corresponded with changes in healthcare for the mentally ill and deinstitutionalization. 

In addition to focusing their activism in reducing sterilization–a form of oppression that started with deadly misguided ideas of how to care for the mentally ill–the women of CRC also directly address the relationship between mental illness and the experience of living in a patriarchal, racist world. Early on in their statement, the women explain: “Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchial rule, and, most importantly, feminism” (Taylor 17). In this statement, they draw a direct line between the feelings that Shakespeare’s theoretical sister faced and the experiences of Black women in the 1970s. However, unlike Woolf–who links this sense of perceived madness with only the talented–the women of the CRC generalize this feeling to all of their Black and brown sisters, attesting that the systems “did not allow most Black women” to critically examine *why* they felt so-called “crazy”. Furthermore, unlike Woolf (in the section that we looked at), the women of the CRC offer a simple solution: giving Black women a lens to understand how the system has let them down and how it connects to their mental health.

As we look at these two texts in conversation with another, they bring to mind a few questions to situation our discussion in a broader historical and political context:

Discussion Questions:

-What is the relationship between early 20th century feminism and experiences of empire? How do we see experiences of empire and neocolonialism impacting discussions of race, class, and gender today?

-Many of the most oppressive body politics in the 20th century–the eugenics movement, forced sterilization, and even the Holocaust itself–started out targetting those with mental illness or so-called “inferior” mental abilities. What is the relationship between race, class, gender, and ability studies / politics? 

-The women of the Combahee River Collective were engaged in issues of reproductive justice and worked at the intersection of queer and feminist politics. Where do we see these intersections and engagement with reproductive justice today?

Lexi’s Personal Question:Would anybody like to dive into excerpts of Mrs Dalloway or other Virginia Woolf texts for the student-facilitated lesson later in the course? Given the circumstances, I’m especially interested in how the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic influenced Virginia Woolf’s life and how it is discussed in texts such as Mrs Dalloway. Also bonus points for anyone who has read The Hours by Michael Cummingham or seen the film =)