448
PARTISAN REVIEW
fifties she played the sam<:> game. exp la ining to th<:> puzzled o bj ect of her
ques tions that the response she wanted was not sober self-questio ning
and scr upulous hones ty but emo ti onal <:>xtravaga nce. H er own set was
ti ght-lipped . Vanessa, for exampl e, could never adequa tel y respond
to
her sister 's decl arati ons of love which she rea lized constituted demands
for a return in kind . To sa ti sfy her need, as impera tive in its way as a
junki e's, Virginia turned to women of a different sort, to women who
had retained the knack of express ing simpl e affect ion , to hos t<:>sses like
Ollo line Morrell and Sybil Colefax, who fl allered her self-esteem as an
art ist, and to downri ght , <:>mphati c, unselfconscious women like Vita
Sackville-West and Ethel Smyth, who w<:>re no t emba rrassed to talk
aho ut their feelings and whose fee lings for Virginia were grat ifying ly
exuberant. But even when she o bta ined th e enormous infu sio ns of
a ffecti on and es teem that she required, the effects soon wore o ff , fo r she
did no t have tha t irra tion a l, unshakable sense of her own worth which,
when it is found at all, is found in people who have been ex travaga ntl y
wanted and loved as children a nd which such lucky pcopl<:> carry
through life. No amount of ex tcrn al approva l can make up for th :J.l
feeling. For Woolf, certa inl y, the hono rs, the fame. and th e money she
<:>venlUa ll y won for herself did no t make" up for it.
As she got more famous, she felt no more secure. The gap between
her private feelings and her public position was perhaps the most
enduring fea ture of her inner world, stretching back to ea rli es t child–
hood . The kind of mo ther everyone thinks of as perfect frequentl y
doesn't g ive enough love to o ne particularly needy littl e soul, which
may be one of the reasons tha t in later years, Virg ini a treasured every
reference to her mother' s ma lice, any descri ption pai nting a mo ustache
on that madonna. Love was the first deceit: that she loved and tha t she
was loved. Other deceits were to fo llow, real and imagined . Her socia ll y
impeccable half-brother was rea ll y after her body. Lonely and n eedy in
her deepes t self, she was forced to play the charming youngest d aughter
in a bi g happy family. It was a betraya l of her rea l self.
It
was fa lse in
every way, because as she knew well life was a ma tter of unsa ti sfi ed
longings, pain, and guilt. By her teens, Virginia had developed a fa irl y
compl ete dual identity. Her real self read books, wrote, lived in a
private world of fantasy . Her fa lse self, centered on her body, with
which her real self felt little connection, got dressed in seed pearl s and
silk, served tea, and made polite conversation.
R. D. Laing's brilliant description of the schizoid personality in
The Divided Self
must be mention ed h ere, although in suggesting tha t
Woolf's inner world was of the type described by La ing, my intent is
no t clinical and certainly not judgmenta l. The states of being La ing
