PHYLLIS ROSE
455
watchful ca re and protection-and yet perhaps he was overly protec–
ti ve. A lovely sto ry, perhaps apocrypha l, but nonetheless expressive,
relates that when a cow wandered into the fi eld adjacent
to
Virginia's
bedroom and stuck its head through her window, Leonard bought the
fi eld, so that this event, which had startl ed, but also amused Virginia,
might no t recur. (Quentin Bell believes he bought the field to prevent
its being built upon .)
The doctors they consulted about Virginia's illn ess were " nerve
specia lists," and they call ed what she suffered from neuresthenia,
fatigued nerves, but what that meant they could not say. (Neures thenia
no longer seems a useful medical term and has disappeared with the
stereopti con.) Although the Woolfs were aware of psychoanalysis and
might discuss each o ther's flaw s in the light of psychoanalysis, Vir–
g ini a did no t consider turning to an analyst for therapy, probably
because she conceived of her illness as one of the nervous system and
no t of the psyche. Under Leonard 's supervi sion, her life was rigidly
structured to avoid the fatigue which, in the view of her doctors,
provoked her insanity. She wrote onl y three hours a day, from lO to 1,
although she spent much of th e afternoon revising or typing up what
she h ad written in the morning, a lso thinking about what she would
write the nex t d ay. She rarely stayed up past eleven, and social life,
which she liked as the o ther pole of her solitude, in the same systole–
diastole way she liked everything else, was strictl y ra tioned. At the leas t
sign of fa tigue or headache she had to stop work and take to h er bed.
Louie Mayer was astonished at the way every hour was accounted for in
the Woolfs' routine. Regular, disciplined, Virginia took little time off
on weekends and gave herself only two-week vacations, although their
moving back and forth between London and the country was a
perpetual tonic. Illness was her un schedul ed, unchosen res t from her
labors. Whole months dropped out of her life, months which healthier,
more fortuna te peop le might spend swimming or sunning in the
South, but which she spent in bed, in paroxysms of fear and self-hatred.
She never blamed her poor health fo r the limita tions on her life.
Nevertheless, if she envi ed her brothers their Oxbridge experi ence, she
envi ed her sister her children and lovers. She envi ed Katherine Mans–
fi eld her travel and adventures. She envi ed Vita Sackville-West her
disregard for conventi on. Thinking of Colelle, who had danced in
music ha lls, made her feel dowdy. We have to remember tha t if Woolf
was confined to a life of lellers, of mediated experience, other women of
her time were not. There was, in fact, more to it than the ev il power of
patriarchy, but her physical and menta l fra ilty played a restrictive part
she chose never to incorpora te in the myth of her own life. Her
