BOOKS
139
novel's larger symbolism and unity of design.
It
contradicts, too, Rose's
own important insight that the novels are made of "wholes."
Because she does not follow the writer's development from novel
to novel, Rose remains curiously unresponsive to the philosophical–
aesthetic fusion Virginia Woolf seeks in the later works. Passing too
quickly over
The Waves,
she admonishes the novelist for abandoning
"the self in the thirties ... embracing impersonality and anonymity."
"For a writer whose greatest impact," she continues, "derives from a
private understanding of life's precariousness, the escape from the
personal meant cutting herself off from the roots of her art." But were
"the roots of her art" what Rose calls "the principle of self–
consciousness"? Or had she, in fact, been aware all a long of larger
connections and sur-realities which she cou ld comprehend on ly when
she finally distanced herself from her creations?
The Unknown Virginia Woolf,
by Roger Poole, is an idolater's
book, written from a post-Freudian perspective and generally so
wrong-headed and irritating that few will persist in reading it to the
end. Poole's claim that no evidence exists for Virginia Woolf's madness
is based on the psychologist R.D. Laing's premise that irrational
behavior can be explained when ana lyzed with the patient's inner logic
in mind. Since in these terms Virginia Woolf's behavior is "expli–
cable," the application of the word "insane" to her severe breakdowns
becomes an affront.
Like Rose, Poole is indebted for fresh material to Jeanne Schul–
kind's collection,
Moments of Being,
and like her he regards Woolf's
fiction as "records of a life," seeing in her work the most reliable
accounts of her so-called madness. What a critic might call her art
becomes for Poole her therapy. "The novels were written," he con–
tends, " to master people and states of mind and states of embodiment
which had previoLisly mastered her."
The villain of the piece is Leonard Woolf, "outsider," Jew, and
professional rationalist, who readily accepted the verdict of hardened
and ignorant medical men, decided his wife must remain childl ess, sent
her off
to
a nursing home when she attempted suicide, and watched her
mercilessly thereafter for signs of "illness." The most damaging
evidence against Leonard is that Virginia Woolf's second episode of
"madness," accompanied by attempted suicide after she learned of her
diagnosis, came soon after their marriage in 1912. Like a prosecuting
attorney, Poole doggedly pursues Leonard with vague charges of
insensitivity, intellectual conceit, and neuroticism stemming from
social and racial antagonisms (as viewed through his little-known
