I am not ill very often and when I am it is generally a mild cold that requires I soldier on, something more dramatic like the flu in which I heave my guts out until there is nothing left and then fall into bed exhausted, or something completely out of left field like vertigo. It seems on the infrequent instances I find myself in bed I can never manage the sort of illness that lets me spend hours reading until my body recovers. Therefore Virginia Woolf’s essay, On Being Ill, is a foreign encounter for me. For Woolf, illness offers flights of creativity.
In this marvelous essay she begins by wondering why literature doesn’t include much about being ill. Obviously, she was writing before the misery memoir brought illness and knowledge of someone else’s bodily functions to a whole new level. Woolf wonders if part of the trouble in her day has something to do with a poverty of language to describe illness. Even today, aside from medical terminology, do we have any better vocabulary that doesn’t resort to metaphors left and right? Woolf does not dwell long here, however. She quickly moves on to describe the lonely business of being ill.
No one can truly understand how someone who is sick feels though those of us in the “army of the upright” attempt to offer sympathy, Woolf wants nothing to do with it. Sympathy is nothing but an illusion, “We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others,” so how can sympathy be real? I agree with her on this. When I don’t feel well I am like a sick animal who goes and hides in a cave except I hide in bed. I curl up in my misery and just want to be left alone. Except of course when I want something — more water please, or ginger ale, or a cracker to nibble on. But just give me what I want and then kindly disappear. When Bookman is unwell he is completely opposite. I will not say more though in the interest of marital harmony.
The rest of the essay is a literary flight of wonder in which Woolf moves us seamlessly along her train of thought. One moment we are enjoying the chance to lay and look at the sky through the window and notice all the tricks the clouds play — do they do that all the time? and if so, why don’t we ever notice? Then suddenly we are talking about roses. And next onto the topic of Heaven and how difficult it is for people to really imagine and believe in because if it were easy to create Heaven we’d all be leaping right into it off Beachy Head.
Woolf moves quickly into to how being ill makes the mind more receptive and how, when ill, one might suddenly understand a poem or passage in a book the meaning of which had previously eluded. But one must also be careful what sort of reading one chooses when ill. Madame Bovary is out but Shakespeare is delightful. Even more delightful is bad literature such as a novel by Augustus Hare. Woolf goes on for pages about Hare and finally closes with the haunting image of
the curtain, heavy, mid-Victorian, plush perhaps, was all crushed together where she had grasped it in her agony.
I’ve read On Being Ill before but it is now out in a new edition from Paris Press (a kind person there sent me a copy) and includes an essay by Woolf’s mother, Julia Stephen, Notes From Sick Rooms. According to an introductory essay to Julia Stephen’s essay, Julia could truly be described as the Victorian “Angel in the House.” Her own marriage to Leslie Stephen was delayed so she could go take care of a sick relative. Woolf recalls wanting to be sick as a child so she could get attention from her mother who was always out taking care of other people.
While Woolf’s essay presents to us illness from the vantage of the unwell, Notes From Sick Rooms was written as a sort of nursing guide for those who were not professional nurses. Julia tells us all the things a good nurse should do from remaining calm and unflustered and quiet to how to give a bath, make the bed, brush hair, all the practical things one might do to ease the suffering of the ill. The best part of the essay is about crumbs in the bed. No matter how careful one might be to keep them from getting into bed, they always manage to find their way in. She advises nurses to always believe the patient when she says there are crumbs because there are few things that are as irritating and sure to make a patient uncomfortable.
Where Woolf believes sympathy is an illusion, her mother believed that a good nurse was completely sympathetic (though no pity please). Julia is not concerned with the patient’s mind or thoughts except as how it concerns keeping the sick calm and comfortable and able to rest. The body comes first. And oddly, though Woolf bemoans how literature is so concerned with the mind and not the body, her own essay on illness very quickly leaps from body to flights of the mind.
Paris Press did well to reissue On Being Ill and including with it Notes From Sick Rooms. Mother and daughter set up and interesting comparison and conversation in print. The book is a good afternoon’s reading and if you are a Woolf fan then it is a must have.
I’m like you Stefanie … am rarely sick but when I am I want to be left along, except when I want something. My husband? Well, let’s just say that he may be more like Bookman.
As for Julia and Virginia, I recollect my daughter often feigning illness when she was in primary school. It was a small friendly school, and I was pretty involved so well known there. The school secretary would call me at work and tell my my daughter was sick but that probably all she needed was a few words from her mum. She was usually right!
The only illness I really recollect from literature before her time is consumption. That did feature a bit in some 19th century novels. And there’s The yellow wallpaper — now that’s an interesting story but not about physical health.
Anyhow, this sounds like an essay I would like. Essays are great aren’t they?
There is a famous work of literature about “being ill”, though as it is mortal illness i’m not sure it counts. Tolstoy’s amazing The Death Of Ivan Illich and Chekhov’s equally brilliant Ward Number 6 (a sort of reply story to Tolstoy’s ) deal with the annhillation of bodies and souls utterly compellingly. One of the best parts of Tolstoy’s story is the awfulness of how poor Illich has to face the fact that nothing can ever be the same in his life again (limited and emotionally stunted as it is) and his isolation from his family and friends which bear out entirely Woolf’s point about illusion of sympathy.
Ian, Alphonse Daudet has a marvelous book about illness that ends in his death but it is quite fascinating. I have a copy and should find it and reread it because it’s been a long time. I’ve not read the Tolstoy or the Chekhov but they sound like and interesting pair. I will make a note for myself that when I get around to the Tolstoy I will also have to read the Chekhov.
whisperinggums, how funny that your daughter used to feign illness in primary school. Even though I am not ill very often as an adult, as a child I was frequently sick with flu or usually an ear infection. I hated being sick and going to the doctor so much that I would hide feeling unwell for as long as possible. Pretending I was sick would have probably gotten me whisked off to the doctor, the last place I wanted to be!
Oh, consumption! Yes, but I can’t recall any novels that detail the physical decline of the consumptive person. It seems like, especially in Victorian novels, so much was implied and then suddenly the person dies. No details other than mention of traveling to better climates or going somewhere for the waters. I wonder if that’s because it was common enough that people didn’t want or need to read about it in their novels?
I remember reading this essay, although ages ago, and writing about Woolf for something or other, though what could it possibly have been? Ah well. Thanks to chronic fatigue, I have spent a lot of sick time reading (and would have gone mad without it!) but it is still nicer to read when you are feeling well, because believe you me, I read a lot of trash when I wasn’t up to much. It’s interesting to think that writers didn’t say so much about illness back when Woolf was writing (although there must have been plenty about altered states of mind, like de Quincy and Baudelaire). Nowadays you can’t move in the bookstore for non-fiction about illness – how times have changed!
Litlove, no doubt reading when you are feeling well is a much better experience. I am sure Woolf would agree with that too. I think hers is a case of making lemonade. She does mention de Quincy in the essay but only in passing and sort of cuts him off at the knees by imply his attempt was feeble. Times have indeed changed though I am not completely certain that it has done so for the better, it’s rather mixed I fear.
I do love an author who can move so seamlessly from one topic to another in an essay or a short story without it being clunky or jarring. I’ve only read a handful of Woolf’s essays and she is a wonder at writing them. She has always seemed so formidable to me, I’m not surprised she didn’t ask for sympathy in her illnesses. I really need to get back to her and read something else by her–this is a nice reminder (and essays are short and quick)–one to add to my 2013 list…
Danielle, it is amazing how Woolf does it, even when I read carefully, looking for the transition and find it I still sit back in amazement at how perfect it is. Woolf can definitely be formidable but I think it is so worth the effort though I forget that when I am not reading her.
It just so happens that the edition I’m reading is the Paris Press one you mentioned above. I appreciated your reading advice on a more recent post about Woolf: she does move at a fast clip. I started wtih ‘Notes from Sick Rooms’ and finished with ‘On Being Ill’. I tend to agree with you that we do not have a good vocabulary to describe pain and illness. I may become a Woolf fan. This was my first taste and I’m heading to the library today to find more books.