Illness and creative work in Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield

ABSTRACT

The personal and professional affinities between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield have been the subject of many studies, one of the most pertinent modes being the examination of how their creativity responded to illness and suffering. By imagining and mastering psychic fragmentation in fiction, Virginia Woolf restored form and value to herself. According to research into inter-hemispheric processing, the same effect can be achieved when readers respond to a text. In a different way, but still relating to creativity and the perception of suffering, Katherine Mansfield speaks about her “two kick offs” in the writing game. The experience of these two writers shows how narrative and literature helped them to deal better with their health conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Illness
• creativity
• bipolar disease
• tuberculosis
• suffering

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Idem identity and ipse identity are two Ricoeurian concepts presented in Soi-même comme un autre (1990). Idem identity is the stable, unchanging core of personality; ipse identity is the changing part of identity, which can be altered through life by others or by circumstances.

2 On this, see Head (1992). “Katherine Mansfield:the impersonal short story”.