Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!
—Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was a literary force, a mind both brilliant and fragile, living perpetually on the edge of psychic unrest.
Despite the inner turbulence, she produced a vast body of work while engaging in an active and dynamic social life. She was intensely curious and hypersensitive yet often perceived as distant or aloof. Poet May Sarton, who knew her briefly, was struck by the sheer vitality Woolf poured into her craft—an energy so relentless it seemed to defy the shadows that haunted her.
“What remains true is that one cannot pick up a single one of her books and read a page without feeling more alive. If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be?”
On this day in 1941, Virginia Woolf took her own life.
It was springtime in London. World War II was at its peak, pressing hard against Britain. Nazi Germany had already conquered much of Europe, and relentless bombing raids had killed or wounded tens of thousands in her homeland. A German invasion of southern England loomed as a real possibility.
Before Hitler shifted focus to Russia and before the U.S. entered the war, Britain stood alone, its people gripped by the very real fear of defeat.
It was the backdrop of this bleak atmosphere that Virginia Woolf took her own life—though her reasons were deeply personal. In a way, her suicide could be perceived as an act of love. She wanted desperately to spare her husband and sister from the burden of her suffering. It speaks to the profound agony of her mental illness that death seemed the only escape.
On the morning of March 28th, Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with heavy stones and walked into the River Ouse in Sussex.
Leonard Woolf discovered Virginia’s final letter on the sitting room mantelpiece after realizing she was missing. He had been in the garden when he noticed her absence, and upon returning to the house, he found the letter where she had left it.
Her body was not found until three weeks later when it washed ashore. Her husband was left with the heartbreaking task of identifying her remains.
Friends noted the deep strain on his face and the redness of his eyes from relentless weeping. He was consumed with grief.
Many years later, Leonard writes in his autobiography:
”Virginia’s attitude to death was very different. It was always present to her. The fact that she had twice tried to commit suicide — and had almost succeeded — and the knowledge that that terrible desperation of depression might at any moment overwhelm her mind again meant that death was never far from her thoughts. She feared it and yet, as I said, she was ‘half in love with easeful Death.’”
Below is the content of the letter he found on the mantelpiece on that fateful day.
Dearest,
I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate.
So I am doing what seems the best thing to do.
You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came.
I can't fight any longer.
I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it.
If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.
I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.
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