K. Stephen had gone mad and also been institutionalized; and her father, Leslie, suffered from depression. Clearly there was a possibility that Virginia’s illness was genetic and biochemical, but at the time mental illness was seriously misunderstood and mistreated. The family doctor prescribed outdoor exercise four hours a day, regular glasses of milk, and no unnecessary excitement. Stella, Virginia’s older half sister, who had taken over as matriarch, supervised Virginia’s treatment, and Virginia slowly recovered.

But then just as Virginia and the family had started to heal, Stella died after returning from her honeymoon. The Stephen family was once again bereft. Leslie, always a needy person, descended into self-pity and gloom, claiming no one had suffered as he had. He bore down on his children, demanding their sympathy and their attention. However, the Stephen children — Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia, and Adrian — had had enough. They believed that their father’s excessive demands had contributed to their mother’s and sister’s deaths and consequently decided to ignore him as much as possible. As the next female in line, Vanessa was delegated to run the household, but she refused to allow her duties or her father’s needs to interfere with her work. She did what was necessary, then dashed off to her studies at art school as quickly as possible. Thoby was at Cambridge, and Adrian, the youngest, attended day school; so only Virginia remained at home with her father on a daily basis.

To her siblings this would have been a tragedy, but for Virginia it was in many ways a blessing; it allowed her to structure her own schooling and develop a closer relationship with Leslie. Her education thus far had been haphazard, limited by her mother’s skills and interrupted by her breakdown. Although Virginia was a prolific reader and had already displayed a gift for writing — she had started a family newspaper called The Hyde Park Gate News at nine — her talents, being those of a female, were largely ignored. While her two brothers were sent to school and then university, Virginia was left to fend for herself. She had access to her father’s extensive library and moved through it with astonishing speed, devouring Macaulay, Cowper’s letters, and volumes of English history one after the other. When Virginia visited her father’s library he would discuss books with her, and they slowly developed a bond. Woolf’s view of books as a means of establishing intimacy recurs throughout The Voyage Out: Richard Dalloway advises Rachel to read Edmund Burke while flirting with her; Clarissa gives Rachel Persuasion as a token of her affection; and St. John sends Rachel Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as penance for his insulting behavior at a dance.

In addition to her voluminous reading, Virginia devised literary exercises and was tutored in Greek and Latin. Only a person of unusual will and ambition would be capable of administering her own education in such a manner. She translated Thucydides and wrote historical essays — not for a grade, but for her own improvement. Virginia inherited this discipline from her father, and she knew it; during this period, she began to appreciate him as an intellect and to identify with him as a writer.

By the time Virginia was twenty-two her father, already seventy-two, had been diagnosed with cancer. Leslie Stephen’s death was not unexpected, but it was still painful for Virginia, who was just beginning to know him. While Vanessa celebrated the family’s newfound freedom, Virginia suffered through enormous pangs of guilt and grief. The nervous tensions returned; she stopped eating, couldn’t sleep, and suffered a second nervous breakdown. She was moved to the house of a family friend and attended by nurses around the clock. Her illness became worse: Virginia suffered severe delusions, heard the birds talk in Greek, and became suicidal. She tried to kill herself by jumping from a low window but escaped without injury.

Vanessa consulted the family doctor and related how their half brother George had behaved inappropriately with Virginia. In later accounts posthumously published in Moments of Being, Virginia described how George had crept into her room when she was a teenager and gotten into bed with her, kissing her and professing love; she also related that her other half brother, Gerald, had touched her sexually when she was a child.