What were the exact texts of Virginia Woolf’s three farewell notes and how do they differ?
Executive summary
Virginia Woolf left three short farewell notes in March 1941: a long, intimate letter to her husband Leonard, a slightly earlier letter to her sister Vanessa, and a brief note left in her writing room; the texts vary in length, addressee, and rhetorical purpose, moving from explanation and reassurance to terse resignation [1] [2] [3].
1. The husband’s letter — the longest, most explicative farewell
The letter found by Leonard and widely reproduced begins with Woolf’s stark declaration of collapse and ends in an affirmation of their happiness; the commonly circulated transcription reads in full: “I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we cant go through another of those terrible times. And I shant recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I cant 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 than we have been. V.” — this text is available in scans and transcriptions cited by Open Culture and Wikisource [4] [2].
2. The sister’s letter — an earlier, more plaintive explanation
Scholars report a separate letter addressed to her sister Vanessa Bell written almost a week earlier that reprises similar themes of despair and resignation; contemporary accounts and academic summaries quote the line “I have fought against it, but I can’t any longer,” and note that this second letter reiterates Woolf’s sense that continuing would “spoil” others’ lives while asserting she and Leonard had been happy [1] [3].
3. The short note left in the writing-room — the terse, final trace
A third, very short note was left in her garden writing-room and is recorded in scholarship as even briefer than the other two, centering again on the same admission of defeat: “I have fought against it, but I can’t any longer,” and echoing that she cannot recover and does not wish to waste Leonard’s life — that concision and repetition underscore resignation rather than explanation [1].
4. How the three notes differ in form and function
Formally, the husband’s letter is discursive, signed “V,” offers reasons (voices, inability to concentrate), expresses gratitude and reassurance about Leonard’s goodness, and functions as both explanation and valediction [2] [5]; the sister’s letter is dated earlier, shorter and framed more as a personal plea or explanation than the long domestic reassurance offered to Leonard [1] [3]; the garden note is minimalist and performative, repeating the decisive line and serving as an immediate marker of intent rather than a sustained justification [1].
5. Authorship, provenance, and how sources frame the texts
Primary transcriptions and scans (e.g., Open Culture and Wikisource) preserve the husband’s note in full and are the basis for most modern citations, while academic articles and forensic-linguistic studies have compared word counts, signatures and style to confirm genuineness and to analyze tone and motive [4] [2] [6]. Critics and cultural commentators have debated whether publishing the notes is ethical or constitutes literary consumption of private pain; defenders of publication point to Woolf’s public stature and the notes’ historical-literal value [4] [5].
6. Limits of reporting and lingering uncertainties
Available public sources reproduce and summarize the three notes but differ in which note they print in full; while the longer Leonard letter is widely transcribed and reproduced [2] [4], some secondary sources quote only lines or summarize the other two, and one must rely on archival facsimiles and edited collections for complete verification — the reporting therefore robustly supports the texts’ key phrases and differences but leaves room for consulting original manuscripts for absolute textual-critical certainty [1] [3].