Virginia Woolf is believed to have suffered from a mental condition that can be seen echoing through her body of work. In her personal writings, Woolf describes dramatic mood swings which, tragically, culminated in her taking her own life. These cyclical fluctuations of emotional highs and lows have since been recognized as the symptoms of bipolar affective disorder. She reported that during a manic upswing, she would write frantically. At other times she would withdraw to her room with feelings of utter hopelessness. Woolf wrote prolifically, producing reviews, novels, biographies and essays amongst other material; she even wrote twenty-six volumes about her own writing. This, in itself, might be a further symptom of illness; hypergraphia, or incessant writing, is another characteristic of bipolar disorder. Knowledge of her possible mental illness provides an insight into Woolf's novels. Her characters equivocate and, even when the author could show preference for one choice over another in an ambiguous situation, she generally declines to do so. Was this a reflection of Woolf's own vacillations?