The final act

Steinem’s description of Virginia Woolf’s suicide as a “radical act of self-determination” shows an unfortunate lack of insight into both Virginia Woolf and the nature of her illness. Steinem feels the movie should have included the rise of fascism and the coming of World War II as motives for Woolf’s suicide in 1941. She also scorns the New York Times’ reviewer for attributing Woolf’s suicide to a problem of “faulty wiring” in the brain.

Woolf was bipolar, a woman who struggled throughout her life with mammoth bouts of depression and mania. Eventually the disease beat her. To describe her painful suicide as anything other than a cry for release strikes me as self-conscious twisting of the truth by Steinem. In Woolf’s suicide note to her husband, Leonard, there isn’t a word about anything other than her fear of illness, her belief that she is ruining his life, and her love for him: “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.... Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness.”

Nancy Wright

Pasadena

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Steinem’s defense of “The Hours” is another example of the “emperor’s new clothes” publicity that has surrounded the movie. We need the little boy to tell the truth: It is about a bunch of spoiled individuals who want to commit suicide, no matter the consequences for those they leave behind.

Sandra Wells and Scott Smith

West Hollywood