Woolf, Virginia

From New World Encyclopedia
 
 
(24 intermediate revisions by 12 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
−
{{Infobox Writer
+
{{Paid}}{{Approved}}{{Images OK}}{{submitted}}{{copyedited}}
−
| name        = Virginia Woolf
 
−
| image      = VirginiaWoolf.jpg
 
−
| caption    =
 
−
| birth_date  = [[25 January]], [[1882]]
 
−
| birth_place = [[London]]
 
−
| death_date  = [[28 March]], [[1941]]
 
−
| death_place = near [[Lewes]], [[England]]
 
−
| occupation  = [[author]]
 
−
| salary      =
 
−
| networth    =
 
−
| website    =
 
−
| footnotes  =
 
−
}}
 
  
−
'''Virginia Woolf''' (née Stephen) ([[25 January]], [[1882]] – [[28 March]], [[1941]]) was a British [[author]] who is considered to be one of the foremost [[modernist literature|modernist]]/[[feminism|feminist]] [[literature|literary]] figures of the [[twentieth century]]. Between the [[World war|World Wars]], Woolf was a significant figure in [[London]] literary society and a member of the [[Bloomsbury group|Bloomsbury Group]].  Her most famous works include the novels ''[[Mrs. Dalloway]]'', ''[[To the Lighthouse]]'', ''[[Orlando: A Biography|Orlando]]'', and her essay [[A Room of One's Own]].
+
{{epname|Woolf, Virginia}}
  
−
== Early life ==
+
[[Image:VirginiaWoolf.jpg|right|200px|thumb|'''Virginia Woolf''']]  
−
Born '''Adeline Virginia Stephen''' in [[London]] to Sir [[Leslie Stephen]] and Julia Princep Duckworth ([[1846]]–[[1895]]), she was educated by her parents in their literate and well-connected household at 22 Hyde Park Gate, [[Kensington]]. Virginia's parents had married each other after being widowed and the household contained the children of three marriages: Julia's children with her first husband Herbert Duckworth: George Duckworth ([[1868]]–[[1934]]); Stella Duckworth ([[1869]]–[[1897]]); and [[Gerald Duckworth]] ([[1870]]–[[1937]]). Laura Makepeace Stephen (1870–[[1945]]), Leslie's daughter with Minny Thackeray, was declared mentally disabled and lived with them until she was institutionalised in [[1891]] to the end of her life; and Leslie and Julia's children: [[Vanessa Bell|Vanessa Stephen]] ([[1879]]–[[1961]]); Thoby Stephen ([[1880]]–[[1906]]); Virginia; and Adrian Stephen ([[1883]]–[[1948]]).  
+
'''Virginia Woolf''' (née Stephen) (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was a British author who is considered to be one of the foremost figures of both [[Modernism]] and [[feminism]] in the twentieth century. Woolf is considered one of the most psychological of all the Modernists; many of her later novels take place entirely within her characters' heads, focusing exclusively on the literary technique known as [[stream-of-consciousness]], which presents not an objective narration, but attempts to replicate the thoughts which shape the character's mind. Although she publicly despised [[James Joyce]], her place in literary modernism resembles his more than any other contemporary writer. Like Joyce, Woolf was endlessly experimental in her literary technique, while each work she created had a style all its own, from the traditional narrative of ''Orlando'' to the high abstraction of ''The Waves.''
 +
{{toc}}
 +
Woolf is one of the most enduringly popular of all the [[Modernists]]. While she liked to experiment with technique, she never abandoned a passionate commitment to storytelling. While some of the most intricately crafted stories in the literature, Woolf's works remain eminently accessible, unlike some of the other Modernists whom she disliked. Her biography betrays the best and worst in [[human being|human]] relations.  Even in taking her own life she wrote lovingly and affectionately to her husband and sister, expressing concern for them more than for her own life.  How tragic is the loss of a sensitive woman and towering talent, arising at least in part from abuse and the shameful sexual deviancy of her half brothers.
  
−
Sir Leslie Stephen's eminence as an editor, critic, and biographer, and his connection to [[William Thackeray]] (he was the widower of Thackeray's eldest daughter) meant that Woolf was raised in an environment filled with the influences of [[Victorian era|Victorian]] literary society.
+
==Life==
  
−
[[Henry James]], [[George Eliot]], [[George Henry Lewes]], [[Julia Margaret Cameron]] (an aunt of Julia Duckworth), and [[James Russell Lowell]], who was made Virginia's godfather, were among the visitors to the house. Julia Duckworth Stephen was equally well connected. Descended from an attendant of [[Marie Antoinette]], she came from a family of renowned beauties who left their mark on Victorian society as models for [[Pre-Raphaelite]] artists and early photographers. Supplementing these influences was the immense library at 22 Hyde Park Gate, from which Virginia (unlike her brothers who were formally educated) was taught the classics and English literature.  
+
Born '''Adeline Virginia Stephen''' in [[London]] to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Princep Duckworth, Woolf was educated by her parents in their literate and well-connected household at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington. Virginia's parents had married each other after being widowed and the household contained the children of three marriages: Julia's children with her first husband Herbert Duckworth: George; Stella; and Gerald; Leslie's daughter, Laura, from his previous wife; and Leslie and Julia's children: Vanessa Bell; Thoby; Virginia; and Adrian.  
  
−
According to her memoirs her most vivid childhood memories, however, were not of London, but of [[St Ives, Cornwall|St Ives]] in [[Cornwall]], where the family spent every summer until 1895.  The family stayed in their home called the Talland House, which looked out over the Porthminster Bay.  Memories of the family holidays and impressions of the landscape, especially the [[Godrevy|Godrevy Lighthouse]], informed the fiction she wrote in later years, notably [[To the Lighthouse]].  She also based the summer home in Scotland after the Talland House and the Ramsey family after her own family.
+
Sir Leslie Stephen's eminence as an editor, critic, and biographer, and his connection to [[William Makepeace Thackeray]] (his previous wife was Thackeray's eldest daughter) meant that Woolf was raised in an environment filled with the influences of [[Victorian era|Victorian]] literary society.  
  
−
The sudden death of her mother from [[influenza]] in 1895, when Virginia was 13, and that of her half sister Stella two years later, led to the first of Virginia's several [[nervous breakdown]]s. The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she was briefly institutionalised.  
+
[[Henry James]], [[George Eliot]], [[George Henry Lewes]], [[Julia Margaret Cameron]] (an aunt of Julia Duckworth), and [[James Russell Lowell]], who was made Virginia's godfather, were among the frequent visitors to the house. Julia Duckworth Stephen was equally well connected. Descended from an attendant of [[Marie Antoinette]], she came from a family of renowned beauties who left their mark on Victorian society as models for [[Pre-Raphaelite]] artists and early photographers. Supplementing these influences was the immense library at her home, from which Virginia (unlike her brothers who were formally educated) was taught the classics and English literature.  
  
−
Her breakdowns and subsequent recurring depressive periods, modern scholars have asserted, were also induced by the [[Sexual abuse#Child sexual abuse|sexual abuse]] she and Vanessa were subject to by their half-brothers George and Gerald (which Woolf recalls in her autobiographical essays ''[[A Sketch of the Past]]'' and ''[[22 Hyde Park Gate]]'').
+
According to her memoirs her most vivid childhood memories were not of London, but of St. Ives in Cornwall, where the family spent every summer until 1895. The family stayed in their home, called the Talland House, which looked out over the Porthminster Bay. Memories of the family holidays and impressions of the landscape, especially the Godrevy Lighthouse, informed the fiction she wrote in later years, most notably the early novel, ''To the Lighthouse.''
  
−
Modern diagnostic techniques have led to her being regarded as having suffered from [[bipolar disorder]], an illness which coloured her work and life, and eventually led to her suicide.  These re-occurring mental breakdowns would greatly affect her social abilities.  However, there was never any permanent damage and her literary abilities were never destroyed.
+
The sudden death of her mother from influenza in 1895, when Virginia was 13, and that of her half sister Stella two years later, led to the first of Virginia's several nervous breakdowns. The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she was briefly institutionalized.  
  
−
Following the death of her father in 1904 and her second serious nervous breakdown, Virginia, Vanessa, and Adrian sold 22 Hyde Park Gate, and bought a house at 46 Gordon Square in [[Bloomsbury, London|Bloomsbury]]. There they came to know [[Lytton Strachey]], [[Clive Bell]], Saxon Sydney-Turner, [[Duncan Grant]], and [[Leonard Woolf]], who together formed the nucleus of the intellectual circle known as the [[Bloomsbury group]].  
+
Her breakdowns and subsequent recurring depressive periods, modern scholars have asserted, were also induced by the child abuse she and Vanessa were subject to by their half-brothers, George and Gerald, which Woolf recalls in her autobiographical essays ''A Sketch of the Past'' and ''22 Hyde Park Gate.''
  
−
While nowhere near a simple recapitulation of the coterie's ideals, Woolf's work can be understood as consistently in dialogue with Bloomsbury, particularly its tendency (informed by [[G.E. Moore]], among others) towards doctrinaire rationalism.
+
Following the death of her father in 1904 and her second serious nervous breakdown, Virginia, Vanessa, and Adrian sold 22 Hyde Park Gate, and bought a house at 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury. There they came to know Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Duncan Grant, and Leonard Woolf, the man she would later marry, who together formed the nucleus of the intellectual circle known as the Bloomsbury group. The group was rather informal and loosely-knit, but was committed to a number of diverse causes, among them modernism in the arts (the group famously introduced post-[[Impressionism|Impressionist]] painting to an English audience) and [[pacificism]] in [[politics]]. This group would tremendously aid Woolf as a source of support and criticism as she came into her own as a writer.  
  
−
== Personal life ==
+
At the end of 1940 Woolf suffered another severe bout of depression, from which she felt she was unable to recover. On March 28, 1941, at the age of 59, Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse, near her home in Rodmell. She left two suicide notes; one for her sister Vanessa, the other for her husband, Leonard: "I feel certain that 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 can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness… I can't fight it any longer, I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work" (''The Letters of Virginia Woolf'', vol. VI, p. 481).
  
−
Although she was married to Leonard Woolf from 1912 to her death in 1941, some of Virginia Woolf's strongest emotional ties were with women. Most members of the Bloomsbury Group were involved in extra-marital and bisexual affairs. Leonard Woolf was described by Virginia as a 'sodomite' and she herself became emotionally - and perhaps romantically close - with several women during her thirties and forties. Her female intimates included Madge Vaughn (the daughter of [[J. A. Symonds]], and inspiration for the character of Mrs. Dalloway), and Violet Dickinson, as well as composer and female activist [[Ethel Smyth]]. Most who knew her described her as occasionally solemn, but often jovial, physically beautiful and a captivating conversationalist.
+
==Work==
 +
[[Image:Bell, Virginia Woolf .jpg|thumb|175px|Virginia, painted by her sister Vanessa Bell, National Portrait Gallery.]]
  
−
==== Affair with Vita Sackville-West ====
+
Woolf began writing professionally in 1905, initially for the ''Times Literary Supplement'' with a journalistic piece about Haworth, home of the [[Brontë]] family. Her first novel, ''The Voyage Out,'' was published in 1915 by her half-brother's imprint, Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd.
  
−
In [[1922]], Woolf met and fell in love with [[Vita Sackville-West]]. After a tentative start, they began an affair that lasted through most of the 1920s.[http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biow3/wool2.html]
+
This novel was originally entitled ''Melymbrosia,'' but due to criticism Virginia Woolf received about the political nature of the book, she changed the novel and its title. This older version of ''The Voyage Out'' has been compiled and is now available to the public under the intended title. She went on to publish novels and essays as a public intellectual to both critical and popular success.  
−
In [[1928]], Woolf presented Sackville-West with ''[[Orlando: A Biography|Orlando]]'', a [[fantasy|fantastical]] biography in which the eponymous hero's life spans three centuries and both [[gender]]s. It has been called by Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West's son, "the longest and most charming love letter in literature." [http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biow3/wool2.html] The details of the relationship and what ended it is not completely understood, but was possibly due to the loss of infatuation, to infidelities on the part of Sackville-West, or to the demands of their respective marriages. Their affair was probably between the years 1922 and 1925. The two women, however, remained friends until Woolf's death in 1941.
 
  
−
====Death====
+
Woolf is considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. In her works she experimented with [[stream-of-consciousness]], the underlying psychological as well as emotional motives of characters, and the various possibilities of fractured narrative and chronology. In the words of [[E.M. Forster]], she pushed the English language "a little further against the dark," and her literary achievements and [[creativity]] are influential even today.
  
−
At the end of 1940 Woolf suffered another severe bout of [[depression]], from which she felt she was unable to recover. On [[March 28]], [[1941]], at the age of 59, Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the [[River Ouse, Sussex|River Ouse]], near her home in [[Rodmell]]. She left two [[suicide note]]s; one for her sister Vanessa, the other for her husband, Leonard: "I feel certain that 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 can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness... I can't fight it any longer, I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work" (''The Letters of Virginia Woolf'', vol. VI, p. 481).
+
Woolf's reputation declined sharply after [[World War II]]. Her work was criticized for epitomizing the narrow world of the upper-middle class English intelligentsia, peopled with delicate, but ultimately trivial, self-centered, and overly introspective individuals. Some critics judged it to be lacking in universality and depth, without the power to communicate anything of emotional or ethical relevance to the disillusioned common reader, weary of the 1920s ''aesthetes'' who seemed to belong to an era definitely closed and buried. Her eminence was re-established with the surge of Feminist criticism in the 1970s. After a reversal of fortunes caused by accusations that Woolf was anti-semitic and snobbish, it seems that a critical consensus has been reached regarding her stature as a novelist, and Virginia Woolf is now recognized as being among the greatest of twentieth century writers.
  
−
==Work==
+
As in the fiction of [[Henry James]], it is a mistake to dismiss Woolf because of her subject matter. Although Woolf takes the upper-class London society with which she was most familiar as her subject-matter, the goals of her work, concerned as they are with the nature of mind and soul, are universal.  
−
[[Image:Bell, Virginia Woolf .jpg|thumb|175px|Virginia, painted by her sister Vanessa Bell [[National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom)|National Portrait Gallery]].]]
 
  
−
Woolf began writing professionally in 1905, initially for the ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'' with a journalistic piece about [[Haworth]], home of the [[Brontë]] family. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf, a writer, [[civil servant]] and [[political theorist]]. Her first novel, ''The Voyage Out'', was published in 1915 by her half-brother's imprint, Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd.  
+
Virginia Woolf's peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to obscure her central strength: Woolf is arguably the major lyrical novelist in the English language. Her novels are highly experimental: A narrative, frequently uneventful and commonplace, is refracted—and sometimes almost dissolved—in the characters' receptive consciousnesses. Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and visual impressions.
  
−
This novel was originally entitled ''Melymbrosia'', but due to criticism Virginia Woolf received about the political nature of the book, she changed the novel and its title. This older version of ''The Voyage Out'' has been compiled and is now available to the public under the intended title. She went on to publish novels and essays as a public intellectual to both critical and popular success.  
+
The intensity of Virginia Woolf's poetic vision elevates the ordinary, sometimes banal settings of most of her novels, even as they are often set in an environment of war. For example, ''Mrs. Dalloway'' (1925) centers on Clarissa Dalloway, a middle aged society woman's efforts to organize a party, even as her life is equated with Septimus Warren Smith, a soldier who has returned from the [[First World War]] bearing psychological scars.  
  
−
Much of her work was self-published through the [[Hogarth Press]], which she and Leonard founded in 1917. She has been hailed as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century and one of the foremost ''[[Modernists]]'', though she disdained some artists in this category.
+
''To the Lighthouse'' (1927) is set on two days ten years apart anticipating and reflecting on the Ramsay family's holiday and the family members' interlocking tensions resolved in a visit to a lighthouse. And yet the novel also meditates on the lives of a nation's inhabitants in the midst of war, of the people left orphaned and alone by destruction and violence. ''The Waves'' (1931), arguably the most ambitious and difficult of all Woolf's novels, presents a group of six friends whose reflections (closer to recitatives than to the interior monologues proper) create a series of waves and ripples in the stream of consciousness—the thoughts of each character rebounding off the others—resulting in a book that is more akin to a prose poem than to a novel with a discernible plot.
  
−
Woolf is considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. In her works she experimented with [[stream-of-consciousness]], the underlying psychological as well as emotional motives of characters, and the various possibilities of fractured narrative and chronology. In the words of [[E.M. Forster]], she pushed the English language "a little further against the dark," and her literary achievements and creativity are influential even today.  
+
===''Mrs. Dalloway''===
 +
{{spoilers}}
  
−
Woolf's reputation declined sharply after World War II, but her eminence was re-established with the surge of [[Feminist literary criticism|Feminist criticism]] in the [[1970s]]. After a few more ideologically based altercations, not least caused by claims that Woolf was [[Anti-Semitism|anti-semitic]] and a [[Snob|snob]], it seems that a critical consensus has been reached regarding her stature as a novelist: Virginia Woolf is among the greatest of 20th century writers.
+
''Mrs Dalloway'' is arguably Woolf's greatest novel, and certainly her most enduringly popular. Chronicling the events of a single day in London, the book is seen as Woolf's highest achievement as a Modernist author, utilizing the effects of stream-of-consciousness narrative masterfully to achieve a story of psychological depth that is nevertheless readily readable.
  
−
Her work was criticised for epitomizing the narrow world of the upper-middle class English intelligentsia, peopled with delicate, but ultimately trivial, self-centred, and overly introspective individuals. Some critics judged it to be lacking in universality and depth, without the power to communicate anything of emotional or ethical relevance to the disillusioned common reader, weary of the 1920s ''[[aesthetes]]'' who seemed to belong to an era definitely closed and buried.
+
The novel follows Clarissa Dalloway throughout a single day in post-Great War England. Constructed out of two short stories that Woolf had previously written ("Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and her unfinished "The Prime Minister"); the plot of the story is deceptively simple: The novel follows Clarissa throughout her day as she prepares to host a party later in the evening. Interspersed with Clarissa's story are chapters told from the perspective of Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked war veteran who has seen the horrors of World War I; as the day drags on, Septimus falls deeper and deeper into depression and ultimately commits suicide by leaping from a window. Using the interior perspective of the novel, Woolf moves back and forth in time, and in and out of the various characters' minds to construct a complete image, not of just Clarissa's life, but of the entire social scene of England in the first decades of the twentieth-century.
  
−
Virginia Woolf's peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to obscure her central strength: Woolf is arguably the major lyrical novelist in the English language. Her novels are highly experimental: a narrative, frequently uneventful and commonplace, is refracted—and sometimes almost dissolved—in the characters' receptive consciousnesses. Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and visual impressions.
+
Because of structural and stylistic similarities, ''Mrs Dalloway'' is commonly thought to be a response to [[James Joyce]]'s ''Ulysses,'' a text that is commonly hailed as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Woolf herself derided Joyce's masterpiece, even though Hogarth Press, run by her and her husband, initially published the novel in England.
  
−
The intensity of Virginia Woolf's poetic vision elevates the ordinary, sometimes banal settings of most of her novels (with the exception of ''[[Orlando: A Biography|Orlando]]'' and ''Between the Acts''), even as they are often set in an environment of war. For example, ''[[Mrs. Dalloway]]'' (1925) centers on Clarissa Dalloway, a middle aged society woman's efforts to organize a party, even as her life is equated with Septimus Warren Smith, a soldier who has returned from the First World War bearing psychological scars.
+
====Themes and analysis====
  
−
''[[To the Lighthouse]]'' (1927) is set on two days ten years apart anticipating and reflecting on the Ramsay family's holiday and the family members' interlocking tensions resolved in a visit to a lighthouse; also, one of the themes is the struggle in the creative process that beset painter Lily Briscoe to encapsulate the family drama. And yet the novel also meditates on the lives of a nation's inhabitants in the midst of war, of the people left behind. ''[[The Waves]]'' (1931) presents a group of six friends whose reflections (closer to recitatives than to the interior monologues proper) create a wave-like atmosphere that is more akin to a prose poem than to a plot-centered novel.
+
The novel itself is preoccupied with a number of issues, most notably madness and the role of women in society, seen through the minds of Clarissa and the novel's other protagonist, Septimus Warren Smith. As a commentary on Edwardian society, Clarissa's character highlights the role of women as the proverbial "Angel in the House" and embodies both sexual and economic repression. Septimus, as the shell-shocked war hero, operates as a pointed criticism of the treatment of insanity and depression. Woolf lashes out at the medical establishment through Septimus's decline and ultimate suicide. Similarities between Septimus's condition and Woolf's own struggles with [[manic depression]] (they both hallucinate that birds sing in Greek, and Woolf once attempted to throw herself out a window as Septimus finally does) lead many to read a strongly auto-biographical aspect into the character of Septimus.  
  
−
Her last work, ''Between the Acts'' (1941) sums up and magnifies Woolf's chief preoccupations: the transformation of life through the art, sexual ambivalence, and meditation on the themes of flux of time and life, presented simultaneously as corrosion and rejuvenation - all set in a highly imaginative and symbolic narrative encompassing almost all of English history.
+
Adopting the plot device used by James Joyce in ''Ulysses,'' the narrative present of Mrs. Dalloway is patterned as the sequence of a single day in June. The novel opens conventionally enough with the sentence, "Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." This single event, however, launches us into Clarissa's mind, and what follows is a plunge into Clarissa Dalloway's past, as the flowers trigger her memories of the open air at Bourton where she spent her adolescence long before she became Mrs Dalloway. Her recollection of that time leads her to think of Peter Walsh, a man with whom she was enamored, as he was at that time.  
  
−
==Modern scholarship and interpretations==
+
A paragraph later, Clarissa is back in the present, waiting for Durtnall's van to pass so that she can cross the road to buy the flowers. It is already apparent from these opening paragraphs with the fluidity of movement between past and present, which softens and blurs the lines of their traditional opposition, that Woolf's technique treats the past as intimately involved with the present. The past is not just treated as a background for the present, it becomes a part of it by virtue of Clarissa's association of the freshness of the June morning with Bourton and Peter. Woolf's novel is, like so many modernist novels, concerned extensively with reconciling the optimism of the present with the horrifying past of the Great War.
−
Recently, studies of Virginia Woolf have focused on [[feminist]] and [[lesbian]] themes in her work, such as in the 1997 collection of critical essays, ''Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings'', edited by Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer. Louise A. DeSalvo offers treatment of the incestuous sexual abuse Woolf suffered as a young woman in her book ''Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on her Life and World''.  
 
  
−
Woolf's fiction is also studied for its insight into [[shell shock]], [[war]], [[social class|class]] and modern British society. Her best-known nonfiction works, ''[[A Room of One's Own]]'' (1929) and ''[[Three Guineas]]'' (1938), discuss the largely failed role of women in the literary canon and the future of women in education and society. 
+
As the day proceeds, we are treated to a number of Clarissa's memories, as most of her time spent making prepartions for her party reminds her of her earlier life, before she was old and before she was married, when life was still open and new and free. She remembers, in particular, how close she came to choosing another man over Mr. Dalloway, musing with a mixture of remorse and wonder about how different her life might have been had she chosen differently. Presenting an alternative meditation on these same themes of memory and regret, we are presented with Septimus' story, as he dissolves away into madness, locked up in his room under doctor's orders, and unable to think of anything at all but what terrible damage the past had wreaked on his fragile mind. By the end of the novel Mrs. Dalloway is able to accept her life as it has become despite regrets. Septimus is consumed by his memories, unable to break free of them. Ultimately, he is destroyed by them. When Peter Walsh appears at Clarissa's party, the novel famously ends on a note of hope and wonder at the beauty of things even though they have changed:
  
−
In 2002, ''[[The Hours (film)|The Hours]]'', a film loosely based on Woolf's life and her novel ''[[Mrs. Dalloway]]'', was nominated for the [[Academy Award for Best Picture]]. It did not win, but [[Nicole Kidman]] was awarded the [[Academy Award for Best Actress]] for her portrayal of Woolf in the movie. The film was adapted from [[Michael Cunningham]]'s 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. ''[[The Hours (film)|The Hours]]'' was Woolf's working title for ''[[Mrs. Dalloway]]''. Many Virginia Woolf scholars are highly critical of the portrayal of Woolf and her works in the film.
+
:“I will come,” said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?
  
−
Irene Coates' book ''Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf: A Case for the Sanity of Virginia Woolf'' takes the position that Leonard Woolf's treatment of his wife encouraged her ill health and ultimately was responsible for her death.  The position, which is not accepted by Leonard's family, is extensively researched and fills in some of the gaps in the traditional account of Virginia Woolf's life.
+
:It is Clarissa, he said.
  
−
[[Hermione Lee]]'s ''Virginia Woolf'' provides an authoritative examination of Woolf's life, updating the earlier biography by Woolf's own nephew, [[Quentin Bell]].
+
:For there she was.
−
 
+
{{endspoiler}}
−
Julia Briggs's ''Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life'', published in 2005, is the most recent examination of Woolf's life. It focuses on Woolf's writing, including her novels and her commentary on the creative process, to illuminate her life.
 
−
 
 
−
==See also==
 
−
* [[Bloomsbury Group]]
 
−
* [[Vita Sackville-West]]
 
−
* [[Ethel Smyth]]
 
−
* ''[[Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?]]''
 
  
 
==Bibliography==
 
==Bibliography==
 
===Fiction===
 
===Fiction===
−
*''[[The Voyage Out]]'' (1915)
+
*''The Voyage Out'' (1915)
−
*''[[Night and Day]]'' (1919)
+
*''Night and Day'' (1919)
−
*''[[Jacob's Room]]'' (1922)
+
*''Jacob's Room'' (1922)
−
*''[[Mrs. Dalloway]]'' (1925)
+
*''Mrs. Dalloway'' (1925)
−
*''[[To the Lighthouse]]'' (1927)
+
*''To the Lighthouse'' (1927)
−
*''[[The Waves]]'' (1931)
+
*''The Wave'' (1931)
−
*''[[The Years]]'' (1937)
+
*''The Years'' (1937)
−
*''[[Between the Acts]]'' (1941)
+
*''Between the Acts'' (1941)
  
 
===Short fiction===
 
===Short fiction===
 
*''Monday or Tuesday'' (1919) A collection of eight short stories including:   
 
*''Monday or Tuesday'' (1919) A collection of eight short stories including:   
−
**'A Haunted House'
+
**"A Haunted House"
−
**'A Society'
+
**"A Society"
−
**'Monday or Tuesday'
+
**"Monday or Tuesday"
−
**'An Unwritten Novel'
+
**"An Unwritten Novel"
−
**'The String Quartet'
+
**"The String Quartet"
−
**'Blue & Green'
+
**"Blue & Green"
−
**'Kew Gardens'
+
**"Kew Gardens"
−
**'The Mark on the Wall'
+
**"The Mark on the Wall"
−
*'[[The New Dress]]' (1924)
+
*"The New Dress" (1924)
  
 
===Biographies===
 
===Biographies===
−
Apart from several ''essays'' containing biographical descriptions, Virginia Woolf published three books which she gave the subtitle "A Biography":
+
Apart from several essays containing biographical descriptions, Virginia Woolf published three books which she gave the subtitle "A Biography":
−
*''[[Orlando: A Biography]]'' (1928, usually characterised ''Novel'', in fact fiction/non-fiction cross-over biography of [[Vita Sackville-West]])
+
*''Orlando: A Biography'' (1928, usually characterized as a novel, although it is in fact a fiction/non-fiction cross-over biography of [[Vita Sackville-West]])
−
*''[[Flush: A Biography]]'' (1933, more explicitly cross-genre: ''fiction'' as "stream of consciousness" tale by Flush, a dog; ''non-fiction'' in the sense of telling the story of the owner of the dog, [[Elizabeth Barret Browning]])
+
*''Flush: A Biography'' (1933, more explicitly cross-genre: fiction as "stream of consciousness" tale by Flush, a dog; ''non-fiction'' in the sense of telling the story of the owner of the dog, [[Elizabeth Barret Browning]])
−
*''[[Roger Fry: A Biography]]'' (1940, usually characterised ''non-fiction'', however: "[Woolf's] novelistic skills worked against her talent as a biographer, for her impressionistic observations jostled uncomfortably with the simultaneous need to marshall a multitude of facts."<ref>Frances Spalding (ed.), ''Viginia Woolf: Paper Darts: the Illustrated Letters'', Collins & Brown, 1991, (ISBN 185585046X) (hb) & (ISBN 1855851032) (pb), pp. 139-140</ref>)
+
*''Roger Fry: A Biography'' (1940, usually characterized "non-fiction," however: "Woolf's novelistic skills worked against her talent as a biographer, for her impressionistic observations jostled uncomfortably with the simultaneous need to marshal a multitude of facts.")
 +
*''Viginia Woolf: Paper Darts: the Illustrated Letters'', Frances Spalding (ed.), Collins & Brown, (1991). ISBN 1855851032
  
 
===Non-fiction===
 
===Non-fiction===
 
*''The Common Reader'' (1925)
 
*''The Common Reader'' (1925)
−
*''[[On Being Ill]]'' (1930)
+
*''On Being Ill'' (1930)
−
*''[[A Room of One's Own]]'' (1929)
+
*''A Room of One's Own'' (1929)
 
*''The Second Common Reader'' (1933)
 
*''The Second Common Reader'' (1933)
−
*''[[Three Guineas]]'' (1938)
+
*''Three Guineas'' (1938)
 
*''The Death of the Moth and Other Essays'' (1942)
 
*''The Death of the Moth and Other Essays'' (1942)
 
*''The Moment and Other Essays'' (1948)
 
*''The Moment and Other Essays'' (1948)
Line 142: Line 124:
 
*''Leave the Letters Till We're Dead: Letters of Virginia Woolf vol 6 1936 - 1941''
 
*''Leave the Letters Till We're Dead: Letters of Virginia Woolf vol 6 1936 - 1941''
  
−
==Notes==
+
==External links==
−
<!—See [[Wikipedia:Footnotes]] for an explanation of how to generate footnotes using the <ref(erences/)> tags—>
+
All links retrieved May 3, 2023.
−
<references/>
+
 
 +
* [http://www.online-literature.com/virginia_woolf/ Read her literature at online-literature.com].
 +
* [http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk/ Virginia Woolf Society].
 +
* [http://www.utoronto.ca/IVWS/ International Virginia Woolf Society].
 +
* {{gutenberg author| id=Virginia+Woolf | name=Virginia Woolf}}.
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
[[Category:Writers and poets]]
  
−
==External links==
 
−
{{wikiquote}}
 
−
{{wikisource author}}
 
−
* [http://www.online-literature.com/virginia_woolf/ Read her literature at online-literature.com]
 
−
* [http://filer.case.edu/qxh4/ Read about the Literary Controversy between Virginia Woolf and Arnold Bennett]
 
−
* [http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/ Online editions of her works] from [http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/ eBooks@Adelaide]
 
−
* [http://acad.depauw.edu/%7Eafernald/passing_glances.html Passing Glances.  A list of incidental mentions of Woolf and her work in various media.]
 
−
* [http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk/ Virginia Woolf Society]
 
−
* [http://www.utoronto.ca/IVWS/ International Virginia Woolf Society]
 
−
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/woolfv1.shtml Listen to Virginia Woolf's BBC Broadcast (29 April 1937)  'Words Fail Me' .]
 
−
* {{gutenberg author| id=Virginia+Woolf | name=Virginia Woolf}}
 
−
* [http://www.portalmundos.com/mundoliteratura/escritoras/virginiawoolf.htm Biography of Virginia Woolf] Spanish
 
  
−
[[Category: Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
 
 
{{credit|57989637}}
 
{{credit|57989637}}

Latest revision as of 20:35, 3 May 2023


Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (née Stephen) (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was a British author who is considered to be one of the foremost figures of both Modernism and feminism in the twentieth century. Woolf is considered one of the most psychological of all the Modernists; many of her later novels take place entirely within her characters' heads, focusing exclusively on the literary technique known as stream-of-consciousness, which presents not an objective narration, but attempts to replicate the thoughts which shape the character's mind. Although she publicly despised James Joyce, her place in literary modernism resembles his more than any other contemporary writer. Like Joyce, Woolf was endlessly experimental in her literary technique, while each work she created had a style all its own, from the traditional narrative of Orlando to the high abstraction of The Waves.

Woolf is one of the most enduringly popular of all the Modernists. While she liked to experiment with technique, she never abandoned a passionate commitment to storytelling. While some of the most intricately crafted stories in the literature, Woolf's works remain eminently accessible, unlike some of the other Modernists whom she disliked. Her biography betrays the best and worst in human relations. Even in taking her own life she wrote lovingly and affectionately to her husband and sister, expressing concern for them more than for her own life. How tragic is the loss of a sensitive woman and towering talent, arising at least in part from abuse and the shameful sexual deviancy of her half brothers.

Life

Born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Princep Duckworth, Woolf was educated by her parents in their literate and well-connected household at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington. Virginia's parents had married each other after being widowed and the household contained the children of three marriages: Julia's children with her first husband Herbert Duckworth: George; Stella; and Gerald; Leslie's daughter, Laura, from his previous wife; and Leslie and Julia's children: Vanessa Bell; Thoby; Virginia; and Adrian.

Sir Leslie Stephen's eminence as an editor, critic, and biographer, and his connection to William Makepeace Thackeray (his previous wife was Thackeray's eldest daughter) meant that Woolf was raised in an environment filled with the influences of Victorian literary society.

Henry James, George Eliot, George Henry Lewes, Julia Margaret Cameron (an aunt of Julia Duckworth), and James Russell Lowell, who was made Virginia's godfather, were among the frequent visitors to the house. Julia Duckworth Stephen was equally well connected. Descended from an attendant of Marie Antoinette, she came from a family of renowned beauties who left their mark on Victorian society as models for Pre-Raphaelite artists and early photographers. Supplementing these influences was the immense library at her home, from which Virginia (unlike her brothers who were formally educated) was taught the classics and English literature.

According to her memoirs her most vivid childhood memories were not of London, but of St. Ives in Cornwall, where the family spent every summer until 1895. The family stayed in their home, called the Talland House, which looked out over the Porthminster Bay. Memories of the family holidays and impressions of the landscape, especially the Godrevy Lighthouse, informed the fiction she wrote in later years, most notably the early novel, To the Lighthouse.

The sudden death of her mother from influenza in 1895, when Virginia was 13, and that of her half sister Stella two years later, led to the first of Virginia's several nervous breakdowns. The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she was briefly institutionalized.

Her breakdowns and subsequent recurring depressive periods, modern scholars have asserted, were also induced by the child abuse she and Vanessa were subject to by their half-brothers, George and Gerald, which Woolf recalls in her autobiographical essays A Sketch of the Past and 22 Hyde Park Gate.

Following the death of her father in 1904 and her second serious nervous breakdown, Virginia, Vanessa, and Adrian sold 22 Hyde Park Gate, and bought a house at 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury. There they came to know Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Duncan Grant, and Leonard Woolf, the man she would later marry, who together formed the nucleus of the intellectual circle known as the Bloomsbury group. The group was rather informal and loosely-knit, but was committed to a number of diverse causes, among them modernism in the arts (the group famously introduced post-Impressionist painting to an English audience) and pacificism in politics. This group would tremendously aid Woolf as a source of support and criticism as she came into her own as a writer.

At the end of 1940 Woolf suffered another severe bout of depression, from which she felt she was unable to recover. On March 28, 1941, at the age of 59, Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse, near her home in Rodmell. She left two suicide notes; one for her sister Vanessa, the other for her husband, Leonard: "I feel certain that 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 can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness… I can't fight it any longer, I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work" (The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. VI, p. 481).

Work

Virginia, painted by her sister Vanessa Bell, National Portrait Gallery.

Woolf began writing professionally in 1905, initially for the Times Literary Supplement with a journalistic piece about Haworth, home of the Brontë family. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915 by her half-brother's imprint, Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd.

This novel was originally entitled Melymbrosia, but due to criticism Virginia Woolf received about the political nature of the book, she changed the novel and its title. This older version of The Voyage Out has been compiled and is now available to the public under the intended title. She went on to publish novels and essays as a public intellectual to both critical and popular success.

Woolf is considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. In her works she experimented with stream-of-consciousness, the underlying psychological as well as emotional motives of characters, and the various possibilities of fractured narrative and chronology. In the words of E.M. Forster, she pushed the English language "a little further against the dark," and her literary achievements and creativity are influential even today.

Woolf's reputation declined sharply after World War II. Her work was criticized for epitomizing the narrow world of the upper-middle class English intelligentsia, peopled with delicate, but ultimately trivial, self-centered, and overly introspective individuals. Some critics judged it to be lacking in universality and depth, without the power to communicate anything of emotional or ethical relevance to the disillusioned common reader, weary of the 1920s aesthetes who seemed to belong to an era definitely closed and buried. Her eminence was re-established with the surge of Feminist criticism in the 1970s. After a reversal of fortunes caused by accusations that Woolf was anti-semitic and snobbish, it seems that a critical consensus has been reached regarding her stature as a novelist, and Virginia Woolf is now recognized as being among the greatest of twentieth century writers.

As in the fiction of Henry James, it is a mistake to dismiss Woolf because of her subject matter. Although Woolf takes the upper-class London society with which she was most familiar as her subject-matter, the goals of her work, concerned as they are with the nature of mind and soul, are universal.

Virginia Woolf's peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to obscure her central strength: Woolf is arguably the major lyrical novelist in the English language. Her novels are highly experimental: A narrative, frequently uneventful and commonplace, is refracted—and sometimes almost dissolved—in the characters' receptive consciousnesses. Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and visual impressions.

The intensity of Virginia Woolf's poetic vision elevates the ordinary, sometimes banal settings of most of her novels, even as they are often set in an environment of war. For example, Mrs. Dalloway (1925) centers on Clarissa Dalloway, a middle aged society woman's efforts to organize a party, even as her life is equated with Septimus Warren Smith, a soldier who has returned from the First World War bearing psychological scars.

To the Lighthouse (1927) is set on two days ten years apart anticipating and reflecting on the Ramsay family's holiday and the family members' interlocking tensions resolved in a visit to a lighthouse. And yet the novel also meditates on the lives of a nation's inhabitants in the midst of war, of the people left orphaned and alone by destruction and violence. The Waves (1931), arguably the most ambitious and difficult of all Woolf's novels, presents a group of six friends whose reflections (closer to recitatives than to the interior monologues proper) create a series of waves and ripples in the stream of consciousness—the thoughts of each character rebounding off the others—resulting in a book that is more akin to a prose poem than to a novel with a discernible plot.

Mrs. Dalloway

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Mrs Dalloway is arguably Woolf's greatest novel, and certainly her most enduringly popular. Chronicling the events of a single day in London, the book is seen as Woolf's highest achievement as a Modernist author, utilizing the effects of stream-of-consciousness narrative masterfully to achieve a story of psychological depth that is nevertheless readily readable.

The novel follows Clarissa Dalloway throughout a single day in post-Great War England. Constructed out of two short stories that Woolf had previously written ("Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and her unfinished "The Prime Minister"); the plot of the story is deceptively simple: The novel follows Clarissa throughout her day as she prepares to host a party later in the evening. Interspersed with Clarissa's story are chapters told from the perspective of Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked war veteran who has seen the horrors of World War I; as the day drags on, Septimus falls deeper and deeper into depression and ultimately commits suicide by leaping from a window. Using the interior perspective of the novel, Woolf moves back and forth in time, and in and out of the various characters' minds to construct a complete image, not of just Clarissa's life, but of the entire social scene of England in the first decades of the twentieth-century.

Because of structural and stylistic similarities, Mrs Dalloway is commonly thought to be a response to James Joyce's Ulysses, a text that is commonly hailed as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Woolf herself derided Joyce's masterpiece, even though Hogarth Press, run by her and her husband, initially published the novel in England.

Themes and analysis

The novel itself is preoccupied with a number of issues, most notably madness and the role of women in society, seen through the minds of Clarissa and the novel's other protagonist, Septimus Warren Smith. As a commentary on Edwardian society, Clarissa's character highlights the role of women as the proverbial "Angel in the House" and embodies both sexual and economic repression. Septimus, as the shell-shocked war hero, operates as a pointed criticism of the treatment of insanity and depression. Woolf lashes out at the medical establishment through Septimus's decline and ultimate suicide. Similarities between Septimus's condition and Woolf's own struggles with manic depression (they both hallucinate that birds sing in Greek, and Woolf once attempted to throw herself out a window as Septimus finally does) lead many to read a strongly auto-biographical aspect into the character of Septimus.

Adopting the plot device used by James Joyce in Ulysses, the narrative present of Mrs. Dalloway is patterned as the sequence of a single day in June. The novel opens conventionally enough with the sentence, "Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." This single event, however, launches us into Clarissa's mind, and what follows is a plunge into Clarissa Dalloway's past, as the flowers trigger her memories of the open air at Bourton where she spent her adolescence long before she became Mrs Dalloway. Her recollection of that time leads her to think of Peter Walsh, a man with whom she was enamored, as he was at that time.

A paragraph later, Clarissa is back in the present, waiting for Durtnall's van to pass so that she can cross the road to buy the flowers. It is already apparent from these opening paragraphs with the fluidity of movement between past and present, which softens and blurs the lines of their traditional opposition, that Woolf's technique treats the past as intimately involved with the present. The past is not just treated as a background for the present, it becomes a part of it by virtue of Clarissa's association of the freshness of the June morning with Bourton and Peter. Woolf's novel is, like so many modernist novels, concerned extensively with reconciling the optimism of the present with the horrifying past of the Great War.

As the day proceeds, we are treated to a number of Clarissa's memories, as most of her time spent making prepartions for her party reminds her of her earlier life, before she was old and before she was married, when life was still open and new and free. She remembers, in particular, how close she came to choosing another man over Mr. Dalloway, musing with a mixture of remorse and wonder about how different her life might have been had she chosen differently. Presenting an alternative meditation on these same themes of memory and regret, we are presented with Septimus' story, as he dissolves away into madness, locked up in his room under doctor's orders, and unable to think of anything at all but what terrible damage the past had wreaked on his fragile mind. By the end of the novel Mrs. Dalloway is able to accept her life as it has become despite regrets. Septimus is consumed by his memories, unable to break free of them. Ultimately, he is destroyed by them. When Peter Walsh appears at Clarissa's party, the novel famously ends on a note of hope and wonder at the beauty of things even though they have changed:

“I will come,” said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.
Spoilers end here.

Bibliography

Fiction

  • The Voyage Out (1915)
  • Night and Day (1919)
  • Jacob's Room (1922)
  • Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
  • To the Lighthouse (1927)
  • The Wave (1931)
  • The Years (1937)
  • Between the Acts (1941)

Short fiction

  • Monday or Tuesday (1919) A collection of eight short stories including:
    • "A Haunted House"
    • "A Society"
    • "Monday or Tuesday"
    • "An Unwritten Novel"
    • "The String Quartet"
    • "Blue & Green"
    • "Kew Gardens"
    • "The Mark on the Wall"
  • "The New Dress" (1924)

Biographies

Apart from several essays containing biographical descriptions, Virginia Woolf published three books which she gave the subtitle "A Biography":

  • Orlando: A Biography (1928, usually characterized as a novel, although it is in fact a fiction/non-fiction cross-over biography of Vita Sackville-West)
  • Flush: A Biography (1933, more explicitly cross-genre: fiction as "stream of consciousness" tale by Flush, a dog; non-fiction in the sense of telling the story of the owner of the dog, Elizabeth Barret Browning)
  • Roger Fry: A Biography (1940, usually characterized "non-fiction," however: "Woolf's novelistic skills worked against her talent as a biographer, for her impressionistic observations jostled uncomfortably with the simultaneous need to marshal a multitude of facts.")
  • Viginia Woolf: Paper Darts: the Illustrated Letters, Frances Spalding (ed.), Collins & Brown, (1991). ISBN 1855851032

Non-fiction

  • The Common Reader (1925)
  • On Being Ill (1930)
  • A Room of One's Own (1929)
  • The Second Common Reader (1933)
  • Three Guineas (1938)
  • The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)
  • The Moment and Other Essays (1948)
  • Modern Fiction (1919)

Autobiography

  • A Moment's Liberty: the shorter diary (1990)
  • A Passionate Apprentice: the early journals (1990)
  • Moments of Being (1976)
  • Congenial Sprits: the selected letters (1993)
  • The Diary of Virginia Woolf (five volumes)
  • The Flight of the Mind: Letters of Virginia Woolf vol 1 1888 - 1912
  • The Question of Things Happening: Letters of Virginia Woolf vol 2 1913 - 1922
  • A Change of Perspective: Letters of Virginia Woolf vol 3 1923 - 1928
  • A Reflection of the Other Person: Letters of Virginia Woolf vol 4 1929 - 1931
  • The Sickle Side of the Moon: Letters of Virginia Woolf vol 5 1932 - 1935
  • Leave the Letters Till We're Dead: Letters of Virginia Woolf vol 6 1936 - 1941

External links

All links retrieved May 3, 2023.


Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.

Retrieved from https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Virginia_Woolf&oldid=1111424

Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details.
Copyright Logo
Powered by MediaWiki