Featured
Writer:
Virginia
Woolf
… born Adeline Virginia Stephen at
22 Hyde Park Gate in London. Her parents
were Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Duckworth Stephen (nee Jackson). Her father was a notable historian, author,
critic and mountaineer. Her mother, a
renowned beauty, served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters.
Early
Influences:
...her home was filled with the renowned, the likes of, to
mention a few: Henry James, George Henry
Lewes, James Russell Lowe. Virginia’s
most vivid childhood memories were of St. Ives in Cornwall, where the family
spent their summers.
The summer home, Talland House, is still standing today. Memories of these family holidays and
impressions of the landscape, especially the Godrevy Lighthouse, informed the
fiction she wrote in later years, especially To the Lighthouse.
Grief/Emotional
Turmoil:
The sudden death of her mother in 1895, when she was 13, and
that of her half-sister, Stella, two years later, led to the first of
Virginia’s several breakdowns. The death
of her father in 1904 provoked her another collapse and she was briefly
institutionalized.
Throughout her life, she was plagued by mood swings and
associated disorders. Though this
instability often affected her social life, her literary productivity continued
throughout her life.
Sexual Abuse:
Modern scholars, including her nephew and biographer, Quentin
Bell have suggested her breakdowns and subsequent recurring depressive periods
were also influenced by the sexual abuse to which she and her sister, Vanessa,
were subjected by their half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth which Woolf
recalls in her autobiographical essays, A Sketch of the Past and 22
Hyde Park Gate.
Literary
Works:
Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was
published in 1915 b Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd. She went on to publish novels and essays as a
public intellectual to both critical and popular success. She is seen as a major twentieth century
novelist and one of the foremost modernists.
Writing
Style:
Woolf is considered a major innovator in the English
language. In her works she experimented
with stream-of-consciousness and the underlying psychological as well as
emotional motives of characters.
Her peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to obscure
her central strength as a lyrical novelist.
Her novels are highly experimental.
Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity fuse to create a world
overabundant and auditory and visual impressions.
Death:
After completing the manuscript of her last novel, Between the
Acts, Woolf fell into a depression. On
March 28, 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, and
walked into the river near her home and drowned herself. She is buried under an elm in the garden of
Monk’s House, her home in Rodmell, Sussex.
Last
Words: (note to her husband)
Dearest, 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 I can't 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 'til
this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling
your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't
even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the
happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and
incredibly good. I want to say that—everybody knows it. If anybody could have
saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty
of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think
two people could have been happier than we have been.
All readers’
comments welcomed.
