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Kategori: Novell

Virginia Woolf- a controversial feminist and author



Virginia Woolf was born on 25 January 1882 in London as a third child to Leslie and Julia Stephen. Her father was a political journalist and later on also chief editor for “the Dictionary of National Biography”. Virginia grew up in a upper middle-class environment which was intellectually stimulating. The authors George Meredith, Alfred Tennyson and George Eliot were some of those who were friends with her father. Virginia’s gift for telling stories was evident at an early age. She wrote this letter to her mother when she was about 6-7 years old and despite the misspellings and the grammatical errors you can get a feeling that she was a born story-teller :

“My dear mother
We went out for a walk with Stella this morning up the pond and there were a lot of big boats. We cleaned the little room out this morning and we cleaned up the silver things cos they were awfully dirty. It was awfully jolly at the stuffed beasts. Edwin came with us to them. Mrs Prinsep says that she will only go in a slow train cos she says all the fast trains have accidents and she told us about an old man of 70 who got his legs caute in the wheels of the train and the train began to go on and the old gentleman was draged along till the train caute fire and he called out for somebody to cut off his legs but nobody came he was burnt up.
'Good bye Your loving Virginia”



The Woolfs lived in respectable Kensington on Hyde Park Gate. They had seven housekeepers who took care of the domestic duties under their mother Julia´s supervision. Both Virginia’s parents had been married before and Virginia had besides her full brothers Thoby and Adrian and her full sister Vanessa also two half brothers and a half sister on her mother’s side called George, Gerald and Stella, and a half sister, Laura, on her father’s side. Laura was mentally unstable and Leslie didn’t pay her much attention. She was admitted to mental hospital where she spent the rest of her life until she died at the age of seventy-five. The family was large after all, Virginia had many cousins. One of them, Madge Vaughan, served as a model to Sally in “Mrs Dalloway”. The cousins and the siblings became her first friends and she adored her elder brother Thoby who unfortunately died young , only 26 years old after he had gone down with typhus during a journey in Greece. His death was a terrible shock to them. Virginia was disconsolate and she kept his death a secret from Vanessa for almost a month, so that she wouldn’t commit suicide. Virginia made up a story about Thoby’s recovering when he in reality already was deceased. Virginia honoured Thoby’s memory in her novel “Jacob’s Room” in which the principal character Jacob is a portrait of Thoby.



The Woolfs went through a lot. The mother Julia died when Virginia was only thirteen and her sister Stella just before her marriage. In addition Virginia was the victim of sexual abuse by her stepbrothers George and Gerald. So therefore it wasn’t so strange that Virginia suffered from mental disorder and severe depressions. Her first collapse broke out after her mother’s death. Like her mother Julia, Virginia was always beautiful but never pretty. She was refused education by her father and as an adult she could sometimes complain with the words: “Bear in mind how I’ve been raised: No school, no opportunity to sniff at everything that happens in school such as ball game, practical jokes, bickering and jealousy.” But she had free admission to her father’s huge library, where she could spend hours totally absorbed by “Homeros”. Later she said that university graduates were dull people. During a visit at Oxford when she was 25 years old, she described the atmosphere there like the most chilly and least human she knew. After her father’s death in 1904 Virginia and her siblings moved to a house in Bloomsbury. The new place served as a central part for Virginia, her siblings plus some fellow authors. They arranged Thursday evenings and a Friday club and the time was devoted to literary conversations about art and literature. Among those who regularly participated were Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Saxon Sydney- Tumer, Walter Lamb and Desmond Mac Carthy and later on also Duncan Grant, Roger Fry and Leonard Woolf.



Two men fell headlong in love with Virginia. One was Walter Headlam, professor of classical languages at Cambridge University. She was so fond of him that she sent her manuscripts to him so he could pass judgement . But he was old enough to be her father and he died unexpectedly in 1908. The other was Hilton Young who was assistant editor at “The Economist” and a frequent visitor on Thursday evenings, but she soon became tired of him. At last she married Leonard Woolf. He didn’t own Lytton Strachey’s sharp wit neither Roger Fry’s glow nor Clive Bell’s kindness but he had an unusually fruitful and independent intellect. He was rather shy and uncertain. His hands always shook. Virginia wrote in her diary: “ To imagine that this lanky man with his badly-fitting suit was a romantic lover fires the imagination, but he certainly was”. Her 3-year-older sister, Vanessa, got married in 1907 with the art-critic Clive Bell. Virginia who wasn’t specially fond of children and Clive who was just as little interested as Virginia of home life found one another. Their friendship developed into a flirtation. Virginia regretted her perfidy and she was extra affectionate towards her sister the rest of her life but Vanessa didn’t always respond to her love with the same carefulness.



Virginia and Leonard moved to Hogarth’s House in Richmond, because Leonard considered it to be the best for Virginia to come away from the hectic social life in London. Together Virginia and Leonard started Hogarth’s Press and they published not only Virginia’s books but also prominent authors for example the Nobel Prize winner T.S Eliot.Virginia broke down several times and she attempted to commit suicide. Leonard hired nurses to look after her. Unbelievably enough she wrote her first novel during a severe psychosis . The novel is called “The Voyage Out”. Four years later 1927, Virginia became together with James Joyce one of Britain’s most celebrated writers of Modernism. Clive Bell introduced her to another successful authoress, Vita Sackville-West who Virginia had a lesbian affair with.Virginia wrote her most personal and exposed letters to Vita.
In her book “Orlando”, 1928, Vita served as a model to the leading character Orlando. There are also photographs of Vita in the novel disguised as Orlando who was an androgynous figure. Orlando changed his sex from a male to a female during the plot. The story extends over a period of 500 years. Virginia was ahead of her time and much discussed by her controversial opinions. In “A Room of One’s Own” she describes the difficulties female authors had at the time in comparison with men. A famous quotation out of the novel says: “A woman needs both money and a room of her own to be able to write”.



The 30’s was a dark and cheerless time for Mr. And Mrs. Woolf. The 2nd World War broke out and Great Britain became invaded. Leonard and Virginia could no longer set out on the journeys which had been so relaxing to Virginia. Since their apartment in London was bombed, Virginia and Leonard were forced to move to a house they called Monk’s House, also situated in the county of Sussex. They also brought Hogarth’s Press with them. Sometimes Virginia had to throw herself into the bushes when she saw the German fighter aircraft fly at so low altitude over Monk’s House that she could see the swastikas. She became more and more depressed. She began to hear voices and finally the illness was out of control. She wrote a farewell letter to Leonard in which she explained how much she loved him. Then she filled her pockets full with stones and drowned herself into the River Ouse near Monks house on 28th March 1941. Why does Virginia Woolf still fascinate us? Well, perhaps because she was a pioneer in both feminism and literature and her lifestyle was modern and controversial.

Skriven av: Linda-Miranda Garbén

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