Virginia Woolf: Difference between revisions

Virginia showed an early affinity for writing. By the age of five she was writing letters. A fascination with books helped form a bond between her and her father.{{sfn|Gordon|2004}} From the age of 10, with her sister Vanessa, she began an illustrated family newspaper, the ''Hyde Park Gate News'', chronicling life and events within the Stephen family,{{sfn|Harris|2011|p=18}} and modelled on the popular magazine ''[[Tit-Bits]]''.{{sfn|Lowe|2005|p=vii}} Virginia would run the ''Hyde Park Gate News'' until 1895, a few weeks before her mother's death.{{sfn|Lowe|2005|p=ix}} In 1897 Virginia began her first diary,{{sfn|Woolf|1990|loc=1 January 1898|p=134}} which she kept for the next twelve years.{{sfn|Woolf|1990}}

 

 

In the spring of 1882, Leslie rented a large white house in [[St Ives, Cornwall]].{{sfn|Eagle|Carnell|1981|p=232}}{{sfn|Gordon|2004}} The family would spend three months each summer there for the first 13 years of Virginia's life.{{sfn|Harris|2011|pp=19-20}} Although the house had limited amenities, its main attraction was the view overlooking Porthminster Bay towards the [[Godrevy Lighthouse]].{{sfn|Gordon|2004}} The happy summers spent at Talland House would later influence Woolf's novels ''[[Jacob's Room]]'', ''[[To the Lighthouse]]'' and ''[[The Waves]]''.{{sfn|Wright|2011|p=22}}

=== Bloomsbury (1904–1912) ===

 

[[File:46 Gordon Square London.jpg|thumb|upright|46 Gordon Square| alt=Photograph of 46 Gordon Square, Virginia's home from 1904 to 1907]]

 

Two days after Thoby's death, Vanessa accepted a previous proposal of marriage from Clive Bell.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|pp=210,226}} As a couple, their interest in [[avant-garde]] art would have an important influence on Woolf's further development as an author.{{sfn|Briggs|2006a|pp=69–70}}

 

[[File:Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw (5025918683).jpg|thumb|upright|29 Fitzroy Square|alt=Photo of 29 Fitzroy Square, Virginia's home from 1907 to 1910]]

After Vanessa's marriage, Virginia and Adrian moved into 29 [[Fitzroy Square]], still very close to Gordon Square.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|p=233}}{{sfn|Bell|1972|p=196}} The house had previously been occupied by [[George Bernard Shaw]], and the area had been populated by artists since the previous century. Duncan Grant lived there, and Roger Fry would move there in 1913.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|p=233}} Virginia resented the wealth that Vanessa's marriage had given her; Virginia and Adrian lived more humbly by comparison.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|pp=233-235}}

Several members of the Bloomsbury Group attained notoriety in 1910 with the [[Dreadnought hoax|''Dreadnought'' hoax]], in which they posed as a royal [[Ethiopian Empire|Abyssinian]] entourage (with Virginia as "Prince Mendax") and received a tour of the [[HMS Dreadnought (1906)|HMS Dreadnought]] by Virginia's cousin [[William Wordsworth Fisher|Commander Fisher]], who was not aware of the joke. [[Horace de Vere Cole]], who had been one of the masterminds of the hoax along with Adrian, later leaked the story to the press and informed the Foreign Office, leading to general outrage from the establishment.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|pp=278-283}}

 

[[File:VStephenKCox.jpg|thumb|upright|Virginia Stephen (L) with [[Katherine Laird Cox|Katherine Cox]], Asham 1912|alt=Virginia Stephen with Katherine Cox at Asham in 1912]]

 

In September 1911 she and Leonard Woolf found Asham House{{efn|Sometimes spelled "Asheham" or "Ascham".{{sfn|Woolf|1964|p=56}}}} nearby, and Virginia and Vanessa took a joint lease on it.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|p=311}} Located at the end of a tree-lined road, the house was in a Regency-Gothic style, "flat, pale, serene, yellow-washed", remote, without electricity or water and allegedly haunted.{{sfn|Eagle|Carnell|1981|pp=9-10}}{{sfn|Lee|1997a|pp=311-312}} The sisters had two housewarming parties in January 1912.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|p=311}}

 

 

{{multiple image |header = Houses in Sussex| align = center | direction = horizontal | total_width =800 | float = none

|image4=Monk's House, Rodmell, UK.jpg|caption4=[[Monk's House]], Rodmell |alt4=Monk's House in Rodmell}}

While at Asham, in 1916 Leonard and Virginia found a farmhouse to let about four miles away, which they thought would be ideal for her sister. Eventually, Vanessa came down to inspect it, and took possession in October of that year, as a summer home for her family. The [[Charleston Farmhouse]] was to become the summer gathering place for the Bloomsbury Group.{{sfn|Bell|1972|loc=Vol II: 1915–1918}}{{page needed|date=June 2024}}

 

=== Marriage and war (1912–1920) ===

Virginia Woolf had completed a penultimate draft of her first novel ''[[The Voyage Out]]'' before her wedding, but undertook large-scale alterations to the manuscript between December 1912 and March 1913. The work was subsequently accepted by her half-brother Gerald Duckworth's publishing house, and she found the process of reading and correcting the proofs extremely emotionally difficult.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|p=321-322}} This led to one of several breakdowns over the subsequent two years; Woolf attempted suicide on 9 September 1913 with an overdose of [[Veronal]], being saved with the help of Maynard Keynes' surgeon brother [[Geoffrey Keynes]] who drove Leonard to [[St Bartholomew's Hospital]] to fetch a stomach pump.{{sfn|Harris|2011|pp=52,54}} Woolf's illness led to Duckworth delaying the publication of ''The Voyage Out'' until 26 March 1915.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|p=322}}

 

 

 

=== Further works (1920{{ndash}}1940) ===

{{main|Memoir Club}}

{{multiple image | header = ''Bloomsberries''| align = center | direction = horizontal | total_width = 600 | float = none

1920 saw a postwar reconstitution of the Bloomsbury Group, under the title of the [[Memoir Club]], which as the name suggests focussed on self-writing, in the manner of [[Proust]]'s ''[[A La Recherche]]'', and inspired some of the more influential books of the 20th century. The Group, which had been scattered by the war, was reconvened by [[Molly MacCarthy|Mary ('Molly') MacCarthy]] who called them "Bloomsberries", and operated under rules derived from the [[Cambridge Apostles]], an elite university debating society that a number of them had been members of. These rules emphasised candour and openness. Among the 125 memoirs presented, Virginia contributed three that were published posthumously in 1976, in the autobiographical anthology ''[[Moments of Being]]''. These were ''22 Hyde Park Gate'' (1921), ''Old Bloomsbury'' (1922) and ''Am I a Snob?'' (1936).{{sfn|Rosenbaum|Haule|2014}}

 

[[File:Vita Sackville-West at Monk's House.jpg|thumb|[[Vita Sackville-West]] at Monk's House {{circa|1934}}|alt=Photo of Vita Sackville-West in armchair at Virginia's home at Monk's House, smoking and with dog on her lap]]

On 14 December 1922{{sfn|Bell|1972|loc=Vol. II |p=235}} Woolf met the writer and gardener [[Vita Sackville-West]],{{sfn|Todd|1999|p=13}} wife of [[Harold Nicolson]]. This period was to prove fruitful for both authors, Woolf producing three novels, ''To the Lighthouse'' (1927), ''Orlando'' (1928), and ''The Waves'' (1931) as well as a number of essays, including "[[Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown]]" (1924) and "[[A Letter to a Young Poet]]" (1932).{{sfn|Hussey|2006}} The two women remained friends until Woolf's death in 1941.

The Woolf's final residence in London was at 37 [[Mecklenburgh Square]] (1939–1940), destroyed during [[the Blitz]] in September 1940; a month later their previous home on Tavistock Square was also destroyed. After that, they made Sussex their permanent home.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|pp=728-730,733}}

 

 

Much examination has been made of Woolf's mental health. From the age of 13, following the death of her mother, Woolf suffered periodic mood swings.{{sfn|Garnett|2011|p=114}} However, [[Hermione Lee]] asserts that Woolf was not "mad"; she was merely a woman who suffered from and struggled with illness for much of her life, a woman of "exceptional courage, intelligence and stoicism", who made the best use, and achieved the best understanding she could of that illness.{{sfn|Lee|1997a|p=171}}

Thomas Caramagno{{sfn|Caramagno|1992}} and others,{{sfn|Koutsantoni|2012}} in discussing her illness, oppose the "neurotic-genius" way of looking at mental illness, where creativity and mental illness are conceptualised as linked rather than antithetical.{{sfn|Jamison|1996}}{{sfn|Caramagno|1992}} [[Stephen Trombley]] describes Woolf as having a confrontational relationship with her doctors, and possibly being a woman who is a "victim of male medicine", referring to the lack of understanding, particularly at the time, about mental illness.{{sfn|Trombley|1980}}{{page needed|date=June 2024}}{{sfn|Trombley|1981}}{{page needed|date=June 2024}}

 

[[File:Roger Fry - Virginia Woolf.jpg|thumb|upright|A portrait of Woolf by [[Roger Fry]] {{circa|1917}}|alt= Portrait of Woolf in 1917 by Roger Fry]] [[File:StracheyWoolf.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Lytton Strachey]] and Woolf at [[Garsington Manor|Garsington]], 1923|alt=Lytton Strachey with Virginia Woolf 1923 ]]

[[File:Virginia Woolf 1927.jpg|thumb|upright|Virginia Woolf 1927|alt=Portrait of Virginia Woolf 1927]]

{{main|A Room of One's Own}}

Among Woolf's non-fiction works, one of the best known is ''A Room of One's Own'' (1929), a book-length essay. Considered a key work of feminist literary criticism, it was written following two lectures she delivered on "Women and Fiction" at Cambridge University the previous year. In it, she examines the historical disempowerment women have faced in many spheres, including social, educational and financial. One of her more famous dicta is contained within the book "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". Much of her argument ("to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money") is developed through the "unsolved problems" of women and fiction writing to arrive at her conclusion, although she claimed that was only "an opinion upon one minor point".{{sfn|British Library|2018a}} In doing so, she states a good deal about the nature of women and fiction, employing a quasi-fictional style as she examines where women writers failed because of lack of resources and opportunities, examining along the way the experiences of the [[Brontë family|Brontës]], [[George Eliot]] and [[George Sand]], as well as the fictional character of [[Shakespeare]]'s sister, equipped with the same genius but not position. She contrasted these women who accepted a deferential status with [[Jane Austen]], who wrote entirely as a woman.{{sfn|Kronenberger|1929}}

 

=== Influences ===