Virginia Woolf’s “Modern Fiction” Reading a Woolfian Essay

A Short Biography Adeline Virginia Woolf is born to Julia Prinsep Stephen and Sir Leslie Stephen.

1895 – Virginia’s mother dies 1897 – Virginia’s sister Stella dies These two events lead to Virginia’s first nervous breakdown.

: Virginia attends the Ladies’ Department of King George’s college, where she studies Greek, Latin, German, and History.

In 1904 Woolf’s father dies. This leads to the worst nervous breakdown up till this point, and Woolf is briefly institutionalized.

The Bloomsbury Group

In 1912 Virginia marries Leonard Woolf

1917: Virginia and Leonard open the “Hogarth Press”

On the 28 th of March, 1941, Virginia Commits Suicide by Drowning 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. V.

“Modern Fiction”? Old = Primitive?New = Better?

The “Materialists”

Excerpt from Old Wives’ Tales Her employers were so accustomed to an interesting announcement that for years they had taken to saying naught in reply but 'Really, Maggie!' Engagements and tragic partings were Maggie's pastime. Fixed otherwise, she might have studied the piano instead. "No gloves, of course!" Sophia criticized. "Well, you can't expect her to have gloves," said Constance. Then a pause, as the bonnet and dress neared the top of the Square. "Supposing she turns round and sees us?" Constance suggested. "I don't care if she does," said Sophia, with a haughtiness almost impassioned; and her head trembled slightly. … "WELL!" cried Constance. "Did you ever see such a thing?" While Sophia, short of adequate words, flushed and bit her lip.

The “Spiritualists” Let us hazard the opinion that for us at this moment … life or spirit, truth or reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to be contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we provide.

Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being “like this”. Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day…

Excerpt from James Joyce’s Ulysses Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.

“But any deductions that we may draw from the comparison of two fictions so immeasurably far apart are futile save indeed as they flood us with a view of the infinite possibilities of the art and remind us that there is no limit to the horizon, and that nothing--no "method", no experiment, even of the wildest--is forbidden, but only falsity and pretence. "The proper stuff of fiction" does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss.”

The End