Virginia Woolf

Early life born in London 1882 Father: Leslie Stephen. Historian, critic, author, mountaineer (from 1 st marriage Laura) Mother: Julia Duckworth. A model for pre- Raphaelite painters (from 1° marriage: George, Stella, Gerald)

together, four children: Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia, Adrian very stimulating environment, huge library girls: educated at home (classics, English literature) boys: formally educated, went to university

summers until 1895: St. Ives, Cornwall (To the Lighthouse) 1895: mother’s sudden death (V. was 13) first nervous breakdown however studied Greek Latin German History at the Ladies’ Department of king’s College, london

1904: father’s death. New crisis sold 22 Hyde Park Gate and bought a house at 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury. Woolf came to know Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Rupert Brooke, Saxon Sydney- Turner, Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, and Roger Fry: nucleus of the intellectual circle of writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group

Bloomsbury Group 'one's prime objects in life are love, the creation and enjoyment of aesthetic experience and the pursuit of knowledge‘ (G.E. Moore) against social rituals, bourgeois habits, conventions of Victorian life, its consideration of the public sphere in favour of a more informal, private-oriented focus upon personal relationships and individual pleasure

1910 Dreadnought hoax (Virginia participated disguised as a male Abyssinian royal) ←

1907 Vanessa married Clive Bell; couple's interest in avant garde art → influence on Woolf's development as an author 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf (recurring breakdowns and depression, maybe originated from sexual abuse by half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth) 1917 founded the Hogarth Press together

1922 met writer Vita Sackville-West, started a relationship with her 1928 Orlando the protagonist passes from one century to the other, also changing sex remained friends until Virginia’s death in 1941

began writing for The Times Literary Supplement highly experimental novels; a «lyrical» novelist 1915 The Voyage Out 1922 Jacob’s Room 1925 Mrs Dalloway 1927 To the Lighthouse

1928 Orlando 1931 The Waves 1941 Between the Acts after completing her last book she fell into a bad fit of depression and committed suicide by drowning herself (28.March, 1941)

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. V

Essay Modern Fiction 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

beyond the limits of traditional fiction interested in the area of psychology

in her works NOT facts events social relations BUT feelings thoughts memories qualities of the brain, of the spirit

interest focussed on the person like an instrument capable of receiving and transmitting perceptions emotions thoughts

Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. (…) The mind: object of impressions of different quality and intensity

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. no logical or chronological organization of the data of life, no symmetrical arrangement indicating there’s a clear pattern below the surface “a halo”: man is not in a position to observe life from the outside, but is immersed in it

role of the novelist: to render life with as little mixture of the alien and the external as possible, to render the experience of life as faithfully as she can “the alien, the external” = the conventions of fiction (setting plot characters)

a representation of life complicated by the simultaneous presence of past and present in the mind + the juxtaposition of different perspectives from which reality can be perceived

TIME handled in two ways: Contrast external – subjective time (underlined by the reference to actions or events treated as counterpoints to the flow of thoughts of the characters)

present time constantly put in relation with the past through the mechanism of memory a recollection, sometimes started by an insignificant event, becomes a way to understand the present more fully; interaction of past and present (they change each other)

1 st passage the beginning of the book “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” third-person, external narrator, who very soon will share the characters’ different points of view

Clarissa’s (Scrope Purvis’s, Hugh Whitbread’s) For Lucy had her work cut out for her. … And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning – fresh as if issued to children on a beach “poetic” quality of the language

the narrator, however implicit and unobtrusive, makes her presence felt by recording the characters’ thoughts «in order» and often providing images rendering the characters’ perceptions and states of mind sometimes managing to create intense poetry

Clarissa goes out in the morning to buy flowers; in her house there are preparations (later the reader will come to know that there’s going to be a party in the evening) the fresh air reminds her of her youth at Bourton remembers a conversation with Peter Walsh (India, letters…) wonders how strange it is that people remember apparently insignificant things

she goes on walking in London towards the flower shop; passes an acquaintance, Scrope Purvis, from whose point of view we get a glimpse of her meditates on the beauty of Westminster and describes the atmosphere created by Big Ben (list of all the aspects of London life that she likes, among which that moment of June) underlines it’s the middle of June, the war is over; it’s the season of horse races and cricket

thinks briefly about her daughter Elizabeth (she seems tempted to buy her a brooch but decides not to buy it) thinks about the party she’s going to have in the evening enters Green Park, is aware of the silence, the slow movements of the animals

meets her friend Hugh Whitbread they talk about his wife’s health problems while they speak she feels self- conscious, not as elegant as he is thinks about the fact that neither Richard (her husband) nor Peter Walsh like him

typical elements of Woolf’s style: indirect interior monologue external third-person narrator adopting the perspective of several characters shifting point of view role of memory («tunnelling process») contrast objective-subjective time poetic quality of the language (similes, metaphors)

2 nd passage “A pistol shot…” just before arriving at the flower shop Clarissa is following her thoughts fights the feeling of annoyance given to her by the thought of her daughter’s teacher opens the doors of the flower shop and is overwhelmed by the beauty, perfume, colours of the flowers

point of view constantly shifting from Clarissa’s perspective to Miss Pym’s (the shop assistant) she is smelling, choosing the flowers for her party when a loud noise, like an explosion, attracts the attention of the two women and of all the people in the street

the external narrator «takes control» of the narration and describes the effect of the event on Mrs Dalloway, the shop assistant, the crowd (rumours described as a cloud, mockery of people’s tendency to be affected by the «wing of mystery») the funny remark of a plumber is heard by a man in the crowd, Septimus Warren Smith

he is described from the outside then the point of view shifts into Septimus’s mind signs of a view of reality deviating from what is considered «normal» (logic?) he tends to interpret all negative events as his own fault, is focused on himself

his wife, Lucrezia, tells him to go on; the reader starts perceiving reality from her point of view an Italian girl feeling completely isolated and lonely now that her husband is mentally disturbed

3 rd passage The party Dr Bradshaw arrives apologizing for being late: a young man has committed suicide Clarissa’s physical reaction to such news: metaphors of «burning» reaction of annoyance: her party will be spoilt gradual identification with the young man (physical, then psychological)

she wonders HOW he did it she describes the man’s fall and death from his perspective then she starts wondering WHY he did it: to preserve the thing that mattered, his own intimate self as an extreme attempt to communicate / a sign of extreme loneliness

If it were now to die, ‘twere now to be most happy (Othello, II.i) in Cyprus, when he learns that the ship carrying Desdemona has not shipwrecked Fear no more the heat of the sun (Cymbeline, IV.ii) a funeral song on Imogen’s presumed death

maybe he was a poet, who felt life had been made intolerable by doctors forcing your soul terror, fear of living → Clarissa’s identification with Septimus becomes explicit (there was in the depths of her heart an awful fear…)

use of metaphorical, «poetic» language describes herself as a small bird crouching at the feet of her husband reading the paper, while she was trying to «revive», to receive warmth and strength from him

relationship between Mr and Mrs Dalloway → compared and contrasted with that between Septimus and Lucrezia (a piece of bone….)

Clarissa moves about the room, looks out, sees the old lady opposite no pleasure could equal this having done with the triumphs of youth perhaps she starts accepting her own life and choices and goes back to her party, finally reconciled with life

Moments of being From Nicole L. Urquhart, Moments of Being in Virginia Woolf’s Fiction ( She first mentions moments of being in her essay, "A Sketch of the Past," which was to be the beginning of her memoirs. She begins with one of her earliest memories: a night in the nursery at St. Ives. She vividly recalls the way the blinds fluttered in the wind, the light coming through the window and the sound of the sea. She had a feeling of "lying in a grape and seeing through a film of semi- transparent yellow" (65). This memory is so strong that when she recalls those sensations they become more real for her than the present moment. This observation leads her to wonder why some moments are so powerful and memorable--even if the events themselves are unimportant--that they can be vividly recalled while other events are easily forgotten. She concludes that there are two kinds of experiences: moments of being and non-being.

Woolf never explicitly defines what she means by "moments of being." Instead she provides examples of these moments and contrasts them with moments of what she calls "non-being." She describes the previous day as: Above the average in 'being.' It was fine; I enjoyed writing these first pages... I walked over Mount Misery and along the river; and save that the tide was out, the country, which I notice very closely always, was coloured and shaded as I like--there were the willows, I remember, all plumy and soft green and purple against the blue. I also read Chaucer with pleasure; and began a book... which interested me. She experiences each of these acts intensely and with awareness. But she continues to say that these moments were embedded in more numerous moments of non-being. For example, she does not remember what she discussed with her husband over tea. Moments of non-being appear to be moments that the individual is not consciously aware of events as she experiences them. She notes that people perform routine tasks such as walking and shopping without thinking about them. This part of the life is "not lived consciously," but instead is embedded in "a kind of nondescript cotton wool".

It is not the nature of the actions that separates moments of being from moments of non-being. One activity is not intrinsically more mundane or more extraordinary than the other. Instead, it is the intensity of feeling, one's consciousness of the experience, that separates the two moments. A walk in the country can easily be hidden behind the cotton wool for one person, but for Woolf the experience is very vivid. Woolf asserts that these moments of being, these flashes of awareness, reveal a pattern hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life, and that we, "I mean all human beings--are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art." But the individual artist is not important in this work. Instead she says of all people, "We are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself" (72). Thus for Woolf a moment of being is a moment when an individual is fully conscious of his experience, a moment when he is not only aware of himself but catches a glimpse of his connection to a larger pattern hidden behind the opaque surface of daily life. Unlike moments of non-being, when the individual lives and acts without awareness, performing acts as if asleep, the moment of being opens up a hidden reality.

Tunnelling Process Virginia Woolf describes her stream- of-consciousness technique as a 'tunnelling process'. 'I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters…I tell the past in instalments as I have need of it.'

she refers to the way her characters remember their pasts in experiencing these characters' recollections, readers derive for themselves a sense of background and history to characters that, otherwise, a narrator would have had to provide

A Room of One’s Own January 1928 Virginia Woolf is asked to give two lectures about women and fiction to two female colleges she didn’t like giving lectures but accepted; the topic started acting inside her

October in a letter she appears annoyed by the engagement however, she gives the two lectures at the end of the month

feels the difference between herself, a woman but a privileged person, and those girls, “hungry, but brave young women. Intelligent, greedy, poor, destined to become schoolteachers…” feels the importance for the privileged ones to elaborate a common language, to give voice to all those “dumb” women

1929 publication of A Room of One’s Own Hogarth Press about the steps of the great exclusion of women from history and culture she offers her listeners, and then her readers, not a cultured lecture on literature, but a passionate invective against patriarchal culture

proclaims women’s need for economic independence and a space of their own in which creativity may find its voice urges her listeners to write, literature being a way to save themselves from silence