Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Adeline Virginia Stephen was born on January 25th 1882 in London. She was the third   child of Leslie Stephen - later Sir Leslie - and his second wife Julia Jackson Duckworth.  Sir Leslie Stephen was an eminent philosopher and critic, and editor of the first   Dictionary of National Biography. Virginia was from a large family - there was her   sister, Vanessa (1879) and brothers, Thoby(1880) and Adrian(1883), and then her 4 half brothers and sisters making a total of 8. The family lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate, London.

Virginia did not go to school, and for the most part educated herself. She was a keen   reader and taught herself from the books in her father's extensive library. From this time Virginia had ambitions to become a writer. Her sister Vanessa trained to be a painter, and her brothers were sent off to public school and then later to Cambridge University. The Stephen family spent many summer holidays in St Ives in Cornwall, a place which was to provide the inspiration for future novels. In 1895, when Virginia was 13 her mother died of rheumatic fever. It was in the summer following her mother’s death that Viriginia had her first mental breakdown. Then in 1897 Virginia’s half sister, Stella, died after she returned from her honeymoon.

In 1904 tragedy struck yet again as Virginia’s father died of cancer. Virginia was once again overwhelmed by a deep depression and mental breakdown. The siblings moved to 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, and her sister Vanessa looked after the family. In 1905 Virginia started writing the first of many reviews for The Times Literary Supplement.

Whilst in Bloomsbury, Virginia’s elder brother Thoby began inviting former university   friends round to the house - aspiring young writers, philosophers, critics and artists. The house became the gathering place of the group who met every Thursday evening   and continued to meet until about 1930. This came to be known as The Bloomsbury   Group. This consisted of future eminent intellectuals and artists such as novelist E M Forster, biographer Lytton Strachey, economist J M Keynes, art critic Roger Fry, writer Leonard Woolf, critic Clive Bell - and the Woolfs themselves. The group described themselves simply as a group of friends who met to discuss the issues of the day, not as a group with a shared set of beliefs. Many of Virginia’s ideas took shape during the discussions of this time. It is in them that we see the foundations of the modernist novel.

  In 1906 the Stephen family went to Greece on holiday - but Vanessa and Thoby became ill. Vanessa recovered but Thoby died - of thyphoid fever. It was another blow to the family. Good news followed as Vanessa announced her intention to marry Bloomsbury member, Clive Bell in 1907. Virginia and her brother, Adrian, moved out of the family home to a house in Fitzroy Square which was not far from Vanessa and Clive. The Bloomsbury group also moved there, and the circle expanded to include some of Virginia and Adrian's friends. Virginia's confidence to speak at these evenings grew, as she found she could talk at length about almost anything she chose. In 1912 Virginia married fellow member, Leonard Woolf. Leonard was a stabilising influence on Virginia and remained so throughout her life. Even so, she suffered from frequent bouts of mental illness, manic depression and nervous breakdowns.
In 1917 the Woolfs bought a hand printing-press. This was intended mainly as therapy for Virginia after she had had yet another period of mental instability. They named it after their house in Richmond - the Hogarth press - and concentrated on publishing both her works and those of others. Some of the famous works they published were by TS Eliot, Sigmund Freud and Katherine Mansfield. In 1919 the Woolfs bought Monks House in the village of Rodmell, Sussex and they spent many summer holidays there. Virginia's sister, Vanessa, moved to Charleston Farm nearby ... this was to become a favourite meeting place for the Bloomsbury Group.

  Virginia’s first two works were The Voyage Out (1915) and Night and Day (1919).   These were well received by the critics, but Virginia was not completely happy with them as they did not go far enough in experimentation. As her writing matured she began to write stream of consciousness novels, that is, the reader follows the characters' feelings, thoughts and actions as they occur to them, in a natural disorganised fashion and not as a logical sequence of events. It is a technique developed by James Joyce and Marcel Proust. Plot is not essential but any there is follows from the internal workings of a character’s mind. Virginia was interested in how experience and external events could affect consciousness. This ran contrary to the usual style of the novel, that is using inner thought processes to elaborate upon an event or to lead up to the next part of the plot. Virginia was also interested in the subject of time. From Jacob’s Room (1922) onwards she also explores the passing of time and the effect it has on the inner workings of the mind.

The Woolfs moved back to central London in 1924 to 52 Tavistock Square, where Virginia continued writing. Much of her writing is drawn from her own life experience. Her novels are often set in London in the society she knew - that of upper-middle class intellectual society. However she was also fascinated by nature, the solitude of plants and their self-sufficiency, so she often wrote about the natural world as well.

Two of her most famous novels are Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To The Lighthouse (1927). Both books contain very little plot, but employ the stream of consciousness technique in their exploration of the characters. In Mrs Dalloway we follow the inner thoughts of two characters over the course of a 12 hour span, neither meet but both have curious parallels. One, Clarissa Dalloway, is a society hostess preparing for a party the same evening; the other, Septimus Warren Smith, is an ex-soldier mourning the death of his friend, and is considered mad. It is only when the soldier commits suicide and Mrs Dalloway hears about him through her doctor at her party that she realises that she and he had much in common.

  To The Lighthouse charts the inner thoughts of the Ramsay family over three different days in its life. Mrs Ramsay dies but her influence over the family remains. Though set on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, the summer holidays in St Ives gave Virginia much of the colour for the setting of this novel. James dreams of visiting a nearby lighthouse. Life goes on, war comes, family members die, and James finally makes his trip to the lighthouse. The characters of Mr and Mrs Ramsay are also partially based on Virginia’s own parents.

  During this time Viriginia was known to all her friends as a lively witty conversationalist and socialite. Her illness never appeared to them, so her periods of depression although known about, were not what she was remembered for. She was known to be shy and awkward with those she didn’t know well. With friends however she was sparkling, bubbly and good fun, laughing loudly and teasing mercilessly. She was also known for flights of fanciful thinking and speculative gossip. Leonard, it is said, watched for the signs of illness coming back and when this happened kept her out of society until she recovered. She could never write during these bouts of illness, but concentrated on producing her best work during her calm periods.

  After Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse she published yet more original novels. Orlando (1928) follows the fortunes of one character 4 centuries apart. In one he is a boy in Elizabethan England, in the other a woman of 38. Orlando was partially modelled on her friend and, it is said, lover, Vita Sackville-West. The Waves (1931) is a denser novel, in which we enter the minds of, and follow, 6 characters from childhood to old age. The novel focuses on the ages of man rather than plot. In 1929 she produced A Room of One’s Own, inspired by a visit to women’s colleges in Cambridge the year before. It explored the role of women in society and their rights and was described as a feminist classic.

  The thirties were a less happy time for the Woolf’s, with the death of friends and the looming threat of war. In 1933 she wrote Flush, the imagined memories of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s spaniel; in 1937 came The Years, a family saga; in 1938 Three Guineas, seen as a sequel to A Room of One’s Own; and in 1940 a biography of art critic and friend, Roger Fry. She also wrote several essays, criticisms and biographies. Her best critical studies of literature were a series of essays entitled The Common Reader (1925-1932).

  During the war the Woolfs moved to their house in Sussex. In 1941 she wrote Between the Acts, a novel following the staging of a pageant in an English village, with the thought of war never far away. By this time Viriginia was hearing voices and suffering once again from mental illness. On March 28th of the same year Virginia committed suicide by drowning herself in the river Ouse near Monks House. She left a note for Leonard, saying she could no longer cope with the madness and feared that this time it would not go away.

  Virginia was remembered during her lifetime mainly as a novelist and distinguished critic. Since then however she has become more famous for her diaries, and for her contribution to the modern novel with her emphasis on the stream of consciousness technique. She is also recognised as being one of the most important feminist writers of the 20th century: many of her most memorable characters are women. She is read by millions worldwide and her life and works are as much the subject of debate today as they ever were. Her illness was officially recognised but was never treated, as there was no known treatment for it. Nearly 40 years after her death Virginia Woolf’s diaries were published in 5 volumes - The Diary of Virginia Woolf 1977-1980. The Letters of Virginia Woolf came out in 6 volumes between 1975 and 1980. Leonard Woolf documented their life in his 5 volume autobiography (1960-69). It provides a unique personal insight into the illness which consumed and finally destroyed his wife, the world famous Virginia Woolf.