Memories In Virginia Woolf's Moments Of Being

538 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Moments of being in Woolf's work

Virginia Woolf’s Moments of Being is characterized by her longing call towards her memories as a child, and her way of words that she uses to reminisce of these memories. Through her prose we can see that these memories will always be held close to her heart, and that these memories were significant to her growth. Throughout the excerpt from her memoir she conveys this in many passages.
The first example of this is found in lines 6 to 10 where she records “And Thoby took the fisherman’s place; and steered; flushed and with his blue eyes very blue, and his mouth set, he sat there, bringing us round the point, into harbor, without letting the sail flag.” This memory shows her love and adoration for her brother, and of this memory including …show more content…

It states “… father said to me: “’Next time if you are going to fish I shan’t come; I don’t like to see fish caught buy you can go if you like.’ It was a perfect lesson. It was not a rebuke; not a forbidding; simply a statement of his own feeling, about which I could think and decide for myself. Though my passion for the thrill and the tug had been perhaps the most acute I then knew, his words slowly extinguished it; leaving no grudge, I ceased to wish to catch fish.” Her regard for her father was very strong from this statement of character that he made. She makes this obvious when she states “…not a forbidding; simply a statement of his own feeling, about which I could think and decide for myself.” During this fishing trip, her father’s actions stated that he regarded her as able to distinguish and set her own morals, and his words said that he respected the actions that she made regardless. This statement made by her father were pictured as if she would remember this moment as a significant factor in shaping her character.
As Woolf makes apparent in this excerpt this specific memory is held high, and it is made apparent that it significantly effected her. The fondness that she shows towards this specific memory is priceless, and her words are

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Julia Alvarez's In The Time Of The Butterflies

    1872 Words  | 4 Pages

    Memory is both a blessing and a curse; it serves as a reminder of everything, and its meaning is based upon interpretation. In Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies Dedé lives through the memory of her family and her past. She tells the stories of her and her sisters lives leading up to their deaths, and reflects upon those memories throughout her daily life. Dedé lives on for her sisters, without her sisters, but all along carrying them with her throughout her life, never moving on. Dedé lives with the shame, sadness, and regret of all that has happened to her sisters, her marriage, and her family. Dedé’s memories serve as a blessing in her eyes, but are a burden

    Read More

  • The Blue Estuaries Personification

    718 Words  | 2 Pages

    Personification is presented by the author as the only explanation for the narrator’s consumption. “The Blue Estuaries” begins to stir the narrator’s own poems (line 24) until she bores down on the page once more, coming back into what is perceived by the reader as a much more clear state of mind. Then, the narrator claims to have “lost her doubts” for a moment (line 34). This was a turning point in the narrator’s tone- signalling a shift in her thoughts, and was a strikingly out of place claim- especially coming from somebody so preoccupied- making the reader wonder what she had thought about for a moment. The narrator then begins to read once more (Line

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Turning By Tim Winton

    808 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through this short story we are taken through one of Vic Lang’s memories narrated by his wife struggling to figure out why a memory of Strawberry Alison is effecting their marriage and why she won’t give up on their relationship. Winton’s perspective of the theme memory is that even as you get older your past will follow you good, bad or ugly, you can’t always forget. E.g. “He didn’t just rattle these memories off.” (page 55) and ( I always assumed Vic’s infatuation with Strawberry Alison was all in the past, a mortifying memory.” (page 57). Memories are relevant to today’s society because it is our past, things or previous events that have happened to you in which we remembered them as good, bad, sad, angry etc. memories that you can’t forget. Winton has communicated this to his audience by sharing with us how a memory from your past if it is good or bad can still have an effect on you even as you get older. From the description of Vic’s memory being the major theme is that it just goes to show that that your past can haunt or follow you but it’s spur choice whether you chose to let it affect you in the

    Read More

  • Psychiatric Evaluation and Diagnosis of Virginia Woolf

    773 Words  | 2 Pages

    I have chosen to write about Virginia Woolf, a British novelist who wrote A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, to name a few of her pieces of work. Virginia Woolf was my first introduction to feminist type books. I chose Woolf because she is a fantastic writer and one of my favorites as well. Her unique style of writing, which came to be known as stream-of-consciousness, was influenced by the symptoms she experienced through her bipolar disorder. Many people have heard the word "bipolar," but do not realize its full implications. People who know someone with this disorder might understand their irregular behavior as a character flaw, not realizing that people with bipolar mental illness do not have control over their moods. Virginia Woolf’s illness was not understood in her lifetime. She committed suicide in 1941.

    Read More

  • Death Of The Moth Rhetorical Analysis

    1636 Words  | 4 Pages

    Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Kate Chopin's The Awakening

    1940 Words  | 4 Pages

    Robert had invited Edna to go to the beach with him and at first she denied but compelled by the spell of defiance followed along allowing herself to indulge in deep self understanding. “A certain light was was beginning to dawn dimly within her,- the light which, which showing the way, forbids it.The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in it’s soft, close embrace” (Chopin 13), that night Edna had formed a fatal attraction to the sea and its seductivity for the presence of the river weighed heavy that night. Causing her to develop a great love for swimming for it gave her a reason to be wrapped up in the ocean’s smothering

    Read More

  • Explore Kathy’s narration in Never Let Me Go and what it reveals regarding the importance of memory as a source for narrative.

    1570 Words  | 4 Pages

    The interdependence of memory and identity is not unproblematic. Self-assessment and assessment of the characters in the novel will lead one to realise that manipulation of the past is integral...

    Read More

  • Poetry Analysis - The Fish

    668 Words  | 2 Pages

    This poem is full of visual imagery; one can imagine being the speaker, staring at the fish on the hook. The fish’s brown skin, shapes on his scales, the tiny white sea-lice, the green weed, the blood flowing from his gills, his entrails, and his pink bladder all describing the fish’s body. This allows the reader to imagine as if the fish was in their hands. She not only illustrates the fish as a whole but also ge...

    Read More

  • Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish”

    961 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The Fish,” written by Elizabeth Bishop in 1946, is perhaps most known for its incredible use of imagery, but this analysis does not merely focus on imagery. Instead, it is based on a quote by Mark Doty from his essay “A Tremendous Fish.” In it he says, “‘The Fish’” is a carefully rendered model of an engaged mind at work” (Doty). After reading this statement, it causes one to reflect more in-depth about how the poem was written, and not just about what its literal meaning lays out. In “The Fish,” Bishop’s utilization of certain similes, imagery in the last few lines, narrative poem style, and use of punctuation allows the audience to transport into the life of the fish; therefore, allowing them to understand Bishop’s ideas on freedom and wisdom.

    Read More

  • The Contrast of Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker

    1345 Words  | 3 Pages

    In her passage she imagines what it may have been like had William Shakespeare had a sister. She notices how difficult it would be even given the same talents as Shakespeare himself, to follow throughout and utilize them in her life. It is clear after reading further into Woolf's passage that obviously she lived in a different time period, only about fifty years apart though. The way she relates and tells a very similar story with an entirely different setting shows without the reader even knowing that she wa... ... middle of paper ... ...

    Read More

  • Memory in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

    1972 Words  | 4 Pages

    Clarissa Dalloway and Peter Walsh are defined by their memories. Virginia Woolf creates their characters through the memories they share, and indeed fabricates their very identities from these mutual experiences. Mrs. Dalloway creates a unique tapestry of time and memory, interweaving past and present, memory and dream. The past is the key to the future, and indeed for these two characters the past creates the future, shaping them into the people they are on the June day described by Woolf. Peter and Clarissa’s memories of the days spent at Bourton have a profound effect on them both and are still very much a part of them. These images of their younger selves are not broad, all-encompassing mental pictures, but rather the bits and pieces of life that create personality and identity. Peter remembers various idiosyncracies about Clarissa, and she does the same about him. They remember each other by “the colours, salts, tones of existence,” the very essence that makes human beings original and unique: the fabric of their true identities (30).

    Read More

  • Existential Crisis In Mrs Dalloway

    781 Words  | 2 Pages

    The extensive descriptions of Mrs. Dalloway’s inner thoughts and observations reveals Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” writing style, which emphasizes the complexity of Clarissa’s existential crisis. She also alludes to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, further revealing her preoccupation with death as she quotes lines from a funeral song. She reads these lines while shopping in the commotion and joy of the streets of London, which juxtaposes with her internal conflicts regarding death. Shakespeare, a motif in the book, represents hope and solace for Mrs. Dalloway, as his lines form Cymbeline talk about the comforts found in death. From the beginning of the book, Mrs. Dalloway has shown a fear for death and experiences multiple existential crises, so her connection with Shakespeare is her way of dealing with the horrors of death. The multiple layers to this passage, including the irony, juxtaposition, and allusion, reveal Woolf’s complex writing style, which demonstrates that death is constantly present in people’s minds, affecting their everyday

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis: Kew Gardens

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    Woolf, therefore, takes advantage of the lyrical short stories’ structure to create a liminal space that both breaks through barriers to form a unified, impressionistic world and to emphasize the imposing negative aspects of such a transitory structure. As a result, Woolf prompts the reader to question whether the liminal space created within the short story is positive in its ability to unite nature and human or negative in its apparent unsustainability. Regardless, the form and structure of the short story are pivotal in Kew Gardens. Without the liminal space of the short story, it is questionable if Woolf could have succeeded in creating the unstable, yet peaceful, world in Kew Gardens.

    Read More

  • Virginia Woolf Female Genius In Literature

    1635 Words  | 4 Pages

    "So it is naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind." Aristotle’s quote rings especially true in reference to the Victorian Era. In the late 1800s and early 1900s men were considered the dominant of the two sexes. Because of this, “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman” (Woolf 51). Female genius was undistinguished or nonexistent in the century in which Virginia Woolf lived, because it was completely and utterly dominated by males. Her surroundings influenced her to explore the history of women in literature through an unconventional examination of the social and material circumstances necessary for the process of writing. Virginia Woolf asserts that female genius cannot be attained in a society that solely praises the masculine desire for status and seniority because it opposes creativity, which is essential to the education and independence of women, which fosters genius.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Memory In The Shadow Of Imana

    982 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Memory is like a sword dipped in steel, like rain in the heart of drought. A tiara placed

    Read More

More about Memories In Virginia Woolf's Moments Of Being

Open Document