Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf, who was born on January 25, 1882 and died on March 28, 1941, was a well known English novelist, essayist, biographer, and feminist. She was a voluminous writer, who composed in a modernist style that always was altered with every novel she wrote. Her letters and memories exposed glimpses of Woolf during the Bloomsbury era. Woolf was included in society, as T.S. Eliot describes in his obituary for Virginia. “Without Virginia Woolf at the center of it, it would have remained formless or marginal…. With the death of Virginia Woolf, a whole pattern of culture is broken.”
Virginia had many mental breakdowns since she lost her mother at the age of 13 and her brother, Thoby inspired her to compose her first novel about a character named Jacob, “Jacob’s Room” (1922) and subsequently on the character Percival in another novel “The Waves.” Woolf suffered from serious bouts of mental illness throughout her life, thought to have been the consequence of what is now termed manic depressive illness or bipolar disorder and committed suicide by drowning in March 1941.
Woolf was a remarkable woman in the London literary society and a critical element in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. Her most notable novels include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous quote, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." She was challenged with the question whether women’s writing should be feminine; she reasoned out that great female authors “wrote as women write, not as men write.” She presented the possibility of a specific style, but at the same time she laid an emphasis that great ...
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...otes: Virginia Woolf: General Summary." SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2014.
The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2014.
"Virginia Woolf." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, n.d. Web. 29 May 2014.
Works Cited
"Biographical Profile of Virginia Woolf." About.com Classic Literature. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2014.
"biography on Virginia Woolf." The European Graduate School - Media and Communication - Graduate & Postgraduate Studies Program. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2014.
"SparkNotes: Virginia Woolf: General Summary." SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2014.
The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2014.
"Virginia Woolf." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, n.d. Web. 29 May 2014.
Both Virginia Woolf and Annie Dillard are extremely gifted writers. Virginia Woolf in 1942 wrote an essay called The Death of the Moth. Annie Dillard later on in 1976 wrote an essay that was similar in the name called The Death of a Moth and even had similar context. The two authors wrote powerful texts expressing their perspectives on the topic of life and death. They both had similar techniques but used them to develop completely different views. Each of the two authors incorporate in their text a unique way of adding their personal experience in their essay as they describe a specific occasion, time, and memory of their lives. Woolf’s personal experience begins with “it was a pleasant morning, mid-September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months” (Woolf, 1). Annie Dillard personal experience begins with “two summers ago, I was camping alone in the blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia” (Dillard, 1). Including personal experience allowed Virginia Woolf to give her own enjoyable, fulfilling and understandable perception of life and death. Likewise, Annie Dillard used the personal narrative to focus on life but specifically on the life of death. To explore the power of life and death Virginia Woolf uses literary tools such as metaphors and imagery, along with a specific style and structure of writing in a conversational way to create an emotional tone and connect with her reader the value of life, but ultimately accepting death through the relationship of a moth and a human. While Annie Dillard on the other hand uses the same exact literary tools along with a specific style and similar structure to create a completely different perspective on just death, expressing that death is how it comes. ...
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
Woolf, Virginia. "A Room of One's Own." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams et al. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000. 2153-2214.
Work Cited Woolf, Virginia. A. Mrs. Dalloway. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc., 2005.
3 Haines-Wright, Lisa and Kyle, Tracy L. "Fluid Sexuality in Virginia Woolf" Virginia Woolf: Texts and Contexts New York, NY: Pace University Press, 1996
She is what happened after Bloomsbury.the link that connects Virginia Woolf with Iris Murdoch and Mrielk Spark”. These highly regarded and well-respected female authors are showing that women can and do hold power in our society. These authors send the message to readers that women throughout time have been and still are fully capable of thinking for themselves. They can hold their own ground without having to subject themselves to the dominance of the males, be it in writing novels, raising a family, working in a factory, or pursuing a singing career. Thus, they as all women, deserve to be held in respect for their achievements and deserve equality.
Whatever the problematic implications, Woolf called for a new era where "[women] have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what [they] think" (Woolf 113). She closed her treatise on a comment pointed at the female writers of her age: "I maintain that she [Shakespeare's sister] would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while" (114).
In Virginia Woolf’s novel “To the Lighthouse” readers can detect feminist undertones subtly seeping in throughout. The struggle to secure and proclaim female freedom is constantly challenged by social normalcy all through the story. Woolf ’s ability to subtly include the conflict between what traditional female ideologies should be and the internal tug-of-war of those who challenge them is found many times and eventually gives rise to the idea that the even women who choose to live unconventional lives have the ability to end up happy and successful. In the novel Woolf selects the character of Lily Brisco to embody this idea. She represents the rosy picture of a woman whom ends up challenging social norms to effectively achieve a sense of freedom and individuality by the end. Woolf all through the novel approaches Lily’s break with conventional female ideals in a myriad of ways, from the comparison between Lily and Mrs.Ramsey, Lily’s very own stream of consciousness, as well as the profess she makes on her painting, in order to reinforce the idea that a happy life doesn’t necessarily have to come from living by the standards society sets for women.
Virginia Woolf, in her novels, set out to portray the self and the limits associated with it. She wanted the reader to understand time and how the characters could be caught within it. She felt that time could be transcended, even if it was momentarily, by one becoming involved with their work, art, a place, or someone else. She felt that her works provided a change from the typical egotistical work of males during her time, she makes it clear that women do not posses this trait. Woolf did not believe that women could influence as men through ego, yet she did feel [and portray] that certain men do hold the characteristics of women, such as respect for others and the ability to understand many experiences. Virginia Woolf made many of her time realize that traditional literature was no longer good enough and valid. She caused many women to become interested in writing, and can be seen as greatly influential in literary history
Born in 1882 Virginia Woolf is a noted novelist and essayist, prominent for her nonlinear prose style and feminist writings. Her essay “Professions for Women” designed as a speech to be given at the Women’s Service League in 1931, informs her audience of the powerful internal dispute she and other women face in an attempt to live their everyday lives as women living in a masculine controlled society, especially within the careers they desire. Woolf adopted an urgent and motherly tone in order to reach her female audience in 1931 during her speech and in response her audience gathered. As a result of her distinct and emotional writing in Professions for Women, Woolf created an effective piece, still relevant today.
Virginia Woolf, one of the pioneers of modern feminism, found it appalling that throughout most of history, women did not have a voice. She observed that the patriarchal culture of the world at large made it impossible for a woman to create works of genius. Until recently, women were pigeonholed into roles they did not necessarily enjoy and had no way of
Woolf empowers women writers by first exploring the nature of women and fiction, and then by incorporating notions of androgyny and individuality as it exists in a woman's experience as writer.
Transue, Pamela J. Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Style. Albany: State U of New York P, 1986.
Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen, in 1882. She suffered immensely as a child from a series of emotional shocks (these are included in the biography of Virginia Woolf). However, she overcame these incredible personal damages and became a major British novelist, essayist and critic. Woolf also belonged to an elite group that included Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot. Woolf pioneered in incorporating feminism in her writings. “Virginia Woolf’s journalistic and polemical writings show that she made a significant contribution to the development of feminist thought” (Dalsimer). Despite her tumultuous childhood, she was an original thinker and a revolutionary writer, specifically the way she described depth of characters in her novels. Her novels are distinctively modern and express characters in a way no other writer had done before. One reason it is easy to acknowledge the importance of Virginia Woolf is because she wrote prolifically. Along with many novels, she wrote essays, critiques and many volumes of her personal journals have been published. She is one of the most extraordinary and influential female writers throughout history. Virginia Woolf is an influential author because of her unique style, incorporations of symbolism and use of similes and metaphors in her literature, specifically in Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves.
Throughout her life Virginia Woolf became increasingly interested in the topic of women and fiction, which is highly reflected in her writing. To understand her piece, A Room of One’s Own Room, her reader must understand her. Born in early 1882, Woolf was brought into an extremely literature driven, middle-class family in London. Her father was an editor to a major newspaper company and eventually began his own newspaper business in his later life. While her mother was a typical Victorian house-wife. As a child, Woolf was surrounded by literature. One of her favorite pastimes was listening to her mother read to her. As Woolf grew older, she was educated by her mother, and eventually a tutor. Due to her father’s position, there was always famous writers over the house interacting with the young Virginia and the Woolf’s large house library.