We explain who Virginia Woolf was, what her main contributions to Anglo-Saxon literature were, and the tragic end of her life.
Virginia Woolf stood out in modernist Anglo-Saxon literature and was an international feminist reference.
Who was Virginia Woolf?
Virginia Woolf She was an English writer, famous for her contribution to contemporary novels and for being one of the central figures of Anglo-Saxon literary modernismwhose peak occurred between 1900 and 1940. She was the author mainly of novels, although she also dabbled in short stories, essays and biography.
With her husband Leonard Woolf, Virginia was part of the so-called Bloomsbury Groupin which various British intellectuals of the interwar period participated, such as John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) and EM Forster (1879-1970), among others.
His work, on the other hand, constitutes a literary reference for contemporary feminismespecially her famous essay “A Room of One’s Own,” in which she reflects on the challenges of a woman who aspires to intellectual life.
In addition, his struggle with bipolar affective disorder that he suffered throughout his life, as well as his tragic suicide in the River Ousenear Lewes, have been the inspiration for novels, films and plays by various authors.
Birth and early years of Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa had a close but competitive relationship.
Adeline Virginia Stephen He was born in London on January 25, 1882, into a wealthy family in the Kensington neighborhood.Her father was the historian, essayist and biographer Leslie Stephen, and her mother Julia Jackson, a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters. Virginia was the second of the couple’s four children, along with Vanessa, Thoby and Adrian; although in their home they lived with the descendants of their parents’ previous marriages: a daughter from Leslie and his first wife, and three from Julia and her first husband.
Nonetheless, Virginia’s parents gave their children a privileged educationIn fact, the Stephen home, located in Hyde Park Gate, was frequently visited by artists and writers of importance in Victorian society of the time, such as Henry James (1843-1916) and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Virginia and her sister Vanessa did not go to school, but had tutors and private teachers. responsible for their education.
From childhood, both of them showed their creative talent. Vanessa, who would end up devoting herself to painting, was already drawing her first illustrations; while Virginia kept a family newspaper called Hyde Park Gate News. Yes ok The older sister used to have maternal and protective attitudes towards Virginia.mutual competition was not unknown between them.
The family often spent their summers on the Cornish coast, where they had a cottage overlooking Porthminster beach. Virginia spent her childhood best there, between 1882 and 1894, and Many of these landscapes would appear portrayed in his literary work decades later.like Godrevy Lighthouse.
The Bloomsbury Group
Virginia (left) participated in the “Dreadnought farce” disguised with a turban and false beard.
Family life was interrupted by the sudden death of his mother in 1895.at just 49 years of age, followed by her half-sister Stella, two years later. These events plunged Virginia into the first great depression of her life.but it was the death of her father in early 1904 that caused her to have a nervous breakdown for which she had to be hospitalized. She was 22 years old.
From then on, Virginia’s older sister, Vanessa, took charge of the household and the younger siblings, under the command of her older maternal half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth.
Those were years of suffering for the Stephen sisters.. Not only because of the loss of her parents, but because of the mistreatment and sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of her stepbrothers. Years later, Virginia referred to this dark passage of her youth in her autobiographical essays A Sketch of the Past (“A Sketch of the Past”) and 22 Hyde Park Gate.
Finally, The sale of the parental home and the move away from his maternal half-siblings allowed the Stephens to lead a more pleasant life.Vanessa and Adrián bought a house in the London neighborhood of Bloomsbury, where they were able to freely devote themselves to their studies, artistic creation and receiving guests from the capital’s cultural life.
Thus, from 1905, Virginia created the “Friday Club” and her brother Thoby the “Thursday Afternoons”. These names were used to humorously refer to their meetings with Thoby’s fellow students, or with Virginia herself, who in those years joined King’s College London, to debate, converse and share ideas.
Among them was, at the end of 1904, the young Leonard Woolf, Virginia’s future husband.who that year left for Sri Lanka to take up a post in the colonial bureaucracy, as well as the art critic Clive Bell (1881-1964), whom Vanessa married in 1907.
From there emerged the so-called “Bloomsbury circle”, where The most important English intellectuals and artists of the first third of the 20th century met theresuch as John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), EM Forster (1879-1970), Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), among others belonging to the exclusive society of the “Cambridge Apostles”.
Although its members never considered themselves part of a group, they shared an aesthetic, political and humanistic criterion.as well as a deep feeling of rejection towards the rigid Victorian morality, religion and realism of the 19th century. They were defenders of individualism and freedom of criteria, and allowed themselves freer considerations regarding interpersonal relationships and individual pleasure.
The existence of this group became known in England at the time, in large part, thanks to what became known as the “Dreadnought Hoax”, a joke that young artists played on the British Navy in 1910 and which caught the attention of the press. Virginia participated in the deception, disguised as an African prince.
The Bloomsbury Circle was deeply affected by the First World War.although its members continued to develop their respective and successful careers. In fact, the most relevant moment for most of them came after 1920 and until the end of the 1930s.
The Dreadnought Hoax is a satirical stunt carried out by several members of the Bloomsbury Group together with the Irish poet Horace de Vere Cole (1881-1936). On 7 February 1910, the poet persuaded the British Navy to show its flagship, HMS Dreadnought, to a supposed Ethiopian delegation that actually consisted of several members of the group in disguise. The hoax caught the attention of the press and made the British Navy look ridiculous.
Marriage with Leonard Woolf
Virginia and Leonard Woolf were married in August 1912. They were together until Virginia’s death.
Virginia’s formal foray into writing began in 1905.the year in which he published his first texts in the Times Literary SupplementHer relationship with writing soon became her mainstay, especially after the death of her brother Thoby in 1906 and the “loss” of her sister Vanessa in 1907, the year of her marriage to Clive Bell.
The intellectual stimulus of the Bloomsbury Circle was also conducive to the development of new artistic forms. Thus, in 1908, Virginia set out to reformulate the novel genre with a narrative project that would escape the Victorian considerations of the time.. This novel, titled Melymbrosiawas not completed until 1912.
Virginia was especially influenced by the emergence in 1910 of the post-impressionist work of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). in London society.
At that time, Virginia’s mental health was precarious and writing was her main anchor in life. Until, in 1911, Leonard Woolf returned from the East and decided to woo her.. Despite their unstable financial situation (Virginia calls him a “penniless Jew” in her diaries), they married in August 1912, when she was 30 years old. They spent their honeymoon in Spain.
The couple, from the beginning, was united by close loving and professional ties.Leonard also wrote and was also critical of the bourgeois lifestyle. In 1913 he published his anti-colonialist novel The Village in the Jungleand in 1914, after publishing another novel, he devoted himself to writing about politics and social activism.
Virginia, for her part, completely reformulated her first novel in 1913 and published it at her half-brother Gerald Duckworth’s publishing house under the title “End of trip” (The Voyage Out). However, the book’s publication had to be postponed until 1915, as Virginia suffered another nervous breakdown. Convinced that she was a failure as a woman and as a writer, hated by her sister and despised by Leonard, Virginia unsuccessfully attempted to take her own life in September 1913..
In April 1915, Virginia had new mental episodes and was delirious for some time. But that same year she improved considerably from her “evil imaginings,” which she managed to keep more or less under control until the end of her days.
Much has been written about Virginia Woolf’s marriage to Leonard Woolf, and about the complicated relationship they had. It is known that their sex life was not particularly active, partly due to Virginia’s traumas with her stepbrother and her constant and sudden mood swings, and also due to Leonard’s lack of experience. Their relationship tended towards intellectuality and literary admiration. The writer also had a long-term relationship with the poet Vita Sackville-West. Leonard, for his part, devoted himself to Virginia with the devotion of a husband and an editor, even after her death.
Hogarth Press
Virginia had an affair with the poet Vita Sackville-West for much of the 1920s.
In 1917, The Woolfs bought a home printing press and founded their own publishing project: Hogarth Pressnamed after their house in the London suburbs, Hogarth House. There they published their first joint work, Two stories: a book with the stories Three Jews of Leonard and The mark on the wall from Virginia. It was a success. Of the 150 copies made, 134 were sold.
The possibility of publishing her own books allowed Virginia to fully devote herself to literary experimentation, without worrying about the usual preferences of publishers. In addition, It allowed her to come into contact with the work of other writers of the time, not always well valued by Virginia.such as James Joyce (1882-1941), TS Eliot (1888-1965) or Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), with whom…