Few literary giants have graced the world with their extreme sensitivity and insight into British society. In this respect, the author Virginia Woolf is a literary genius who deserves our praise. In books concerning Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941, authors trace ways in which Woolf’s personality was formed by her peculiar family background. Brought up by her father Leslie Stephen, Woolf’s creative genius, coupled with a nervous constitution, would later emerge and mark her as a woman, as a writer, as a wife and as a critic. In the book, we learn that Woolf’s early acquaintance with books began when her father introduced her to his personal library, where Woolf is reported to have spent many happy hours reading and expanding her knowledge. Later on in the book, the reader discovers that Woolf met and engaged with numerous brilliant literary critics who formed the Bloomsbury Group. One of its members, Leonard Woolf, would become her husband and lifelong partner in dealing with her literary ideas and with her bouts of nervous breakdowns. The author writes quite passionately of Woolf’s demise, but makes sure to touch upon major events in her life which were mainly positive ones. These include her marriage to Leonard, whom she regarded as a best friend, the literary parties she attended at her residence in Richmond, and the purchase of a hand-press in 1917.
As the years wore on, however, Woolf became increasingly weighed down by her nervous demeanor which, coupled with her extreme shyness and introvert nature, made it all the harder for her to reach out and communicate with others. As such, it may come as no surprise to learn that, despite her husband’s heroic and valiant attempts to draw her out of her secluded home, Woolf took her own life by drowning herself in a river near a house she and Leonard possessed in Rodmell, Sussex.
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"“You cannot find peace by avoiding life” – Virginia Woolf".
Although a biographical sketch is indeed a helpful asset to any reader who is interested in Woolf as a writer, it is also important to consider how she was considered by her contemporaries and how she earned literary applause. Although Woolf is renowned today for her independent spirit, remarkable critical skills, and introspective nature, she was often overshadowed by her male colleagues because British society, and the world by extension, rarely hailed women who attempted to write professionally. Like many other women of her time, Woolf was often relegated to the sidelines. In their analysis of women literature, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar tackle this phenomenon. “But this distinctly feminine aspect of their art has been generally ignored by critics because the most successful women writers often seem to have channeled their female concerns into secret or at least obscure corners” (212). In this respect, it may come as little surprise to learn that critics like Gilbert and Gubar are challenged to fit women literary works of the 19th century into well-defined literary categories, which were usually established by men. Gilbert and Gubar write: “Such writers, therefore, both participated in and-to use one of Harold Bloom’s key terms- “swerved” from the central sequences of male literary history, enacting a uniquely female process of revision and redefinition that necessarily caused them to seem odd” (213).
In this respect, I would argue that works penned by women writers like Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson must have seemed “odd”, to quote Gilbert and Gubar, because they focused on issues which male writers typically disregarded. To use a specific example, Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own exposes the myriad of difficulties women face when assuming a role that does not fit into the domestic realm, but that seeps into the professional one. In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf unabashedly reveals how difficult it is for a woman to write without considering the pressures laid upon her in a distinctly male-centric culture. In this vein, Woolf argued a quite radical notion for the day, stating that women who wanted to write needed to have a room of their own in order to think independently. As such, it is tempting to argue that Woolf pushed the envelope by refusing to accept her role as a mere homemaker. Her staunch refusal to conform made her stand out even more. Gilbert and Gubar write: “For the woman writer, however, concealment is not a military gesture but a strategy born of fear and dis-ease” (215).
Another highly acclaimed novel, Mrs. Dalloway, raises issues of feminism, mental illness and homosexuality without reserve. In pursuing her line of thought, Woolf never backs down. Rather, in her quintessentially quite yet observant nature, she manages to subtly critique her society and draw attention to the superficiality of British Victorian system. In many regards, reading Woolf is like peering over the edge of a cliff; one never knows what will happen next. Woolf’s writing reads smoothly and fluidly, yet an undercurrent of nervousness combined with a suppressed perpetual sadness is also discernible. Some feminist scholars have argued that women writers have so much more to hide in comparison to their male counterparts and that, as a result, their literary works hold much more power and allure. Gilbert and Gubar write: “The evasions and concealments of their art are therefore far more elaborate than those of male writers” (214).
What did Virginia Woolf try to conceal, one may wonder? A fair amount, I would argue. In this paper, we have addressed the mental health challenges that crippled Woolf as a person. On the flip side, we have looked at the brilliant ways in which Woolf as an introspective writer was able to shed light on her society in a critical fashion. Although her life may strike us as sad, ending in suicide, her life was rich and purposeful, dedicated as she was to observing the world with a clinical eye.
- Ed. Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.
