Virginia Woolf Notes

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

Epitaph: "Death is the enemy. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding o Death!"
Full name: Adeline Virginia Stephen.
Born: 25 January 1882 in Hyde Park Gate, Kensington, London.
Parents: Julia Jackson Duckworth and Leslie (later Sir Leslie) Stephen.
Family: Grew up in a large, talented family and educated herself in her father’s library.
Influences: Met eminent Victorians in childhood and learned Greek from Walter Pater’s sister.
Family Newspaper: Virginia and her sister Vanessa Bell started a family newspaper called Hyde Park Gate News.
Inspiration: Summer vacations at Talland House, St Ives, Cornwall, provided inspiration for her writing.
Youth:
- Suffered sexual abuse from her older half-brother.
- Experienced mental breakdown after her mother’s death in 1895.
- Her half-sister died in childbirth two years later.
- Her father died of cancer in 1904.
- A brother died of typhoid in 1906.
Bloomsbury Group:
- After her father’s death, she settled with her sister and two brothers in Bloomsbury.
- The Bloomsbury Group was an intellectual circle including Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, and E. M. Forster.
- Her sister Vanessa married Clive Bell in 1907.
- Woolf and her brother Adrian took another house in Bloomsbury, hosting literary and artistic friends at evening gatherings.
Career:
- Began writing for the Times Literary Supplement in 1905, a connection that lasted almost until her death.
- Married Leonard Woolf in 1912.
- Worked on her first novel, The Voyage Out, since 1908 and published it in 1915.
Health:
- First serious breakdown in 1904, attempted suicide by jumping out of a window.
- Health collapsed again in 1910, and in 1913 she took a near-fatal overdose.
- Suffered another major collapse in 1915.
- Founded the Hogarth Press with Leonard in 1917 as therapy; their first production was Two Stories.
Novels:
- Night and Day (1919)
- Jacob’s Room (1922)
Essays:
- Wrote an essay Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown (1924) which critiqued the realism of Arnold Bennett.
Modernism:
- Regarded as one of the principal exponents of modernism.
- Major novels: Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931).
Other Works:
- Orlando (1928), a biography inspired by Vita Sackville-West.
- Flush (1933), a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s spaniel.
- The Years (1937), a chronicle of the Pargiter family from 1880 to the present day.
- Between the Acts (1941), her last work.
Death: Drowned herself on 28 March 1941, shortly after finishing her last work.
Literary Criticism:
- Also a literary critic, essayist, and journalist.
- A Room of One’s Own (1929) is a classic of the feminist movement.
- Three Guineas (1938) connects patriarchal tyranny at home with tyranny abroad.
Critical Essays: Published in several collections, including The Common Reader (1925), The Death of the Moth (1942), The Captain’s Death Bed (1950), and Granite and Rainbow (1958).

Important Works

The Voyage Out

Published in 1915.
Alternate version: In 1981, Louise DeSalvo published an alternate version with its original title, Melymbrosia.
Plot:
- Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship, initiating self-discovery.
- Satirizes Edwardian life through mismatched passengers.
- Introduces Clarissa Dalloway, who later becomes the central character in Mrs. Dalloway.
- Characters modeled after figures in Woolf's life: St John Hirst (Lytton Strachey) and Helen Ambrose (Vanessa Bell).
- Rachel's journey mirrors Woolf's own from a repressive household to the intellectual Bloomsbury Group.
- Rachel Vinrace dies of a fever towards the novel's end.

Mrs. Dalloway

Published in 1925.
Working title: The Hours; created from two short stories, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister".
Plot:
- Clarissa Dalloway prepares to host a party in London.
- Reflects on her youth in Bourton and her choice to marry Richard Dalloway instead of Peter Walsh, and her inability to be with Sally Seton.
- Peter Walsh visits, reintroducing these conflicts.
- Septimus Warren Smith, a First World War veteran with traumatic stress, spends his day in the park with his wife Lucrezia.
- Septimus experiences hallucinations of his deceased friend Evans.
- Septimus commits suicide by jumping out of a window to avoid involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital.
- Clarissa hears about Septimus' suicide at her party and admires his act as a preservation of his happiness.
- The action takes place on a day in June 1923.
- Comparison to James Joyce's Ulysses; uses stream of consciousness.

To the Lighthouse

Plot
- Part I: The Window
  - The Ramsays' summer home in the Hebrides, on the Isle of Skye.
  - Mrs. Ramsay assures her son James that they will visit the lighthouse the next day, but Mr. Ramsay doubts it due to the weather.
  - This creates tension between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, and between Mr. Ramsay and James.
  - Friends and colleagues join the Ramsays, including Lily Briscoe, a young painter attempting a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay and James.
  - Lily faces doubts, fueled by Charles Tansley, who believes women cannot paint or write.
  - Mr. Ramsay is irritated when Augustus Carmichael asks for more soup.
  - Mrs. Ramsay is concerned when Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle arrive late to dinner after Minta loses her grandmother's brooch.
- Part II: Time Passes
  - Ten years pass; the First World War begins and ends.
  - Mrs. Ramsay dies, as do two of her children: Prue from childbirth complications and Andrew in the war.
  - Mr. Ramsay is left without his wife's support.
  - Told from an omniscient viewpoint and Mrs. McNab's perspective, who highlights the changes in the unoccupied summer house.
- Part III: The Lighthouse
  - Remaining Ramsays and guests return ten years later.
  - Mr. Ramsay plans to visit the lighthouse with Cam(illa) and James.
  - The children initially protest but eventually set off.
  - James keeps the boat steady and receives praise from his father, fostering empathy.
  - Cam's attitude towards her father shifts from resentment to admiration.
  - They are accompanied by Macalister and his son, who catches fish.
  - Lily completes her painting, balancing memories to reach an objective truth about Mrs. Ramsay and life.
  - Realizes the execution of her vision is more important than legacy.

Orlando: A Biography

Published in 1928.
Inspired by Vita Sackville-West.
Plot
- The hero is born as a male nobleman in England during the reign of Elizabeth I.
- Undergoes a sex change at 30 and lives for over 300 years without aging.
- Includes an episode of love and ice skating during the Great Frost of 1608.
- Orlando writes a poem, The Oak Tree.
- Features appearances by Nicholas Green and Alexander Pope.
- Orlando marries a sea captain, Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine.

The Waves

Published in 1931.
Plot
- Bernard is a storyteller.
- Louis seeks acceptance and success.
- Neville seeks a series of men to love.
- Jinny is a socialite; her worldview corresponds to her physical beauty.
- Susan prefers the countryside and grapples with motherhood.
- Rhoda is riddled with self-doubt and seeks solitude and resembles Virginia Woolf.
- Percival, based on Thoby Stephen, is a morally flawed hero who dies in India.
- Percival never speaks but is described and reflected on by the other six characters.

The Years

Published in 1937; the last work published during her lifetime.
Traces the Pargiter family from the 1880s to the mid-1930s.
Plot
- Follows the Pargiters, an upper-middle-class London family, from 1880 to 1937.
- Introduces Colonel Pargiter, his dying wife, and his mistress.
- Meets his children: Eleanor, Maurice, Milly, Delia, Edward, Rose, and Martin.

Between the Acts (1941)

Takes place just before the Second World War, over a single day during the annual pageant.
Characters
- Bartholomew Oliver: A widower and retired Indian Army officer, owner of the house.
- Lucy Swithin: Bartholomew's eccentric but kind sister.
- Giles: Bartholomew's restless and frustrated son, works in London.
- Isa: Giles' wife, attracted to Rupert Haines.
- Mrs. Manresa: A guest who flirts with Bartholomew and Giles.
- William Dodge: A guest who is assumed to be homosexual.
- Miss La Trobe: The strange and domineering spinster who wrote the pageant.
Plot
- The pageant has three main parts: a Shakespearean scene, a restoration comedy parody, and a Victorian triumph panorama.
- The final scene, "Ourselves", involves the cast turning mirrors on the audience.
- Miss La Trobe retreats to a pub, brooding over the pageant's perceived failure and planning her next drama.
- Giles and Isa are left alone, presumably resulting in conflict and reconciliation.

Drama

Freshwater: A Comedy

Produced in 1935.
Virginia Woolf researched Julia Margaret Cameron's life and published her findings in an essay titled Pattledom (1925).
It was later adapted into Freshwater drama.

Test Your Knowledge

In which of the following works of Woolf, Alfred Lord Tennyson makes an appearance as a character?
A – Freshwater: A Comedy
In which river did Woolf drown herself?
C – Ouse
Into how many sections did Woolf divide her novel ‘The Waves’?
D – 9
In which work of Woolf, Clarissa Dalloway was introduced for the first time?
B – The Voyage Out
Which of the following ghost story is written by Virginia Woolf?
A – A Haunted House
“It is a strange, tragic, inspired book whose scene is a South America not found on any map and reached by a boat which would not float on any sea, an America ..” Who said this about Woolf’s ‘The Voyage Out’?
C – E. M. Forster
In which novel of Woolf do we find the character of Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine?
B – Orlando
From which work of Woolf is her epitaph taken – “Death is the enemy. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding o Death!”
D – The Waves
Which of the following characters did not appear in Woolf’s ‘The Waves’?
A – Lucrezia
Who wrote ‘Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life’?
B – Julia Briggs
Which of the following work is not written by Virginia Woolf?
D – The Glass Castle
Which of the following figures did Virginia Woolf write a full-length biography about?
C – Roger Fry
Virginia Woolf's ‘To the Lighthouse’ is divided into three sections. Which of the following is not one of them?
D – The Isle of Skye
How many siblings, including half-siblings, did Virginia have?
A – 7
Who among the following was Virginia Woolf’s Godfather?
C – James Russell Lowell