Trabajo Final Virginia Woolf - Copia

7/28/2019 Trabajo Final Virginia Woolf - Copia

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LITERATURA

INGLESA VIRGINIAWOOLF


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INDEX

I. LIFEII. MENTAL ILLNESSIII. MARRIAGEIV. THE BLOOMSBURY GROUPV. HER WRITING STYLEVI. HER WORKVII. NOTABLE WORKVIII. NOTABLE ESSAYSIX. DEATHX. PUBLISHED BOOKSXI. REFERENCES


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LIFEConsidered one of the best of the Modernist writers, Virginia Woolf's personal life is almost as

intriguing as her fiction.

In 1878, Leslie Stephen and Julia Jackson Duckworth married a second marriage for both. Four

years later, in 1882, they gave birth to Adeline Virginia Stephen on the 25th of January at 22 Hyde

Park Gate, London. Virginia was the third of their four children. Her two older siblings were

Vanessa Nessa (1876-1961) and Thoby (1880-1906). Adrian (1883-1948) was the fourth son. He

became a psychoanalyst and Vanessa, a painter.

Leslie Stephen began his career as a clergyman but soon became agnostic and took up journalism.

He and Julia provided their children with a home of wealth and comfort. However, both parents

had very strong personalities and Virginia would feel overshadowed by them for years.

Formal education was only allowed to men, however, she was able to take courses of study (some

at degree level) in Greek, Latin, German and history at the Ladies Department of King's CollegeLondon between 1897 and 1901, and this brought her into contact with some of the early

reformers of womens higher education such as Clara Pater, George Warr and Lilian Faithfull

(Principal of the Kings Ladies Department and noted as one of theSteamboat ladies). Her sister

Vanessa also studied Latin, Italian, art and architecture at Kings Ladies Department.

Also, Virginia was able to take advantage of her father's abundant library and observe his writing

talent. She was usually surrounded by intellectual conversation although she rejected the values

and morals of her generation.

During her life and since her death she has been the subject of much debate and discussion

surrounding her pacifist political views, her sexual orientation as well as her mental health issues.

Virginia Woolf and her father
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_College_Londonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_College_Londonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_College_Londonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_ladieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_ladieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_ladieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_College_Londonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_College_London


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MENTAL ILLNESSIt is said Woolf was manic-depressive. Throughout her

life, she was plagued by periodic mood swings and

constantly battled depression. Apparently this illness

started in 1895 when she was thirteen and her motherdied. This caused the first mental breakdown of many

that would plague her off and on the rest of her life.

Two years later, the death of Stella, who was her half-

sister, caused her another period of profound depression

because Stella had become like a mother to Virginia. The

death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming

collapse and she was briefly institutionalised.

She spent times in nursing homes for rest cures; she frankly

referred to herself as mad and said she heard voices and

had visions. She spent three short periods in 1910, 1912 and 1913 at Burley House, 15 Cambridge

Park, Twickenham, described as "a private nursing home for women with nervous disorder".

Though this instability often affected her social life, her literary productivity continued with few

breaks throughout her life. When Virginia was not depressed she worked intensely for long hours

at a time.

Modern scholars (including her nephew and biographer, Quentin Bell) have suggested her

breakdowns and subsequent recurring depressive periods were also influenced by the sexual

abuse to which she and her sister Vanessa were subjected by their half-brothers George andGerald Duckworth.

MARRIAGEIn 1912, Virginia accepted Leonard Woolf's proposal of marriage, after recovering from a mental

breakdown in a country nursing home. Leonard was a good novelist, a Jewish descent and the son

of a barrister. He had studied at Cambridge and from 1923 to 1930 he was a literary editor on the

Nation.

Both Virginia and her husband were very interested in literature. Together they founded the

Hogarth Press in 1917. Hogarth Press had operated from the basement room in Tavistock Square.They scouted great unknown talents like T.S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield and E.M. Forster. Hogarth

also began publishing Virginia's novels.

From 1919 and 1941, during the inter-war period, Virginia and Leonard lived in Rodmell, near

Lewes, Sussex, where Virginia was a central character of the literary scene as well as in London.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mood_swinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Bellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_%28mood%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse#Child_sexual_abusehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse#Child_sexual_abusehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herbert_Duckworthhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Duckworthhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Duckworthhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herbert_Duckworthhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse#Child_sexual_abusehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse#Child_sexual_abusehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_%28mood%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Bellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mood_swing


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With the outbreak of WWII the Woolfs were living at their country retreat, Monks House near

the village of Rodmell, which is now preserved by the National Trust. In 1940 they received word

that their London home had been destroyed. Fear of a German invasion loomed and Leonards

Jewish heritage provoked the couple to make a suicide pact if the possibility of falling into German

hands arose. Leonard as usual was ever vigilant to the onset of the next major depressive episode

in his wife; she would get migraine headaches and lay sleepless at night.

Although she was married to Leonard, she had strongest emotional ties with women. Her lovers

included Madge Vaughn (the daughter of J. A. Symonds, and inspiration for the character of Mrs.

Dalloway), Violet Dickinson, as well as composer and female activist Ethel Smyth; and in 1922,

Woolf met and fell in love with Vita Sackville-West. After a tentative start, they began an affair

that lasted through most of the 1920s.

Even though she had those affairs of the heart with other women, Virginia remained very much in

love with Leonard for her entire life. She thought he was her greatest supporter, half-nursemaid

and half-cheerleader.

Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf


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THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP

In 1905 she started meeting with friends to discuss literary and artistic topics. This group of people

would later become known as the Bloomsbury Group. The Bloomsbury group was initially based at

the Gordon Square residence of Virginia and her sister Vanessa (Bell).

The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury had been started by Virginias brother Thoby and his

friends from Cambridge. Its other members included among others E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey,

Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, and Leonard Woolf. The consolidation of the group's beliefs in unifying

aesthetic concerns occurred under the influence of the philosopher G.E. Moore. The group quickly

grew to encompass many of Londons literary circles, who gathered to discuss art, literature, and

politics.

Unfortunately, by the early 1930s, the group ceased to exist in its original form. Virginia Woolf also

became a member of the Peoples Suffrage Federation and of the Womens Co-operative Guild.

The Bloomsbury group in a picnic
http://www.gothereguide.com/bloomsbury+london-place/http://www.gothereguide.com/bloomsbury+london-place/http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/forster.htmhttp://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/forster.htmhttp://www.gothereguide.com/bloomsbury+london-place/http://www.gothereguide.com/bloomsbury+london-place/


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HER WRITING STYLEWoolf proved to be an innovative and influential 20th Century author. In some of her novels she

moves away from the use of plot and structure to employ stream-of-consciousness to emphasise

the psychological aspects of her characters. In her works she experimented with the emotional

motives of characters, and the various possibilities of fractured narrative and chronology. Themesin her works include gender relations, class hierarchy and the consequences of war. Woolf was

among the founders of the Modernist movement which also includes T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James

Joyce, and Gertrude Stein.

Virginia Woolf did not use the traditional writing styles of her time. During her lifetime, Virginia

had become a leader in the modernist literary movement.

Much of her writing reflected her inner conflicts. Woolf developed innovative literary techniques

in order to reveal women's experience and find an alternative to the dominating views of reality.

WORKWoolf is considered one of the

greatest innovators in the English

language. In the words of E.M.

Forster, she pushed the English

language "a little further against

the dark," and her literary

achievements and creativity are

influential even today.

Woolf's reputation declined

sharply after World War II, but her

eminence was re-established with the surge of Feminist criticism in the 1970s. After a few more

ideologically based altercations, not least caused by claims that Woolf was anti-semitic and a snob,

it seems that a critical consensus has been reached regarding her stature as a novelist: Virginia

Woolf is among the greatest of 20th century writers.

Her work was criticised for epitomizing the narrow world of the upper-middle class English

intelligentsia, peopled with delicate, but ultimately trivial, self-centred, and overly introspective

individuals. Some critics judged it to be lacking in universality and depth, without the power to

communicate anything of emotional or ethical relevance to the disillusioned common reader,

weary of the 1920s aesthetes who seemed to belong to an era definitely closed and buried.

Virginia Woolf's peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to obscure her central strength: Woolf

is arguably the major lyrical novelist in the English language. Her novels are highly experimental: a

narrative, frequently uneventful and commonplace, is refractedand sometimes almost
http://www.online-literature.com/ts-eliot/http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/http://www.online-literature.com/ts-eliot/


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dissolvedin the characters' receptive consciousnesses. Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity

fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and visual impressions.

The intensity of Virginia Woolf's poetic vision elevates the ordinary, sometimes banal settings of

most of her novels, even as they are often set in an environment of war.

NOTABLE WORKSShe began writing professionally in 1905, initially for the Times Literary Supplement with a

journalistic piece about Haworth, home of the Bront family.

The Voyage Out (1915) was Virginia Woolf's first novel. Set in South America, it tells of the

emotions of tourists somewhere near the Amazon River. The whole scene is imaginary; Woolf had

never been there, but the story can be read as an allegory of artistic creation. This work, which

received mixed reviews, was followed by Night and Day(1919), a realistic novel about the lives of

two friends, Katherine and Mary.Jacob's Room (1922) was based upon the life and death of her

brother Thoby.

To the Lighthouse (1927) had a tripartite structure: part 1 presented the Victorian family life, the

second part covers a ten-year period, and the third part is a long account of a morning and

reconciliation. The central figure, Mrs. Ramsay, was based on Woolf's mother. Also other

characters in the book were drawn from Woolf's family memories.

With The Waves (1931) Woolf established herself as one of the leading writers of modernism. And

this is perhaps Woolf's most difficult novel since it follows in soliloquies the lives of six persons

from childhood to old age.

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) formed a web of boring and

depressing thoughts of several groups of people. Like

Joyce's Ulysses, the action takes place in a single day, in

this case in June in 1923. There is little action, but much

movement in time from present to past and back again.

The central figure, Clarissa Dalloway, married to Richard

Dalloway, is a wealthy London hostess, who spends her

day in London preparing for her evening party. Clarissa

recalls her life before World War I, her friendship with

the unconventional Sally Seton, and her relationship

with Peter Walsh. At her party she never meets the

shell-shocked veteran Septimus Smith, one of the first

Englishmen to enlist in the war. Sally returns as Lady

Rossetter, Peter Walsh is still enamored with Mrs.

Dalloway, the prime minister arrives, and Smith

commits suicide.


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Orlando (1928), a fantasy novel, traced the career of the androgynous protagonist, Orlando, from

a masculine identity within the Elizabethan court to a feminine identity in 1928. Chief model for

the character was writer Vita Sackville-West, with whom Woolf had a lesbian relationship. Violet

(Keppel) Trefusis, who had a passionate relationship with Vita, was Sasha, named after a white

Russian fox Orlando had had as a boy, "a creature soft as snow, but with teeth of steel, which bit

him so savagely that his father had it killed." The book was illustrated with pictures of Vita

Sackville-West, dressed as Orlando. According to Nigel Nicolson, the initiative to start the affair

came as much on Virginia's side as on the more experienced Vita's. Their relationship coincided

with a period of great creative productivity in Woolf's career. In 1994 Eileen Atkins dramatized

their letters in her play Vita and Virginia, starring Atkins and Vanessa Redgrave.

NOTABLE ESSAYSAs an essayist Woolf was prolific. She

published some 500 essays in periodicals and

collections, beginning 1905. To find her own

voice, she read and wrote voraciously, but it

was not until Woolf was middle-aged she felt

confident in her craft. Characteristic for

Woolf's essays are dialogic nature of style

her reader is often directly addressed, in a

conversational tone.

In her essay 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown'

Woolf argued that John Galsworthy, H.G.

Wells and other realistic English novelist

dealt in surfaces but to get underneath thesesurfaces one must use less restricted

presentation of life, and such devices as

stream of consciousness and interior

monologue and abandon linear narrative.

Marital disappointments and frustrations she

often dealt ironically.

Virginia Woolf's concern with feminist

thematic is dominant in A Room of One's

Own (1929). In it she made her famous

statement: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she wants to write fiction."

In this essay Woolf examined the obstacles and prejudices that have hindered women writers. She

separated women as objects of representation and women as authors of representation, and

argued that a change in the forms of literature was necessary because most literature had been

"made by men out of their own needs for their own uses."
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/sackvill.htmhttp://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/sackvill.htm


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DEATHAfter completing the manuscript of her last (posthumously published) novel, Between the Acts,

Woolf fell into a depression similar to that which she had earlier experienced. The onset of World

War II, the destruction of her London home during the Blitz, and the cool reception given to her

biography of her late friend Roger Fry all worsened her condition until she was unable to work. On28 March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, and walked into the

River Ouse near her home in Sussex, and drowned herself. Her body was found later on April 18,

1941; and she was then cremated, her ashes spread under two elms at Monks House , their home

in Rodmell, Sussex. She was fifty-nine years old when she died

In her last note to her husband she wrote:

Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another

of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't

concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the

greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I

don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't

fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work.

And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want

to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with

me and incredibly good. I want to say thateverybody knows it. If anybody could

have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty

of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people

could have been happier than we have been. V.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_the_Actshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitzhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Fryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Ouse,_Sussexhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodmellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodmellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Ouse,_Sussexhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Fryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitzhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_the_Acts


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PUBLISHED BOOKS The Voyage Out, 1915 Night and Day, 1919 Monday or Tuesday: Eight Stories, 1921 Jacob's Room, 1922 Mrs Dalloway, 1925 To the Lighthouse, 1927 Orlando, 1928 A Room of One's Own, 1929 The Waves, 1931 Flush, 1933 The Years, 1937 Three Guineas, 1938 Roger Fry: A Biography, 1940 Between the Acts, 1941 (edited by Leonard Woolf) The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, 1942 (edited by Leonard Woolf) A Haunted House and Other Short Stories, 1943 (edited by Leonard Woolf) The Moment and Other Essays, 1947 (edited by Leonard Woolf) The Captain's Death Bed And Other Essays, 1950 (edited by Leonard Woolf) A Writers Diary, 1953 (ed. Leonard Woolf) Letters of Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, 1956 Granite and Rainbow, 1958 (edited by Leonard Woolf) The Lady in the Looking-Glass, 1960 Contemporary Writers, 1960 (edited by Jean Guiguet) Nurse Lugton's Golden Thimble, 1966 Collected Essays, 1967 (4 vols., edited by Leonard Woolf) Mrs Dalloway's Party, 1973 (edited by Stella McNichol) Moments of Being, 1976 (edited by Jeanne Schulkind) Books and Portraits, 1977 (edited by Mary Lyon) The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1975-80 Women and Fiction, 1979 (edited by Michle Barrett) The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 1977-84 (5 vols., edited by Anne Olivier Bell) The Letters of Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 1984 The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf, 1985 (edited by Susan Dick) The Essays of Virginia Woolf, 1986-2011 Congenial Spirits: The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1989 Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909, 1990 (edited by Mitchell Leaska) A Moment's Liberty: The Shorter Diary, 1990 (abridged and edited by Anne Olivier Bell) A Woman's Essays: Selected Essays, Vol. 1, 1992 (edited by Rachel Bowlby) Travels with Virginia Woolf, 1993 (edited by Jan Morris) The Crowded Dance of Modern Life: Selected Essays, Vol. 2, 1993 The Mark of the Wall and Other Short Fiction, 2001 ( Selected Essays, 2008 (edited with an introduction and notes by David Bradshaw)


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REFERENCESConsulted websites:

The literature network: Virginia Woolfhttp://www.online-literature.com/virginia_woolf/

Literature collection: Virginia Woolfhttp://www.literaturecollection.com/a/virginia-woolf/

The international Virginia Woolf societyhttp://www.utoronto.ca/IVWS/

Books and writers: Virginia Woolfhttp://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/vwoolf.htm

Famous people: Virginia Woolfhttp://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/virginia-woolf-30.php

Spark notes: Virginia Woolfhttp://www.sparknotes.com/biography/woolf/terms.html
http://www.online-literature.com/virginia_woolf/http://www.online-literature.com/virginia_woolf/http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/virginia-woolf/http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/virginia-woolf/http://www.utoronto.ca/IVWS/http://www.utoronto.ca/IVWS/http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/vwoolf.htmhttp://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/vwoolf.htmhttp://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/virginia-woolf-30.phphttp://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/virginia-woolf-30.phphttp://www.sparknotes.com/biography/woolf/terms.htmlhttp://www.sparknotes.com/biography/woolf/terms.htmlhttp://www.sparknotes.com/biography/woolf/terms.htmlhttp://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/virginia-woolf-30.phphttp://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/vwoolf.htmhttp://www.utoronto.ca/IVWS/http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/virginia-woolf/http://www.online-literature.com/virginia_woolf/

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