Who Am I? GUESS THE MYSTERY person Here are some clues: I was born in London, England, in 1892, the seventh of eight children born to my upper-class parents.
page 1 I was home-schooled in English literature and started writing at a young age.
page 2 After my parents died when I was relatively young, my siblings and I lived together and embraced a bohemian lifestyle.
page 3 My husband and I owned a printing press, and I self-published editions of some of my writing.
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My press also published the poet T.S. Eliot.
page 5 I wrote and published several slightly different versions of one of my well-known novels.
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Besides being a writer, I was a suffragist and early feminist.
page 7 I was a founder of the Bloomsbury Group for artists and writers, which is still in existence.
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I am considered one of the first modernist writers.
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I admired the writing of Walt Whitman.
page 10 My writing style is sometimes labeled as “stream of consciousness.”
page 11 My books are part of the curriculum in the literature, women’s studies, and gender studies departments at many universities.
page 12 In several of my novels, most of the “action” takes place in a character’s mind.
page 13 One of my novels is a “biography” of a poet who is born a man but lives—for over 300 years—as a woman.
page 14 Another of my novels features a title character who is preparing for a dinner party.
page 15 My family summered in Cornwall near Godrevy Lighthouse, which makes an appearance in one of my novels.
page 16 I influenced many other writers, including Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Plath.
page 17 Two of my novels are on Time magazine’s list of “100 Best Books.”
page 18 If I were alive today, I might be diagnosed with a mental illness such as bipolar disorder, which may have caused my death.
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Nicole Kidman portrayed me in a movie.
page 20 There is a well-known play and film with my name in the title, but it isn’t about me.
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My first name is Adelaide, but most people know me by my middle name. It’s also the name of one of the 13 original United States.
page 22 My last name sounds the same as the name of a woodland animal, but it is spelled differently.
page 23 I wrote these often-quoted words in a famous essay: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
page 24 I wrote To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and A Room of One’s Own.
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Have you guessed who I am?
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Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not you!
page 27 Introduction Virginia Woolf was a prolific writer who came from a bohemian background that influenced not only her own work but many of her contemporaries. Her writing style was unique, straddling the line between postmodernism and stream-of-consciousness narratives.
page 28 A Child of the Arts Adeline Virginia Stephen was born on January 25, 1892, in London, England. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was a writer, historian, and mountaineer. Her mother, Julia Prinsep Stephen, was a famous beauty and muse who used her inherited wealth for philanthropic pursuits. Both Julia and Leslie had been widowed before they married.
page 29 Each had children they brought to the marriage, but together they had four more, including Virginia and her sister Vanessa, who went on to become a painter and interior designer. They also had two sons, Thoby and Adrian.
page 30 While Virginia’s brothers went to college, the girls in the family were educated at home, mostly in English literature. They read, wrote their own magazines, and kept journals. Their parents encouraged the girls to be creative and enterprising and felt that writing and art were respectable professions for women.
page 31 When Woolf was only nine years old, she and her sister Vanessa began a family-centered mini-newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News. This kept her entertained as a writer for about four years, and then she began to keep personal diaries and notebooks.
page 32 Woolf’s early childhood was idyllic in many respects, as her parents had many creative and adventurous friends who were constantly surrounding the family. They also had the means to travel; summering in Cornwall near the Godrevy Lighthouse would later influence Woolf’s most famous book, To the Lighthouse.
page 33 Close to the end of her life, Woolf would write in her diary that although London was her home for most of the year, it was Cornwall that had truly left an impression on her. “Why am I so incredibly and incurably romantic about Cornwall? One’s past, I suppose; I see children running in the garden… The sound of the sea at night…”
page 34 Not all was idyllic, however. Woolf and her sister, both creative and eager to please their parents, held onto a rivalry. The pressure to be exceptional may have been amplified during the frequent visits from exceptional guests such as Henry James and Alfred, Lord Tennyson (pictured). In a letter to a friend, Woolf wrote, “Indeed one of the concealed worms of my life has been a sister’s jealousy— of a sister I mean.” page 35 Tragedy struck the “communicative, literate, letter writing, visiting, articulate” family (as described by Virginia herself in her journals) when Woolf’s mother, just 49 years old at the time, died from influenza. Woolf, 13, sank into the first of many depressions that haunted her throughout her life.
page 36 Perhaps because of his own grief at losing a second wife, her father loosened the rules on formal education, and Virginia was able to study ancient Greek, Latin, history, and classic literature at King’s College in London from ages 15 to 19. However, in 1904, when Virginia was 22, the family lost their patriarch (pictured) as well, and Virginia described his death as something that caused her to feel broken before she had even had the chance to fully bloom.
page 37 Discussion Starters • What interests did you have as a child? Were you encouraged to pursue them? • The Stephen family bonded over literature and academic pursuits. How do you and your family enjoy time with each other? • What moments from your childhood shaped you as an adult?
page 38 Portrait of a Young Woman After the death of their father, the four children from their parents’ second marriage chose to escape what they considered to be the dreary confines of Victorian London. Woolf was open with her distaste for London’s “polite” society and the rules and restrictions that came with it.
page 39 The group retreated to a coastal town on February 27, just five days after their father died. During their month of mourning by the water, Woolf decided that she would, as her father had suggested during his life, make a concerted effort to be a writer.
page 40 Woolf was excited about her newly decided destiny. She had both the support of her siblings and experiences from her travels to Italy and France to inspire her writing. However, Woolf suffered another nervous breakdown and had to be temporarily convalesced for three months.
page 41 Plans were made amongst all the siblings to sell the house in South Kensington, and then the four Stephen children moved to Bloomsbury, a less expensive and more bohemian area of London. It was at the Gordon Square house that life began to open up for them.
page 42 Thoby Stephens (pictured), the eldest male of the siblings, regularly invited his university friends from Cambridge to the house, and it slowly became an elite literary and art circle known as the Bloomsbury Group. Included in that group was his friend Leonard Woolf, a political theorist and writer. However, Virginia and Leonard’s meeting was brief, as he was leaving to take a civil service position in Ceylon, which is now Sri Lanka. page 43 Woolf began teaching at Morley College to bring in income, as the family had not inherited much money and needed to work to support themselves. For a brief time, all felt rosy and glowing and bright in their house.
page 44 In 1906, Thoby, only 26, died of typhoid. Woolf was once against devastated by death. She found a house close to Vanessa and Vanessa’s new husband, art critic Clive Bell (pictured). The relationship between the sisters continued on much as before, with the two traveling to Paris together and resuming their Thursday Club for their bohemian and artistically minded friends.
page 45 Nonetheless, their rivalry continued as well, and—all too frequently—the two sisters pursued what the other held most dear. The neverending rivalry, coupled with the pain of loss, fueled Woolf’s creativity and her depression. During this time, Virginia began working on her first novel, using the working title Melymbrosia, but it would eventually be published as The Voyage Out.
page 46 Guests were constantly coming in and out of Vanessa and Clive’s house, and in 1911, Leonard Woolf returned to London when he was on leave from his civil service position. During his monthlong stay with the couple, Woolf became enamored with Virginia and proposed marriage. Virginia, unsure of whether she should marry a man of no financial means, asked for time to think over the proposal. Not wanting to lose Virginia but unable to extend his leave, he quit his job to pursue her.
page 47 This made her even more wary of marrying him, explaining to him all the reasons she feared the restrictions of marriage. Her precarious mental state also became clear to Leonard at this time, but he was still not put off. In the end, they were married, and Leonard was devoted to trying to make his wife happy and feel safe. Unfortunately, she suffered another bout of depression shortly after the wedding, but this time Leonard was there to tend to her.
page 48 Discussion Starters • If you have siblings, what is your relationship like? Did that relationship change as you grew up? • Leonard Woolf took a chance on a romantic gesture that panned out. Have you ever taken such a leap of faith for love or something else? • What does unconditional love mean to you?
page 49 Writer on the Move For the next 20 or so years, the couple moved from here to there and traveled as Woolf wrote novel after novel. Along the way, she also published over 500 essays and reviews. She then used her childhood passion of bookbinding to begin her own publishing house, publishing the works of writers such as T.S. Eliot. Virginia hoped to create a world where peace and equality were paramount, and her small publishing house, Hogarth Press, was the closest she was able to come.
page 50 She worked alongside talented and liberal women, such as Vita Sackville-West (pictured) and Sibyl Colefax, challenging societal norms and her own beliefs about herself. Sackville-West, in an attempt to help her friend financially, chose the financially struggling Hogarth Press as her publisher.
page 51 Her novel, The Edwardians, became a best seller that kept the publishing company afloat. Woolf privately anguished that “low brow” novels were more popular than more artistic writing, but she was appreciative of her friend’s gesture. Woolf wrote Orlando in honor of Sackville-West, and the two remained close friends until Woolf’s death.
page 52 With each book she wrote, she explored the boundaries of what a story could be. She channeled her own thoughts into her writing by using stream-of-consciousness style to tell her tales. Woolf’s work, while modernist, holds up against the works of her contemporaries, such as James Joyce.
page 53 Her writing is renowned for being lyrical and experimental. The subjects of her books are often mundane, and boring moments are pulled apart and dissected in a poetic way. Her ability to elevate the ordinary to the extraordinary may not have been appreciated by most publishers, but thanks to Hogarth Press, she was able to share her unique vision with the world.
page 54 Discussion Starters • What are your thoughts on the difference between popular, best-selling literature and more artistic literature? • Virginia created her own publishing house as a way to have complete creative freedom. If she had not done this, do you think her books would have been published? How different would today’s literary landscape look without her works or the works of T.S. Eliot and James Joyce?
page 55 Virginia Woolf Quotes • A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. • As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. • One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
page 56 Virginia Woolf Quotes (continued) • You cannot find peace by avoiding life. • For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. • Language is wine upon the lips. • If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people. • Arrange whatever pieces come your way.
page 57 Conclusion Even with the success of her writing, a strong and stable marriage that gave her freedom to explore her interests, and close supportive friends, Woolf was never able to overcome her depression. As World War II raged on, with her London home being destroyed in the blitz in 1940, Virginia became even more obsessed and transfixed by death.
page 58 She and her husband moved to their country home in Sussex, but even leaving the city could not fix the sadness that seemed to permeate her world. In 1941, at just age 59, she placed rocks in her pocket and drowned herself in the river near her home.
page 59 It has been argued that because Woolf was so in touch with her own grief and pain that she was able to give great insight into the themes she wrote about, such as war, shellshock, and the pain of social classes. She is renowned for her ability to provide authentic voices for those who are suffering and to make pain into poetry so that it is more easily understood by those who have not experienced the horrors of war or the grief of loss. page 60 Discussion Starters • Many readers feel that Virginia Woolf’s work captures certain emotions. Do you have any books or authors that you feel strongly connected to? What do you connect most with? • In your opinion, can writers capture experiences they haven’t lived through? Do you think that Virginia Woolf’s losses at such an early age allowed her to better understand what soldiers were going through?
page 61 Can You Guess? (Guess the title of the Virginia Woolf novel based on its description.) 1. This is one of Woolf’s best-known works of nonfiction. Published in 1929, this book-length essay is a key work of feminist literary criticism. It was written following two lectures she delivered on “Women and Fiction” at Cambridge University the previous year.
page 62 Answer: A Room of One’s Own
page 63 Can You Guess? 2. This book takes place on one day in the middle of June 1923. Its plot is deceptively thin: a middle-aged society hostess is having a party; she hopes the prime minister will attend; she reconnects with old friends from her youth.
page 64 Answer: Mrs. Dalloway
page 65 Can You Guess? 3. This 1927 novel centers on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. It is told in three parts.
page 66 Answer: To the Lighthouse
page 67 Can You Guess? 4. In this 1915 novel, Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father’s ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery. The mismatched jumble of passengers provides ample opportunity to satirize Edwardian life. The novel also introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf’s later novel, Mrs. Dalloway.
page 68 Answer: The Voyage Out
page 69 Can You Guess? 5. This 1931 novel by Virginia Woolf is considered to be her most experimental work and one of the best British novels ever written. The book consists of soliloquies spoken by six characters from childhood through adulthood. Woolf was concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together.
page 70 Answer: The Waves
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