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Virginia Woolf: Life
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Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 in London, England. She was not given a formal education and benefited from observing her father’s writing abilities. Virginia’s mother died when she was thirteen. This caused the first of several mental breakdowns Virginia would have throughout her life.
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Virginia Woolf is regarded as a major figure in the Modernist movement, making significant contibutions to the development of the novel. She is known as an experimenter and innovator in novel writing, particularly in her use of the techniques of interior monologue and stream of consciousness. Her novels are noted for their poetic and symbolic quality, where the emphasis is not on plot or action but rather the psychological life of the characters. Her novels are ... known for their delicacy and sensitivity of style, their evocation of place and mood, and their background of historical and literary reference. Many are concerned with time, its passage and the difference between external and inner time.
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Concerned with the inner life of individuals, Woolf attempted to represent not only the social relationships of her characters but ... their solitude, when they were most themselves, forming silent relationships with the things around them. She was, in fact, quite interested in the things of the natural world, such as rocks and plants, because of their solitude and self-sufficiency; her books contain many detailed descriptions of such things. Her concern with things for their own sake influenced Alain Robbe-Grillet and other French novelists of the nouvelle vague (new wave) movement, who attempted to write purely objective fiction in which the author does not intrude with commentary.
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This novel was originally entitled Melymbrosia, but Woolf repeatedly changed the draft. An earlier version of The Voyage Out has been reconstructed by Woolf scholar Louise DeSalvo and is now available to the public under the intended title. DeSalvo argues that many of the changes Woolf made in the text were in response to changes in her own life [7].
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One of the greatest literary achievements of the twentieth century, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE is Virginia Woolf's most popular novel. The serene and maternal Mrs Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr Ramsay together with their children and assorted guests are holidaying on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life, and the conflict between male and female principles.
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Why has the woman artist, according to Woolf, led a life of such "disorder" and struggle? How does Woolf argue against the assumption that "no woman can write the plays of Shakespeare"?
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