VIRGINIA WOOLF Flashcards
VIRGINIA WOOLF’S LIFE
– born in London in 1882.
– receives a good education at home thanks to her father’s library
– spends her summers at St Ives and the sea remains a central symbol in her art.
– When she is only thirteen her mother dies, which causes her first nervous breakdown
Now she is rebel against her father because of his idealization of the woman – this anger is reflected in the characterization of Mrs Dalloway
– After his death in 1904, she moves to Bloomsbury and becomes a member of the Bloomsbury Group.
It was a small group of intellectuals and artists in the area of Bloomsbury who
challenged the Victorian values
questioned values of sexual and personal relations
– In 1912 Virginia marries Leonard Woolf
– **In 1915 she publishes her first novel The Voyage Out.
– In 1917 the Woolfs found their own publishing house: Hogarth Press
– She comes in contact with Vita Sackville-West, a novelist and biographer, their friendship turns into a romantic affair
Virginia is also a talented literary critic.
Her works also has a great impact on the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
She becomes depressed – which was increased by World War II.
In 1941 She drowns herself in the River Ouse
Virginia Woolf’s works
In 1925 Mrs Dalloway
In 1927 To the Lighthouse
In 1928 Orlando
Her last work is Between the Acts, published after her death.
THE ESSAYS of Virginia Woolf are important, because they are self reflection about her novels.
In “Sketch of the past” for example, she talks about the difficulties women’s writers have to overcome.
VIRGINIA WOOLF’S STYLE
– THE TUNNELLING TECHNIQUE the digging into character’s personality and past, connecting them.
We get to know the characters through these “tunnels” dug into their memories.
The reader gets to know things through the characters themselves. Through this revelation we get to know them.
MOMENTS OF BEING and MOMENTS OF NOT BEING the different moments we live in a day.
Some are insignificant ( moments of not being ) some are so remarkable to our soul and feelings ( moments of being ). With Joyce these come from an epiphany.
She is interested in giving voice to the complexity of mind, feelings and memories, but she shows character’s emotions in a quite controlled way
using
– shifts of the point of view through flashbacks
– keeps the stability of grammar and syntax in an elegant prose.
