“Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.”~Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf, born in London and named Adeline Virginia Woolf, is remembered as one of the first feminist and foremost literary novelist of the twentieth century. One of her most famous novels, To The Lighthouse (1927), recaptures her childhood memories of summers spent at a cottage near Port-minster Bay, near Cornwall.
Growing up in a home with step-siblings (both parents were married prior), she experienced tragedy at the age of 13 when her mother died suddenly and two years later, her half sister died. It is documented that this was the first of several nervous breakdowns she suffered; the most crippling was in 1904 after the death of her father where she was institutionalized. It has been suggested that some of these breakdowns were due to sexual abuse she and her half sister were subjected to by her half brothers. She wrote about this in her essays A Sketch of the Past and 22 Hyde Park Gate.
In 1912 she married a writer, Leonard Woolf, but in 1922, Virginia met the female writer and gardener Vita Sack-ville-West and engaged in an affair. It was during this relationship she wrote one of the longest love letters in literature. Her writing blended art, English history, a psychological stream of thought and her interpretation of time and relationships. Her work was often narrative, symbolic and shared her take on life.
When the effects of bi-polar disorder caused her to withdraw or suffer socially, she wrote about hearing voices and having visions.
“My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery-always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What’s this passion for?” (from a letter dated in 1932). She did write about suicide in some of her work and she would refer to herself as “mad” and frustrated that the “buzzing” in her head distracted her from writing.
To think if she had been born in today’s world, later than 1882, her life would have been so different. Despite bouts with depression and instability, she is credited with creating literature that integrated a type of psychological stream of consciousness, which set her apart from other writers of her time.
She was an influential member of the Bloomsbury Group in England and other literary circles. She was described as witty, funny and intelligent. Despite bouts with depression and instability, she studied and wrote until her untimely death in 1941 at the age of 59. Tragically taking her own life, leaving a letter to her husband describing her illness as something that “I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer…I can’t fight any longer…”
To think if she had been born in a different time period, with today’s advances in medication and treatment, she would have left more literary works behind. And despite her controversial life, and her battle with a misunderstood illness, she was a creative power that should not be dismissed or forgotten.
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