A Study Of Virginia Woolf free essay sample

# 8217 ; s Life Reflection In Her Work Essay, Research Paper Patton 1 Josh Patton Mrs. Theresa R. Coco College Prep English 12 8 March, 2000 # 8220 ; Virginia Woolf # 8211 ; A Life of Struggle and Affliction # 8221 ; The literary critic Queenie Leavis, who had been born into the British lower center category and reared three kids while composing and redacting and learning, thought Virginia Woolf a absurd representative of existent adult females # 8217 ; s lives: # 8220 ; There is no ground to say Mrs. Woolf would cognize which terminal of the cradle to stir. # 8221 ; Yet no 1 was more cognizant of the monetary value of unworldliness than Virginia Woolf. Her inventive ocean trips into the waveringly lit deepnesss of # 8220 ; Mrs. Dalloway # 8221 ; and # 8220 ; To the Lighthouse # 8221 ; were partially owed to a freedom from the actual day-to-day demand of sailing out # 8211 ; to the store or the office or even the babys room. Her hubby, Leonard Woolf, believed that without the assistance of her heritage his married woman would likely non hold written a novel at all. For money guaranteed non merely clip but rational autonomy. # 8220 ; I # 8217 ; m the lone adult female in England free to compose what I like, # 8221 ; she exulted in her journal in 1925, after the publication of # 8220 ; Mrs. Dalloway # 8221 ; by the Hogarth Press, which she and Leonard had set up to liberate her from the demands of publishing houses and editors. What she liked to compose turned out to be, of class, books that gave voice to much that had gone unheard in the old history of composing things down: the dartings and weavings of the human head in the fleet amplifications of thought itself ( Malcomi, 4 ) . # 8220 ; Mrs. Dalloway # 8221 ; is a delicate testimonial to the complexnesss of societal interaction on a individual twenty-four hours in London in 1923, stoping with a shallow society hostess # 8217 ; s glistening party ; it is besides one of the Patton 2 written about the effects of World War I. Virginia Woolf was non without political relations or fierce worldly concerns ( 4-5 ) . The journals and letters crossing both universe wars are filled with bulletins statements, panics of distant ground forcess and next-door bombs and the precariousness of the full civilisation of which she knew herself to be a late, likely excessively keen bloom. Her art is less direct. In her novels the resonance of great events sounds from deep within single lives. More than any other author, Woolf has shown us how the most faraway calamities become a portion of the manner we think about our day-to-day outlooks, our friends, the colourss of a park, the conditions, the possibility of traveling on or the determination non to. The old image of Virginia Woolf the prig has mostly given manner to assorted loftier word pictures: Virginia Woolf the literary priestess, or the Queen of ever-titillating Bloomsbury, or # 8211 ; most influentially # 8211 ; the critical womens rightist whose needed # 8220 ; room of her ain # 8221 ; came to look the really workshop in which such books as # 8220 ; The Second Sex # 8221 ; and # 8220 ; The Feminine Mystique # 8221 ; were subsequently produced ( Reinhart, 27 ) . Recently, nevertheless, Woolf has been granted a excessively modern female pantheon: the victim. The ascertained molestations of her childhood, the turns of lunacy that led to her self-destruction, seem now to commend instead than to measure up her right to speak for adult females. But Woolf # 8217 ; s personal illustration is in the strength and the steady professionalism that kept her invariably at work # 8211 ; the overambitious failures as sweated over as the words victory. For all her breakability as a adult female, she was a author of elephantine appetency, and she knew full good how much she intended to envelop in her all right but colossal, distributing, unbreakable webs. # 8220 ; Happier today than I was yesterday, # 8221 ; she wrote in her journal in January 1920, # 8220 ; holding this afternoon arrived at some thought of new signifier for a new novel ( Reinhart, 36 ) . Suppose one thing of another # 8230 ; merely non for 10 pages but for 200 or so # 8211 ; doesn # 8217 ; t that give the diarrhea and Patton 3 elation I want ; doesn # 8217 ; t that get closer and yet maintain signifier and velocity, and enclose everything, everything? # 8221 ; She non merely said that she was depressed, but that she was traveling # 8216 ; mad # 8217 ; once more, and get downing to hear voices. She could non concentrate, and believed she could non read or compose. She was hopeless and self-critical, and to the terminal maintained that her self-destruction was justified and that she would non recover. Her self-destruction was planned and determined, and despite a possible failed effort a hebdomad earlier can non be seen as an unprompted gesture that went incorrectly. When she wrote at the terminal of her life that she was traveling huffy # 8216 ; once more # 8217 ; , she spoke the truth and from drawn-out experience. She had her foremost breakdown at the age of 13, and others when she was 22, 28, and 30. From 1913 to 1915, from the age of thirty-one to 33, she was badly so frequently and for so long that lasting insanity was feared ( Malcomi, 12 ) . These onslaughts were severe, necessitating medical intervention and bed remainder. During the remainder of her life she had wilder temper swings. All this, particularly the drawn-out unwellnesss of 1913/14 and 1915, is good documented ; in peculiar, typical stages of passion and depression are described in textbook-like item. When elated, her hubby describes her ceaseless speaking, the content going progressively incoherent as she worsens in the following twenty-four hours or two, until, acutely frenzied, there is merely a # 8216 ; mere clutter of dissociated words. # 8217 ; Equally convincingly he describes her idea processes when down: she believes that she is non ill, that her status is her ain mistake, and is unable to accept reassurance or to be argued out of her beliefs. The symptoms of elation and depression are convincingly described, and their badness made clear. Over the old ages we can follow the phasic nature of her unwellness, with irregular onslaughts runing from the mild and doubtful to the terrible and drawn-out. This is a convincing life history of frenzied depressive psychosis, climaxing in self-destruction at Patton 4 the age of 59, and including a self-destructive effort in her mid-thirtiess which was about successful. Because no specific interventions were available during her life the unwellness can be observed running its natural class ; such terrible and drawn-out onslaughts would be rare today. Her medical history otherwise can be followed in item in her journals. She had much minor ill-health between 1915 and her decease in 1941. Some of this is attributable to mild temper swings, either up or down, possibly overzealously managed by her hubby and physicians with bed rest and curtailment of her societal life. She suffered from frequent lengthy and disabling concerns, migrainous in character, accompanied by depressive symptoms and by palpitations ( Malcomi, 10 ) . Flu- like unwellnesss and dysmenorrhoea are frequent. The physicians who attended her and her household were the most distinguished of the clip, particularly the head-shrinkers, but despite their distinction had no effectual intervention to offer at the clip, and seem prejudiced and unhelpful to modern eyes, although their text editions show they were able to do an accurate diagnosing. There is an impressive household history of affectional unwellness. Her brother Thoby died immature but was an emotionally disturbed kid. Her sister Vanessa had an episode of depression in her mid-thirtiess after a abortion. The onslaught lasted some two old ages, and was regarded by the household as similar to Virginia # 8217 ; s depressions. Her brother Adrian besides suffered from episodes of jitteriness and depression. Her male parent was a glooming pessimistic adult male who had two mild onslaughts of depression. His male parent # 8211 ; her gramps # 8211 ; had three serious depressions which affected his calling. Her first cousin on her male parent # 8217 ; s side developed terrible passion in his mid-twentiess and died within a few old ages in an refuge ( 13-14 ) . For coevalss her household history is filled with glooming work forces and flake Patton 5 household was besides really originative, non merely in literature. Her male parent founded and wrote much of the Dictionary of National Biography. Many of her relations were friends of Thomas Carlyle: see Virginia Woolf and Thomas Carlyle. Virginia resembled her male parent in many ways, and had a lose but ambivalent relationship with him. Her siblings were originative in other ways. Her sister was a painter, and her brother one of the first English psychoanalysts. Her personality was a mixture of shyness and exuberance. She was remembered by friends non as a gloomy down individual but as a superb conversationist, express joying, joking, gossipmongering, and frequently indulging in malicious flights of phantasy at the disbursal of her friends. She was loved by kids, given to interrogating others in her hunt for stuff, and frequently ill-mannered and clannish. She was awkward out of her societal category, and had an uneven flake visual aspect which made people stare at her in the street ( Reinhart, 26-27 ) . As a kid she was sexually abused, but the is hard to set up. At worst she may hold been sexually harassed and abused from the age of 12 to 21 by her half-brother George Duckworth, 16 old ages her senior, and sexually explored as early as six by her other half-brother. It is likely that her sisters and half sister were besides sexually abused. In ulterior life, likely as a consequence, she was sexually cold in her matrimony. She had several homosexual flirtings in big life, some intense, but likely non affecting physical dealingss. It is improbable that the sexual maltreatment and her manic-depressive unwellness are related. However alluring it may be to associate the two, it must be more likely that, whatever her upbringing, her household history and familial makeups were the finding factors in her temper swings instead than her unhappy childhood. More relevant in her childhood experience is the long history of mournings that punctuated her adolescence and precipitated her first depressions. Early losingss are known to be related to adult depression. Her life and illness agreements with recent work on Patton? Rienhart, Ruth. # 8220 ; Virginia Woolf # 8211 ; Rediscovered. # 8221 ; The New York Times. 12 May 1991, late erectile dysfunction. : C1. 12 May 1991. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.times.com Malcomi, Richard. # 8220 ; Virginia Woolf # 8217 ; s Psychiatric History: Drumhead and Site Guide. # 8221 ; Compuserve Modern Feminist Literature Guide. ( 1999 ) 24 Aug. 1999. hypertext transfer protocol: //ourworld.compuserve.com/homepage/malcolmi/woolf-psych/sum.htm Rienhart, Ruth. # 8220 ; Virginia Woolf # 8211 ; Rediscovered. # 8221 ; The New York Times. 12 May 1991, late erectile dysfunction. : C1. 12 May 1991. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.times.com Malcomi, Richard. # 8220 ; Virginia Woolf # 8217 ; s Psychiatric History: Drumhead and Site Guide. # 8221 ; Compuserve Modern Feminist Literature Guide. ( 1999 ) 24 Aug. 1999. hypertext transfer protocol: //ourworld.compuserve.com/homepage/malcolmi/woolf-psych/sum.htm Rienhart, Ruth. # 8220 ; Virginia Woolf # 8211 ; Rediscovered. # 8221 ; The New York Times. 12 May 1991, late erectile dysfunction. : C1. 12 May 1991. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.times.com Malcomi, Richard. # 8220 ; Virginia Woolf # 8217 ; s Psychiatric History: Drumhead and Site Guide. # 8221 ; Compuserve Modern Feminist Literature Guide. ( 1999 ) 24 Aug. 1999. hypertext transfer protocol: //ourworld.compuserve.com/homepage/malcolmi/woolf-psych/sum.htm