Virginia Woolf(1882-1941)

Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 in London, of a well-to-do family. Her father was Sir Leslie Stephen, a well-known essayist and the editor of the

English Dictionary of National Biography; he had a talent for drawing (inherited by

Virginia's sister, Vanessa), and was able to tell enchanting adventure stories and

recite poetry (this was Virginia's inheritance). So she grew up in a literary and

intellectual atmo sphere ; her father's friends were some of the most important

19th-century writers — Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Henry James.

Her mother (Julia Duckworth) was a beautiful and sensitive woman, who also

belonged to the aristocratic world.

Virginia was the third of four children (Toby, Adrian, Vanessa plus two half-

brothers, and two half-sisters:, Laura (Both parents had been married before: her

father to the daughter of the novelist, Thackeray, by whom he had a daughter

Laura (1870-1945) who was intellectually backward; and her mother to a barrister:

); they all received their elementary education mostly at home, from their

parents, or from Swiss and French governesses.

The unforgettable paradise of Virginia's youth was Talland House, a big house at St. Ives in Cornwall. The family went there every summer, with several

relations and such friends as Meredith and Henry James. Virginia adored the ocean, the sound of the waves, the ebb and flow of the tides. All this provided

a treasure-house of reminiscences, which she drew on for such works as To the

Lighthouse, Jacob's Room or The Waves. The variety of her experience found its synthesis in the symbols of water, sea and waves. For Virginia, water

represented two things; on the one hand, it represented what is smooth-flowing, harmonious, feminine. On the other hand, it stood for the possibility of the resolution of intolerable conflicts in death.

But this happy period was soon to end. In 1895 Virginia's mother died and her

father, unable to bear the idea of going to Talland House without her, sold it.

Virginia was thirteen, but she was deeply affected by her mother's death, and for a long period she suffered from depression , becoming shy and moody; it was the first sign of how frail her nerves were. In these years she

used to read for long hours in her father's library and began writing articles and

essays. She began to be in revolt against her father's aggressive and tyrannical

character and his idealization of the domesticated woman.

In 1904 Sir Leslie Stephen died; it was only with her father's death that Woolf

began her own life and literary career.

She felt isolated and afraid, and later, in 1913, in a moment of mental anguish,

she attempted suicide by taking drugs.

The Stephen children abandoned their house at Hyde Park Gate, and settled in

Bloomsbury, in Gordon Square. Virginia was now writing for literary reviews, and

for a short time she gave lectures in English history to young students at Morley

College. Their spacious Bloomsbury home became the centre of the famous Blooms bury Group , a circle of intellectuals such as the biographer Lytton

Strachey, the art critics Clive Bell and Roger Fry, the economist J.M. Keynes, the

writer E.M. Forster and the publisher Leonard Woolf, whom Virginia married in 1912. This group was an expression of the new tendencies of the first half of

the twentieth century, in which manners and morals were drastically changed.

Strict Victorian moralism, which had permeated the early life and education of

Virginia Woolf, was being replaced by a new vision of the world. The old taboos

were falling away; the Bloomsbury “apostles”, as they called themselves, were an - ti-monarchist in politics, sceptical in religion, intellectually free and open-mind ed, and refined in art and literature.

In this period Virginia also worked as a volunteer in the movement for women's

suffrage, and she always felt the subordinate position of women in society to be an

injustice.

In 1917 the Woolfs founded the Hogarth Press, which was to publish most of

Virginia's works, as well as the works of talented young writers, such as Katherine

Mansfield and T.S. Eliot.

Notwithstanding her recurrent mental instability, Virginia Woolf liked to live in a cultivated

environment, to be listened to, to feel the effect of her words on the people around her.

When she was alone, she was overcome by anxiety and insecurity, by terror at the

brevity of life.

The Second World War increased her terrors; in the London streets, devas tated by the

bombs, she saw the disintegration of her world, and isolation from her friends. Aware of

her mental fragility, and obsessed by the fear of madness, she decided to put an end to her

life. She drowned herself in the river Ouse on March 28th, 1941 (Rodmell/Lewes

Sussex).

WORKSThe only remedy for her anxiety was work: she wrote nine novels, many short stories, some biographies and twentysix notebooks in diary form:Novels

← The Voyage Out (1915)

← Night and Day (1919) ← Jacob's Room (1922) ← Mrs Dalloway (1925) ← To the Lighthouse

(1927)← Orlando: A Biography

(1928) ← The Waves (1931) ← The Years (1937) ← Between the Acts

(1941)

Essays and other works

Kew Gardens (1919), a sketch.Monday or Tuesday (1921), a collection of short stories.Mr Bennet and Mrs Brown (1924), literary criticism.The Common Reader, First Series (1925), Second Series (1932): two volumes of literary criticism.A Room of One's Own (1929), a delightful, ironic account of the position of women and their right to live their own lives.Flush: a Biography (1933), on the love story between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, seen through the eyes of the latter's dog.Three Guineas (1938), an essay ridiculing male pomposity.

FEATURES and THEMES

FAITHFUL ANALYSIS OF HUMAN NA TURE : in May 1924 Virginia Woolf delivered a lecture entitled Mr Bennet and Mrs Brown, where she claimed that the basis of good fiction lay in "character in it self" , and launched an attack on the Edwardians. She said that, although both groups shared the same concern with the problem of characterization and tried to be as accurate and realistic as possible, the Edwardians contented themselves with presenting their characters from the outside . But, since the "human beings" are not on ly what they do (actions, dialogues), but above all what they are (feelings, thoughts, memories),

the novel , in order to be a faithful analysis of human na ture, had to turn inwards and explore man's mental experience and his com plex consciousness, to enter into the minds of him/her.

the MOMENTS OF BEING " : what became all important for the writer, therefore, was what she called "the moments of being " , that is to say the moments of utmost intensity, of per ception, of vision in the "incessant shower of innumerable atoms" that strike our minds every day, as she wrote in her much-quoted statement:

"Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance comes not here but there... Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration and complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it."

Later she continues:

"Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness."

NEW TECHNIQUE : following what Joyce had already done in England and Proust in France, and what, in a way, Sterne had attempted as early as two centuries before, Virginia Woolf therefore abandoned the traditional technique of novel writing for a new, more modern form. Accordingly, she eliminated - traditional plots and - direct dialogues, - turning to an interior monologue. External reality lost its long-praised importance, ex cept for the influence it had on the inner life, the life of the mind.

The mind, however, has processes of its own, which obviously need different methods of narration. Aware of this fact and in compliance with Bergson's theory of "la durée"(inner time has a duration that eludes conventional clock time),

Use of TIME : Woolf tried to compress these mental processes into minimum time units, using a variety of techniques. These techniques, which earned her novels the definition of "experimental", show. This is why she contained the plot respectively within one ordinary day (Mrs Dalloway), or two different days , years apart (To the Lighthouse) , or only a few hours (Between the Acts). In Orlando, on the other hand, she expanded time to about three centuries. Moreover, in her need to shift back and forth in time and intermingle past, present and future , she followed Joyce in using two methods which are analogous to film montage:

- the subject can remain fixed in space and its consciousness can move in time (time-montage);

- time remains fixed, and it is the spatial element that changes (space-montage) risk of incoherence and ob scurity.

SYMBOLS AND IMAGERY : in compliance with the "stream of consciousness" technique, the work is rich in symbols and imagery. Besides the lighthouse and the journey, which may stand in turn for the themes of the quest, the alternation of light and dark ness in the flow of life , the transition from innocence to experience, and even death, the third main symbol is that of the sea, so much loved by Virginia Woolf who, while producing the novel, wrote in her Diary. "the sea is to be heard all through it". With its ebbing and flowing tides and its waves lapping on the beach, the sea, now consoling and protective, now menacing and destructive, stands therefore for life itself and for the inexorable flow of time.

LOVE/LONELINESS : they were an obsession for her (“To the Lighthouse” – “Mrs. Dalloway”)

Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway is a unique novel in that it takes place in a single day—a Wednesday in mid-June 1923 . The novel interweaves two seemingly unconnected storylines during this day.

1) At the beginning, Clarissa Dalloway , fiftyish and recently recovering from an illness, is preparing for a party she will host that evening . She begins her day running an errand to purchase the flowers for the party. Throughout the morning, Clarissa reflects on her past, including her decision to marry Richard Dalloway thirty years earlier, rather than her more fiery suitor Peter Walsh.

2) Meanwhile, the second storyline begins with Septimus Smith , a shellshocked war veteran, out on the street with his wife, Lucrezia. Septimus struggles with the aftereffects of the war, hearing voices and feeling that life has little meaning. A car backfiring paralyzes him, and he reflects on his life. Septimus lost his good friend and commanding officer Evans in the war and continues to carry on conversations with this lost friend.

- Clarissa has returned home and begins to remember a special friendship she shared in her youth with Sally Seton, a vivacious, slightly scandalous young woman. The two shared a special bond, bordering on a crush, and Clarissa remembers a kiss they shared.

- Clarissa begins mending her green silk dress for the evening when she receives an unexpected visit from Peter Walsh , her former suitor . Peter had once told Clarissa disparagingly that one day she would become “the perfect hostess,” and it becomes more and more clear that his prediction was accurate. Clarissa and Peter talk to each other easily about the present, but both are thinking of their past and the decisions they made to get them to the place they are now. Clarissa’s 17-year-old daughter Elizabeth enters and Peter ends his visit.

- Peter goes to a park where Septimus and Lecrezia are also walking. The couple get into a heated discussion about suicide, and Peter sees them as a young and in love couple quarreling . He doesn’t realize the depth of their emotions or how unsteady Septimus is. Lecrezia has made an appointment for Septimus to see a specialist, Sir William Bradshaw, who dismisses the complexity of Septimus’s madness and suggests a rest in an asylum to get more perspective .

- Meanwhile, Richard Dalloway has been to lunch with Lady Bruton . Clarissa was somewhat miffed that Lady Bruton invited only Richard and not her, and sees it as a remark on Clarissa’s validity. Richard has realized during this lunch that

he wants to come home and tell Clarissa that he loves her . Unfortunately, he never finds the words, as he has gone so many years without saying them.

- Septimus and Lecrezia go to their apartment to wait for the attendants who will take him to the asylum. When they arrive, Septimus decides to escape from them, and not wanting to leave life but not wanting to meet the attendants, he jumps out the window to his death .

- Clarissa’s party is underway, with several ghosts from her past – including Peter Walsh and Sally Seton – in attendance. Richard has still been unable to tell her that he loves her. Very late into the party, Sir William and Lady Bradshaw arrive, very apologetic for their tardiness. Lady Bradshaw explains that they were delayed as one of Sir William’s patients (Septimus) had committed suicide that day. The party ends with Clarissa surprisingly disappointed at the success of her party.

Features and themes

- Mrs Dalloway is often considered Woolf's first fully realised novel, a book in which the writer has fully mastered her literary technique. Clarissa Dalloway's interior monologue, interwoven with the sights and sounds of the city, is constructed with a bravura that marks a new phase in the development of the English novel.

- The beginning of the novel is a brilliant example of the way Virginia Woolf portrays interior time in contrast with chronological time. As Clarissa walks around London, her physical trajectory towards the flower shop is constantly interrupted by the interior tunnels that open up in her mind . She is thrown into the depths of the past and the uncertain terrain of the future . One of Virginia Woolf's literary aims in writing Mrs Dalloway, as she herself put it, was to `dig caves behind her characters'. Walking around London, Clarissa's physical impressions of the city are interwoven with her mental associations and reveries, while the dilated quality of her interior time is interrupted by the chimes of Big Ben.

- Another interesting aspect of the novel is the way the characters of Clarissa and Septimus become mutually dependent, although they are never directly connected apart from at the party scene . In her diary, Woolf noted:

`Mrs Dalloway seeing the truth. Septimus Smith seeing the insane truth'.

- Like Clarissa, Septimus too moves about London, the brilliant chaos of his mind merging with the physical act of walking. But unlike Clarissa, Septimus is unable to hold all the threads of experience and sensation that invade his mind together, and weave them into a meaningful pattern. His choosing to die is inseparable from her acceptance of life, and his death becomes the halo that illuminates her life .

TRADUZIONE – OH! A Pistol Shot in The Street Outside!

Sciocchezze, sciocchezze, esclamò tra sé e sé mentre spingeva la porta a molla di Mulberry, il fioraio. Entrò leggera, alta, eretta, per essere subito salutata dalla faccia rotonda di Miss Pym, che aveva sempre le mani rosse, come se le tenesse nell’acqua fredda insieme ai fiori.Era pieno di fiori: delfini, fior di pisello, mazzi di lillà; e garofani, mazzi interi di garofani. C’erano le rose; c’erano gli iris. Ah sì – e così inspirava il dolce odore di quel giardino terrestre mentre stava in piedi a parlare a Miss Pym, che era in debito con lei, e pensava fosse molto buona, perché era stata buona con lei anni fa; molto buona, ma pareva invecchiata, quest’anno, mentre girava la testa da una parte all’altra tra iris e rose e ciuffi di lillà chini come per salutarla, con gli occhi socchiusi, e ne annusava, dopo il chiasso della strada, il profumo delizioso, la squisita freschezza. E poi, aprendo gli occhi, come apparivano fresche le rose, quasi lenzuola ricamate, pulite e piegate in ceste di paglia al ritorno dalla lavanderia; e scuri e compìti i garofani rossi, a testa alta; e i fior di pisello sparpagliati nelle coppe, di un viola sfumato, bianconeve, pallidi – come se fosse sera, e le ragazze uscissero nei loro vestitini di mussola a raccogliere fior di pisello e rose al termine di quella splendida giornata estiva, con il cielo d’un azzurro quasi nero, i delfini, i garofani, i gigli; ed era il momento tra le sei e le sette quando ogni fiore – le rose, i garofani, gli iris, i lillà – risplende: bianco, viola, rosso, arancione, ogni fiore sembra ardere di luce propria, morbida e pura, nelle aiuole coperte di nebbia; e come amava le grigie e bianche falene che giravano sopra i girasoli, sopra le primule! E mentre si spostava con Miss Pym da un vaso all’altro scegliendo i fiori, sciocchezze, sciocchezze, diceva a se stessa, sempre più gentilmente, come se quella bellezza, quell’odore, quei colori, e il fatto di piacere a Miss Pym, di riscuotere la sua fiducia, fossero un’onda a cui si lasciava andare che vinceva quell’odio, quel mostro, lo vinceva completamente; e la sollevava sempre più in alto quando – oh! un colpo di pistola, per strada! «Ah, queste automobili», disse Miss Pym, andando alla vetrina a guardare e poi tornando con un sorriso come per scusarsi e le mani piene di fior di pisello, quasi le automobili, e le gomme delle automobili, fossero tutta colpa sua. La violenta esplosione che aveva fatto trasalire Mrs. Dalloway e accorrere Miss Pym alla vetrina e scusarsi, proveniva da un’automobile che si era accostata al marciapiede proprio di fronte al negozio di Mulberry. I passanti che, naturalmente, si erano fermati e guardavano stupiti, ebbero appena il tempo di vedere un volto con un’aria di grandissima importanza contro un interno grigio perla, prima che una mano maschile tirasse le tendine e non vi fosse altro da vedere tranne che un rettangolo grigio-perla. Ciononostante per Bond Street iniziarono subito a circolare delle voci, fino a Oxford Street da un lato, e fino alla profumeria Atkinson dall’altro, invisibili, impercettibili, come una nuvola passeggera che sfiori le colline, avvolgendo per l’appunto con l’istantanea sobrietà e immobilità di una nuvola facce che un attimo prima apparivano del tutto scomposte. Ma ora il mistero le aveva toccate con la sua ala, avevano udito la voce dell’autorità; lo spirito della religione aleggiava nell’aria con occhi bendati e labbra aperte. Ma nessuno sapeva di chi era il volto che aveva visto. Del Principe di Galles? Della Regina? Del Primo Ministro? Di chi era quel volto? Nessuno lo sapeva. Edgar J. Watkiss, con il tubo di piombo che gli sbucava sotto il braccio, disse ad alta voce, ovviamente scherzando: «L’automobile del Primo Ministro». Lo sentì Septimus Warren Smith, che non era riuscito a passare. Septimus Warren Smith, all’incirca sui trent’anni, pallido in viso, il naso aquilino, le scarpe marroni e un cappotto sdrucito, gli occhi color nocciola, aveva quello sguardo d’apprensione che rende apprensivi anche degli estranei. Il mondo ha alzato la frusta; dove scenderà? Tutto si era fermato. Le vibrazioni dei motori risuonavano come una pulsazione irregolare che attraversava un corpo. Il sole si era fatto straordinariamente caldo per via dell’automobile in sosta davanti alla vetrina di Mulberry; vecchie signore sull’imperiale degli omnibus aprivano i loro parasole neri; e con uno scatto leggero se ne apriva qui uno verde, là uno rosso. Avvicinandosi alla vetrina con le braccia piene di fior di pisello, Mrs. Dalloway guardò fuori, il faccino roseo aggrottato per la curiosità. Tutti guardavano l’automobile. Septimus guardava. Dei ragazzi scesero dalla bicicletta. Il traffico aumentava. E l’automobile sempre là, con le tendine tirate, e su di esse un curioso disegno come di un albero, pensò Septimus, e questo graduale raccogliersi di tutte le cose in un unico centro davanti ai suoi occhi, come se un qualche orrore stesse per affiorare alla superficie ed esplodere in fiamme, lo terrorizzò. Il mondo ondeggiava e tremava e minacciava di esplodere in fiamme. Sono io che blocco la strada, pensò. Non era lui a essere

guardato e indicato; non era schiacciato da un peso, inchiodato al marciapiede, per qualche scopo? Ma quale? «Muoviamoci, Septimus», disse sua moglie, una donna minuta con gli occhi grandi e una faccia sciupata e puntuta; una ragazza italiana. Ma la stessa Lucrezia non poteva evitare di guardare l’automobile e quel disegno dell’albero sulle tendine. C’era la Regina là dentro – la Regina che andava a fare spese? L’autista, che era stato occupato ad aprire, girare e richiudere qualcosa, risalì al volante. «Vieni», disse Lucrezia. Ma suo marito, poiché erano sposati da quattro, cinque anni ormai, trasalì, si voltò di scatto, e disse: «E va bene!», con rabbia, quasi lo avesse interrotto. La gente se ne accorge senz’altro, la gente lo nota. La gente, pensò lei, osservando la folla che fissava l’automobile; gli inglesi, con i loro bambini e i loro cavalli e i loro abiti, che in qualche modo lei ammirava; ma adesso essi non erano altro che «gente», perché Septimus aveva detto, «Mi ucciderò», una cosa tremenda da dire. E se lo avessero sentito? Guardò la folla. Aiuto, aiuto! Voleva gridare ai garzoni dei macellai, alle donne. Aiuto! Appena l’autunno scorso lei e Septimus stavano all’Embankment avviluppati nello stesso cappotto e, siccome Septimus leggeva un giornale invece di parlarle, glielo aveva strappato dalle mani ridendo in faccia al vecchio signore che li stava guardando! Ma la disgrazia la si nasconde. Doveva portarlo via, in un parco. «Ora attraversiamo», gli disse. Aveva diritto al suo braccio, anche se inerte. A lei che era così ingenua, impulsiva, che aveva soltanto ventiquattr’anni, non conosceva nessuno in Inghilterra, e aveva lasciato l’Italia per amor suo, lui non offriva che un osso.