by Jasmijn Groot -
Virginia Woolf, born as Adeline Virginia Stephen (1881-1941), was an English modernist author, famous for pioneering the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Some of her most well-known works, also deal with her liberal ideas on gender norms, gender identity, feminism, sexual orientation and relationships, that were way ahead of her time.
Although many Victorian authors passed through her house when Virginia was young, due to her father’s occupation as an author and literary critic, the Stephens were conservative when it came to the rearing of their children: the boys went to expensive boarding schools and universities, while the girls had to make do with the private education they received at home. Virginia and her older sister Vanessa only left the family home after the death of their father in 1904.
There is still a considerable amount of research going on about Virginia’s childhood in relation to her literary work and her mental health. Virginia suffered from nervous breakdowns and depressive episodes throughout her life. Scholars are still debating to what extent Virginia’s relationships to her parents, their genetics, and the untimely death of her direct family members contributed to her struggles. Virginia testified during her lifetime that she suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her older half-brothers as a child. These testimonies were long believed to have been the ramblings of a ‘crazy lady’, but are now taken seriously and considered a possible cause to her depressive episodes.
Virginia and Vanessa moved from Kensington to a house in the bohemian Bloomsbury area of London, together with their brothers Thoby and Adrian. From 1905 onwards, Thoby began hosting his intellectual friends from Cambridge, that gradually became the Bloomsbury Group. All of its members, that quickly included Virginia and Vanessa, but also E.M Forster, were critical of old Victorian notions, focused on personal relationships, individual pleasure, art, and discussed left-liberal political stances.
Virginia ventured into journalism in 1904, writing reviews and essays for the Women’s Supplement of ‘The Guardian’ and 'The Times Literary Supplement’. She married fellow Bloomsbury member Leonard Woolf in 1912. Her first novel, ‘The Voyage Out’ was published by her half-brother’s publisher in 1915. Virginia and Leonard started their own publishing house, Hogarth Press, with which they published most of Virginia’s works.
Many of Virginia’s novels covered contemporary themes, such as war and shell shock, subjects that were influenced by her life during the First World War and the interbellum era. In many other respects, her work was ahead of its time, even timeless, covering topics that are still relevant today. One of her most popular works, Orlando (1928) is a fictitious biography of a man who changes gender and lives for 300 years, through which Virginia explored gender identity and norms. Virginia’s loving marriage to Leonard Woolf was an open one and both spouses engaged in extramarital affairs. Virginia’s most famous lover, Vita Sackwell-West, who openly defied gender roles, was the inspiration behind the novel.
But Virginia was herself in many ways a modern feminist: she wanted financial independence, to contribute to her family’s income, and she desired the acknowledgement of women writers as equals to men. In her long essay A Room of One’s Own (1929), she argues for women’s liberation and she explores the social injustices against women in her own time, while finding its roots in the past. Virginia not only found our lack of knowledge on historical women worrisome, she argued that their invisibility is a result of a lack of opportunity, not of a biological inferiority.
Virginia Woolf passed away on the 28th of March 1941 at the age of 59. She drowned herself in the river behind her house in Sussex, England.
Jasmijn is a gender historian and founder of the Historical Women Project. She publishes articles and lends her expertise on gender and women's history to various kinds of media. Jasmijn studied History and Ancient Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit.
Image: Photograph of Virginia Woolf (1927) Photographer Unknown. Harvard Theater Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
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