Written by Nora Carranza
BIOGRAPHY
Thinking about Virginia Woolf:
One of the most relevant writers of the 20th century; she renovated
English literature of her time; extensive work including novels, stories,
articles, and essays; defended freedom and liberation of women; lover of men
and women; influenced intellectual and artistic society; opposed moral
conventions; loved her husband and he loved her deeply; introduced the
modernist movement in writing; expressed the stream of consciousness and the
complexity of the human mind; recognised, forgotten, and restored thanks to
feminist criticism. She suffered, from adolescence, deep and long depressive
crises, and finally threw herself into the River Ouse.
Adeline Virginia Woolf (London, 25 January 1882 –
Lewes, Sussex, 28 March 1941). Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was an eminent
writer and intellectual; her mother, Julia Prinsep Jackson, born in India,
belonged to a distinguished family. Both parents were widowers with children
from previous marriages, and together they had four more children, including
Virginia. One of them died young; the others maintained a close relationship.
Virginia and her sister Vanessa were educated at home
by their parents and tutors. Moreover, the house was visited by prominent
representatives of Victorian cultural society, and the young girls had free
access to Sir Stephen’s splendid library. Unfortunately, misfortune and tragedy
came early in Virginia’s life. It seems that both sisters suffered sexual abuse
from their stepbrothers. When Virginia was thirteen, Julia Stephen died—another
strong emotional blow that provoked her first episodes of mental instability
and depression.
Some years later, Stella, the beloved stepsister,
died. Eventually, Sir Stephen also passed away. These losses caused further
suffering, deepening the difficulties for Virginia to lead a normal life or
work during certain periods. It was a serious emotional situation that doctors
of that time could neither understand nor treat. The symptoms accompanied
Virginia Woolf throughout her life. Despite her literary success, social
influence, intense cultural activity, lovers, and a loving and stable marriage,
depression was always threatening her days.
After Sir Stephen’s death, the siblings moved to a
house in the elegant Bloomsbury neighbourhood. It soon became a meeting point
for artists, writers, economists, and philosophers, giving rise to the
celebrated Bloomsbury Group. The group had a significant impact due to its
progressive ideas about politics, art, feminism, and its opposition to Victorian
conventions.
In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a writer,
editor, and member of the group, who played a fundamental role in her life,
offering deep love, understanding, and emotional support. The couple founded
Hogarth Press, publishing not only Woolf’s works but also books by innovative
authors in literature and psychoanalysis.
In 1925, Mrs
Dalloway was published, her first fully recognized novel, although she had
already written other works.
That same year, Virginia Woolf met Vita
Sackville-West, a writer and gardener, married to the politician Harold
Nicolson. Their relationship lasted throughout the 1920s, a fruitful period for
both authors. Woolf produced To the
Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and The Waves (1931), as well as several
essays. The two women remained friends until Woolf’s death.
In 1929, her most relevant essay, A Room of One’s Own, based on lectures delivered at Cambridge
University, was published. It clearly expresses her feminist ideas: women must
find their own voice, not imitate men. The difference between sexes is not a
problem, but a richness.
The arrival of World War II, with bombings (Virginia
and Leonard lost their house in London), and the Nazi threat increased her
emotional struggles.
The couple had a cottage, Monk’s House, in Sussex.
After finishing her last novel, Between
the Acts, Virginia Woolf fell again
into a profound depression she could not overcome. On 28 March 1941, she filled
her pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse near her home, leaving
two letters: one for Vanessa and another for Leonard. Her body was found days
later.
Nowadays, her condition might be considered bipolar
disorder. Perhaps today she would not have needed to take her own life.
Letter for Leonard
Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go
through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I
begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the
best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have
been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have
been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight it any longer. I
know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will
I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to
say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely
patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that—everybody knows it. If
anybody could have saved me, it would have been you. Everything has gone from me
but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any
longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.
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 essay collections
“Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” (1924)
“Modern Fiction” (1925)
The Common Reader (1925)
“The Art of Fiction” (1927)
“The New Biography” (1927)
The Common Reader: Second Series (1932)
Three Guineas (1938)
Other works
“Kew Gardens” (1919), a short story
Flush: A Biography (1933)
Freshwater (1935)
KEW GARDENS
Perhaps the title of this short story evokes in some
reader’s mind the images of those huge, prestigious, magnificent Royal Kew
Gardens, full of devoted visitors. The reader may have anticipated a story with
refined, sophisticated protagonists, wandering through the different and varied
arrangements of flowers and trees, discussing elevated subjects.
Far from that scenario, the tale concentrates only on
a single oval flower-bed and a few quick passers-by, during a hot summer
afternoon.
The whole splendid nature of Kew Gardens is
concentrated in a small piece of land. The behaviour of the visitors is
demonstrated through four plain, chatting couples.
The universe of the oval flower-bed presents hundreds
of stalks with colourful petals at the tip, moved by the summer breeze. The
light falls upon a pebble or the shell of a snail, or a raindrop.
The detailed description shows the rich life of nature
in that little portion of the gardens.
Then, moving irregularly, like the blue and white
butterflies going from bed to bed, a man and a woman approached, followed by
their children. The man remembered how fifteen years ago, in that place, he
proposed to Lily, but he was refused, and finally he married Eleanor and then
they had children. Simon wanted to know if Eleanor minded thinking about the
past. Why should she mind? She remembered a kiss someone gave her on the neck
when she was a little girl. She has kept the vivid significance of that kiss.
They continued walking, while the inhabitants of the
flower-bed faced important decisions. A green insect, moving its antennae,
seemed in deliberation; the snail, moving slightly in its stained shell,
studied its way in front of a dead leaf, analysing its possibilities to reach
some goal, rolling on the loose earth, defying difficulties…
Two men advanced to the flower-bed. William, the young
one, showed a calm expression; the elder one kept talking incoherently, passing
from one subject to another, from dead spirits to an electric battery, or to
the forests of Uruguay he visited years before. William, whose face showed
great patience, tried to distract the old man and made him move on.
The next couple followed closely the previous one, two
elderly women, described as low middle class, both intent on establishing if
the old man was eccentric or out of his mind. While restarting their trivial
conversation, they reached the point where the oval flower-bed stood, and
there, looking at the flowers, one of them considered that a seat to have their
tea should better be found.
In the flower-bed, the snail had no rest, so finally
he decided to creep beneath the leaf, inserting its head inside that kind of
cool brown dome. Simultaneously, a young man and a young woman came near,
talking about the Gardens’ prices. They stopped, and together, his hands over
hers, he fixed her parasol into the earth. Their hands, their slow words,
seemed to express something—who knows—a dubious, uncertain moment. He pulled
the parasol, impatient to find where to have tea, like everybody. She walked down
the path, asking where to have one’s tea, but soon forgetting her tea, and
remembering somewhere, down there, there were flowers and birds and a Chinese
pagoda.
More and more men, women, children passed the
flower-bed, their movements, voices, desires, dissolved in the hot atmosphere
and the colours that the flowers transmitted to the air.
Brushstrokes of one July afternoon, in the famous
Gardens near a busy, noisy, large city.
pebble, straggled, ponderous, nimble, taking stock, cranes, gear