85 years after she took her personal life, Virginia Woolf’s great-niece Emma on why the ‘snobbish’ and ‘superior’ author stays a literary famous person
Virginia Woolf and Nicole Kidman because the creator within the 2002 movie The Hours (Picture: -)
May Virginia Woolf’s suicide have been prevented? Right this moment, 85 years since that fateful day, this and lots of different questions stay unanswered. On March 28, 1941, my great-aunt Virginia left her dwelling Monk’s Home at Rodmell, close to Lewes, walked throughout the Sussex Downs to the River Ouse and seems to have positioned a big stone in her pocket and entered the fast-flowing waters.
Virginia’s physique was not discovered till April 18, practically three weeks later. The coroner’s verdict was “killing herself whereas the stability of her thoughts was disturbed… dying by drowning”. The notice she left for her husband, Leonard, ended: “Every little thing has gone from me however the certainty of your goodness. I can not go on spoiling your life any longer. I do not assume two folks may have been happier than we now have been. V.”
As I take into consideration my great-aunt, I nonetheless marvel at her enduring reputation, her standing as family identify. Each London cabbie, each Italian or Japanese vacationer has heard of her; regardless that the bulk have by no means learn her books they’ll immediately recognise her face. That 1902 Beresford picture of the younger Virginia is haunting (she was 20-years-old) and adorns tea towels in lots of museum present outlets. What’s it about Virginia Woolf: past the ground-breaking modernist fiction and the pioneering feminism, the literary societies and conferences – why does everybody know her identify?
1902 Beresford picture of the younger Virginia Woolf aged 20 (Picture: Heritage Photos/Getty Photos)
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In her suicide notice, written on the age of 59, she is satisfied she is “going mad once more”. Sadly these breakdowns have been nothing new. The sudden dying of her mom from rheumatic fever in 1895 had provoked Virginia’s first breakdown on the age of 13. Her father’s dying in 1904 triggered her second collapse; she then endured the dying of her half-sister Stella in 1897 and her beloved brother Thoby in 1907.
The repeated bereavements took their toll on her psychological well being. Virginia’s third breakdown in 1913, aged 31, occurred lower than a yr after her marriage to Leonard Woolf. In the course of the course of 1913-15 she made a number of suicide makes an attempt, together with making an attempt to leap from a window and overdoses of sedatives.
Because the “insanity” took maintain, she stopped consuming or sleeping and at instances she hallucinated – Quentin Bell information that she as soon as heard “the birds singing in Greek and [imagined] that King Edward VII lurked within the azaleas utilizing the foulest doable language”.
The hallucinations and the insanity which is commonly mirrored in her novels have contributed to the parable of Virginia as a chilly, forbidding determine, with out youngsters and considerably distant. Bodily, she couldn’t be described as female or maternal; photographs from the early twentieth century present her as tall and angular, typically writing and often with a cigarette. (PIC)
Socially too, she has acquired the fame of being snobbish and superior (she herself wrote an essay entitled “Am I A Snob?”).
However what was she actually like? In actual fact she wasn’t snobbish or distant – my father Cecil Woolf (who lived in Leonard’s London dwelling for 30 years) recollects a talkative, deeply engaged lady, who was inquisitive about on a regular basis life.
He remembers his aunt as, “Risky, mercurial, moody… She could possibly be fairly sharp – she appeared sharp, her face was sharp. While you arrived at their home, she would ask you about your journey and he or she wished each element. ‘Okay, you got here by practice. Inform me concerning the folks within the carriage’.”
“Dearest, I really feel sure that I’m going mad once more. I really feel we won’t undergo one other of these horrible instances. And I shan’t get better this time. I start to listen to voices, and I can not focus. So I’m doing what appears the very best factor to do. You’ve given me the best doable happiness. You’ve been in each means all that anybody could possibly be. I do not assume two folks may have been happier until this horrible illness got here. I can not struggle any longer. I do know that I’m spoiling your life, that with out me you can work. And you’ll I do know. You see I can not even write this correctly. I can not learn. What I wish to say is I owe all of the happiness of my life to you. You’ve been completely affected person with me and extremely good. I wish to say that – everyone is aware of it. If anyone may have saved me it might have been you. Every little thing has gone from me however the certainty of your goodness. I can not go on spoiling your life any longer. I do not assume two folks may have been happier than we now have been. V.”
My father recollects how she would recycle info, exaggerating and fictionalising all of the day by day trivia in her novels and in her characters. Studying her letters and diaries, one discovers a extra playful facet to the tortured genius. Virginia’s day by day journal and correspondence reveal a delicate, perceptive younger lady who liked a “debauch of gossip” together with her buddies.
She information romantic, intimate moments together with her husband; her thirty third birthday, for instance, when Leonard “crept into my mattress, with a little bit parcel, which was an exquisite inexperienced purse… I don’t know when I’ve loved a birthday a lot…” (January 25, 1915).
She describes a purchasing journey after her skirt has cut up in two: Leonard goes to the library and he or she to “ramble concerning the West Finish, choosing up garments. I’m actually in rags. It is vitally amusing… I purchased a ten and elevenpenny blue gown”.
Regardless of her recurrent bouts of ‘insanity’ which required complete relaxation and seclusion, Virginia was extraordinarily sociable. This facet of Virginia is commonly missed: she adored the social whirl, flirtations with women and men, the stimulation of discuss and human interplay. Her letters and diaries refer continuously to her busy social life, teas with poet and writer T S Eliot, dinners with the political economist Maynard Keynes, London events and weekends with buddies within the nation, journeys overseas.
Her social milieu is one other side of Virginia’s enduring fascination, particularly the Bloomsbury Group immortalised by Dorthy Parker: “They lived in squares, painted in circles, and liked in triangles.”
Nicole Kidman portrayed Virginia Woolf in 2002 movie The Hours (Picture: Paramount/Everett/Shutterstock)
Though it was by no means truly a proper ‘group’, the members are well-known and their amorous affairs nonetheless excite our curiosity – so what was the Bloomsbury Group?
As of late Bloomsbury, WC1 is a prestigious space within the coronary heart of central London. However when Virginia moved there together with her brothers and sister in 1905 it was a seedy a part of city, low cost sufficient for college students, artists’ fashions and different doubtful sorts. It was exactly this unconventional side which appealed to Virginia and her siblings – shabby Bloomsbury was a world away from the “mummified humbug” of their oppressive Kensington childhood.
And so started the phenomenon, now marked by a sequence of blue plaques throughout Bloomsbury, which ignited her emancipated streak.
Beginning in Gordon Sq., and shifting to Fitzroy Sq. a couple of years later, then Brunswick Sq., Tavistock and eventually Mecklenburgh Sq., Virginia inhabited these massive homes alongside varied younger males, together with Keynes, the artist Duncan Grant, and her future husband, Leonard Woolf, simply returned from Colonial Service in Ceylon. That they had “events in any respect hours of the day or evening”, typically consuming champagne within the again backyard. Alongside together with her sister the artist Vanessa Bell, that they had amorous affairs aplenty.
Beginning in Gordon Sq., and shifting to Fitzroy Sq. a couple of years later, then Brunswick Sq., Tavistock and eventually Mecklenburgh Sq., Virginia inhabited these massive homes alongside varied younger males, together with Keynes, the artist Duncan Grant, and her future husband, Leonard Woolf, simply returned from Colonial Service in Ceylon. That they had “events in any respect hours of the day or evening”, typically consuming champagne within the again backyard. Alongside together with her sister the artist Vanessa Bell, that they had amorous affairs aplenty.
British author Leonard Woolf (1880 – 1969), beloved husband of Virginia Woolf (Picture: Getty Photos)
It’s not solely the scandals and sexual intrigues of the Bloomsbury group, however the themes which run all through Virginia’s novels which maintain her related to this present day. From psychological sickness (in Jacob’s Room), to marriage and households (in To The Lighthouse), feminism and discovering one’s independence as a author (in A Room of One’s Personal), relations between women and men (in The Voyage Out, Evening and Day) and a lot extra.
For a younger lady introduced up in Victorian instances it’s exhausting to think about the place Virginia’s inspiration for Orlando got here from, with its enlightened exploration of sexuality, id and gender fluidity, greater than a century earlier than the LGBT+ motion and rainbow flags.
No marvel it was tailored for the large display screen. There are additionally these fascinating echoes with Virginia’s personal sexuality – have been she and Vita Sackville-West lovers?
And in our unstable international instances, her preoccupation with the conflict additionally speaks to us. All through the primary half of the twentieth century, Europe was within the turmoil of the primary and second world wars. Though Virginia didn’t write straight concerning the conflicts, they resonate by her novels, significantly Jacob’s Room (1922) and Mrs Dalloway (1925) with their legacy of loss, shell-shock and a technology modified eternally.
The recurrent symbols of distant armies, bombs and weapons overheard throughout the Channel in To The Lighthouse (1927) and The Years (1937) even have their origins within the First World Battle.
Right this moment, 85 years on, Virginia’s last phrases stay probably the most shifting she ever wrote. That straightforward assertion – “I don’t assume two folks may have been happier than we now have been” – reveals the profound love between Virginia and Leonard, and stays a testomony to an vital literary marriage.
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And but the unhappiness and the insanity are painful to witness, as are the unanswered questions. What have been these episodes of psychological sickness which plagued her all her life? Had been they bipolar dysfunction, schizophrenia or persistent despair? May psychiatric therapy or totally different medicine have saved her? And did she actually imply it – did she wish to die? “I shan’t get better this time… I can not struggle any longer.”
Ought to that suicide notice have stayed non-public? Maybe. But when so, it might have robbed us of the ultimate chapter of this tortured and delightful life.
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