“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”-Virginia Woolf on being an honest writer.
One of the foremost modernists of the Twentieth century, Virginia
Woolf gained fame for her nonlinear, free prose style which not only
inspired her peers but also earned her accolade.
The English writer began writing as a young girl and published her
first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915. Yesterday was her 134th birth
anniversary and to commemorate the day we have put together a list of
the writer’s most iconic works.
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
If you are encountering Virginia Woolf’s writing for the first time,
then Mrs Dalloway may be the best to start with. Woolf tells the story
of Clarissa Dalloway, a high society English woman in post-World War I
in London. Clarissa made her debut on print in Woolf’s first novel- The
Voyage out. Woolf explores the society at the time and creates an image
of the protagonist’s life through her thoughts, as Clarissa prepares for
a party that she is going to host that evening. This book is an example
of a stream of consciousness narrative, as the reader gets thrown into
Clarissa’s mind and her world, creating a sense of intimacy with this
character. It was made into a film in 1997.
Orlando (1928)
Described by Jorge Luis Borges as Woolf’s ‘most intense novel, and
one of the most singular of our era’, Orlando is an enthralling yet
accessible read. The novel begins with a male protagonist, an
aristocratic who frequents Queen Elizabeth’s court. It explores key
questions of gender and identity set against the backdrop of the
characters travelling through time and meeting various important
literary figures across the ages. Orlando is a must on any literary
fan’s reading list.
To the Lighthouse (1927)
To the Lighthouse is undoubtedly one of Woolf’s most famous
novels. This is a story of three members of the Ramsay family, told
from their varying perspectives, To the Lighthouse is a touching story
of the hardships this family faces while living in a house on the coast
of Scotland. Woolf explores the human fear of change in a new,
compelling way, and her ability to make descriptions come to life is one
of her greatest tools and one of the reasons that readers are unable to
put this book down.
A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Based on several lectures Woolf delivered at the University of
Cambridge, A Room of One’s Own is seen as a feminist literary tract.
Woolf argues that great writers are ‘androgynous’ in the sense that they
contain both masculine and feminine impulses and sympathies. She also
discusses how, if Shakespeare had had a sister of equal talents,
‘Judith’ Shakespeare (as Woolf chooses to call this fictional sibling)
would never have made it as a poet and playwright during the Elizabethan
era, because she would not have had the opportunities in terms of
schooling and stage-acting that her brother enjoyed. In this essay,
Woolf delves into the implications of gender, and claims that without
money and a room of their own, women are not able to let their
creativity and genius run free.
Between the Acts (1941)
This was Virginia Woolf’s last work, and was published posthumously.
It is set in an unknown location in England as the outbreak of the
Second World War looms over the country. It is a play within a play in
which Woolf cleverly alludes to certain topics, mostly related to the
war: the rise of fascism was important to her, not only because her
husband was Jewish, but because she too was on Hitler’s UK death list.
Woolf suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her
life, thought to have been what is now termed bipolar disorder and
committed suicide in 1941 at the age of 59. In her suicide note she
wrote to her husband Leonard:
“Dearest,
I feel certain 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 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.”
