VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THEORY OF THANATOS

Thanatos is a concept, in which the person feels that he or she can get rid of all his sorrows only by death. In fact this urge for death exists in every person’s inner consciousness. At the same time there are people who feel that there is no death instinct in their personality, because somewhere their life instinct is strong. Depressive and negative people have more desire for death than life.For example in a drama called Hamlet by Shakespeare when Hamlet came to know that his father was murdered by his uncle and his own mother, he was in such an agony that he sighed and said: "To be or not to be … that is the question"It happens even when a person is very much happy, in that extreme joy, he or she sometimes feels to die. The word called 'Death' can be easily seen in Woolf's most of the novels like example in Mrs Dalloway. It’s like a ghost that cannot be expelled from the consciousness of the mind. The question which has been raised here is from where does the death instinct came from ? why Woolf's own personal life has an urge for death ?

If the readers can put a glance on Woolf's life they will come to know that Woolf's thanatos is closely related to her past life. There was a problem of psychosis in her father's history. Virginia's father's life was full of sadness, lamentations and melancholy. When one of his daughters died, he also wanted to die. There was a moment when he was saying that he wished that he were dead. After the death of his wife, he got depressed. Woolf's mother was born as a woman of melancholy. After the time when her first husband died, she became more sad and silent.

Her parent’s sadness has a great influence on her and planted the death instinct in her gradually. On the other hand Woolf's disease is another source of her Thanatos. The psychological problem is haunting Woolf throughout her life. There was a great darkness in her past life when she suffered from her first mental breakdown; she used to talk to herself continuously which lasted for several days. She was lost to all around her. The mental disease led to her depression, despair and eventually provoked her to die.

Thanatos and Eros both are irresistible instinctive forces in person’s subconscious. It can be said that in extreme pain and pressure, Thanatos can overcame Eros. The theory of Thanatos in novel Mrs Dalloway is taken from Woolf's own Thanatos. It can be seen that Woolf's Thanatos derived from her family and society. She described the art of death in her works. Mrs Dalloway is a sharp insight into people's subconscious and the best illustration of Freud's theory of Thanatos.

It has been found that after finishing each and every novel she feels a kind of terrible depression. It is said that she destroyed every journal in which she had her works published the question arises that, why did she has such a strange response? Why couldn't she reread her own works? May be because, she saw herself in her words.

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