WHY VIRGINIA WOOLF WAS LONELY ?

"loneliness copy" (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 by St' John's Catholic Comprehensive

INTRODUCTION

“These memorable moments were of ecstasy but also of fear. She always remembered from her first ten years of her life, a feeling of desolation she used to have at St. Ives, as she saw the clouds darkening over the waves, while she sat at lessons worth her mother; a feeling of shame associated with the mirror in the hall and the stone slab outside the dining- room a feeling of hopeless sadness while she was fighting with Thoby on the lawn so that she stopped and let him win"

(Lee 105)

She always feels herself as a desolated girl who has no one to share her feelings and emotions. She was the one who has faced all the terrible tragedies in her life and has no one to even share those worst reveries.

"I seemed to be dragged down, hopelessly, into some pit of absolute despair from which I could not escape".

(Lee 105)

WAS LONELINESS DESTINED ?

Whatever she has faced it was all destined from which she could not escape. Her mental condition was lagging between two poles, the one in which she has put all the worst memories of incidents and accidents which has shaken her life and the another which was bounding her in solitude n loneliness, because she doesn’t have anyone to share with. The only solution left for Virginia to provide peace to her mind and soul is to write something by which she can share and pen down her feelings and emotions. She has mentioned every single thing which she has faced in her life i.e. her sufferings, traumas and her every single, petty feelings and emotions.

“How little we know even about brothers and sisters.”

(Lee 112)

The above lines are representing the inner feelings of Woolf towards her relatives and blood relations. She was very much surprised to think about her near and dear ones. Brothers and sisters are the relationships which can be equally important after parents. But if a person can be victimised with these close relations then there is nobody to trust on. Everything will be uncertain. Virginia unfortunately was the one who suffered a lot being the victim of her step brother.

“The least satisfactory of these sibling ‘relations’, Virginia’s with Adrian, has to be deduced from a scatter of incidental and largely unfriendly remarks. Uniquely in these family papers, no letters from Virginia to Adrian survive, and very few from him to her. She wrote no full portrait of him. Although they lived in the same houses for thirty years, their relationship was always awkward. Her main feelings towards him were negative and critical.”

(Lee 112)

Vanessa, Thoby, Adeline and Adrian, are the brothers and sisters who were having blood relationship, out of which Vanessa and Thoby were closest and lovable to Virginia throughout her life but the least satisfactory out of these relations were with Adrian, because he always used to pass unfriendly remarks to Virginia. She never discussed about him in detail, carrying negative feelings towards him.

“The stories of Vanessa and Virginia as childhood do point ahead to their adult lives. They bathed and slept together; Vanessa mothered and used to rub her with scents and put her to bed.”

(Lee 117)

The love relationship of Vanessa and Virginia was not at all normal. They love each other like lovers; Virginia used to take bath with her, and mothered her and makes her sleep on bed. It was not a normal love relation between two sisters, but something more than that.

Comments

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