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

VIRGINIA WOOLF AND STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN MRS DALLOWAY

INTRODUCTION The stream of consciousness is a narrative technique on which so many writers have given their views whether they are essayist, novelists etc, but the most well known is Virginia Woolf who is considered as the forerunner of this style of writing. "Influenced by the works of French writer Marcel Proust and Irish writer James Joyce, among others, Woolf strove to create a literary form that would convey inner life. To this end, she elaborated a technique known as stream of consciousness" (Bouzid) Richardson is the pioneer of the stream of consciousness technique. He is the first 20th century British author to publish a full length stream of consciousness novel Pointed Roofs. On one side was the little grey river, on the other long wet grass repelling and depressing. Not far ahead was the roadway which led, she supposed to the farm where they were to drink new milk. She would have to walk with someone when they came on the road, and talk. She wond...

VIRGINIA WOOLF AND STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

INTRODUCTION "stream of consciousness"(CC BY-SA 2.0) by planeta To the Lighthouse is not an easy novel to read. Its style of writing is quite critical. Readers can get confused because there are none of the standard novelistic signposts telling the readers what is the location, where the action is being done. who is speaking, when this takes place. For example the novel begins with the answer to a question that has not been asked, and that question is answered by the person who has not been described, and addressed to a child who seems to be sitting on the floor in an unspecified location. Every single thing is ambiguous. Nor is there much respect for the standard novelistic conventions of clock time or consecutive action. Woolf seems to delight in confusing the readers by using and inserting a recollection or anticipating a reaction, consequently past and present and future seem to flow into one another in an unbroken stream of consciousness. STREAM OF CONSCI...

VIRGINIA WOOLF AND INTERIOR MONOLOGUE IN HER NOVELS

"Blah Blah Blah (CC BY-NC 2.0) by id.-iom INTRODUCTION "A monologue is presented by a single character, most often to express their mental thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience." (Hargrave) Virginia Woolf beautifully uses both the techniques whether its stream of consciousness or interior monologue she continued to use the same technique in her subsequent novels as well. It is already mentioned that Woolf was not at all satisfied with the traditional method of writing novels. In an essay Modern Fiction she had criticized novelist like Arnold Bennet and John Galsworthy for the 'Naturalistic' manner in which they had written their novels. James Joyce probed the same inner consciousness in Ulysses which Woolf probed in Mrs. Dalloway. Although there is an incessant flow of thoughts which has been given the technical name of 'the stream of consc...

WHY DID VIRGINIA WOOLF COMMIT SUICIDE ?

This was the question hitting everybody's mind when it was declared publicly, that Woolf is no more, she drowned herself into the river Ouse near her house and committed suicide on 28 March, 1941. The above is the news in The New York Times regarding Virginia, who was missing from her house. Sources were saying that she already planned to kill herself because she did not find any charm in her life. Still she neither informed anybody nor she shared it with her husband. Eventually people of her area found her clothes in the river then everyone came to know about the sad demise of her. WHY SHE CHOSE RIVER ONLY ? "Virginia Woolf"(CC BY -SA 2.0) by Wolf Gang Now the question is again unanswered that if she was enjoying her life with her husband, everything seems to be happy and gay then why she took this decision? Even if she decided to kill herself then why she chose river to be the option ? Why not any other ways to do it? Does she not like her existence...

VIRGINIA WOOLF AND OEDIPUS COMPLEX

INTRODUCTION In Freudian Theory: "The complex of emotions aroused in a young child, typically around the age of four, by an unconscious sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex and wishes to exclude the parent of the same sex. The term was originally applied to boys, the equivalent in girls being called the Electra complex." (Schuller) Freud's theory of Oedipus complex has become a major theme for various renowned English novelists like example: - D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, Sophocles’s Oedipus the King and last but not the least Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Orlando etc. Another thing apart from all the literary techniques, which caught attention while reading To the Lighthouse is the language that Virginia uses to describe James and her mother Mrs. Ramsay’s relationship. One can easily forget that James is Mrs. Ramsay's six year old son and think ...

VIRGINIA WOOLF - A BRIEF GLANCE ON HER LIFE, WORKS AND STYLE.

Search This Blog