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VIRGINIA WOOLF IN 45 POINTS.

"Virginia Woolf Lived Here"(CC BY-SA 2.0) by Kootenayvolcano

Here are some important and interesting facts about Virginia Woolf...

1. Who was Virginia Woolf ?
A. She was an essayist, publisher, critique but more than that she was a great novelist.

2. With what genre she was famous in ?
A. Novels.

3. Does she write drama ?
A. Yes.

4. How many novels she has written?
A. Virginia has written total nine novels that is The Voyage Out (1915) , Night and Day (1919), Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), The Years (1937), Between the Acts (1941).

5. Which was her famous novel?
A. Her most famous works are Mrs Dalloway, Orlando, To the Lighthouse, The Waves and the feminist essay, A Room of One's own

6. Does Virginia write on her life?
A. Yes, there are most of the novels which she wrote on her life.

7. Which novel has her autobiographical content?
A. To the Lighthouse, Jacob's Room, Orlando has autobiographical content in it.

8. Does she write poetry?
A. No probably not.

9. Does she write short stories ?
A. Yes, she wrote  six short stories collection - Kew Gardens (1919), Monday or Tuesday (1921), A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (1944), Mrs Dalloway's Party (1973), The Complete Shorter Fiction (1985), Carlyle's House and Other Sketches (2003).

10.  What Virginia Woolf is known for?
A. Virginia Woolf is known for her great writing style especially the novels Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse and her tragic life and suicidal end.

11. Does she has a natural death?
A. No.

12. Does she committed suicide ?
A. Yes,  she commited suicide on 28 March, 1941 by drowning herself. 

13. Where did Virginia Woolf drown ?
A. She drowned herself in the river Ouse, near her house in Sussex. 

14.  Where is Virginia Woolf buried ?
A. Virginia Woolf is from England. Her grave is in Sussex. Her ashes buried under an elm tree in the garden of her monk house in Sussex.

15. Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf play?
A. Yes, its a play written by Edward Albee in the year 1962. Play focused on marriage of Martha and George.

16. How many siblings does Virginia Woolf has? Name them.
A. Virginia Woolf has three siblings with blood relation Vanessa Bell, Thoby Stephen, Adrian Stephen.

17. How many step brothers and step sisters she has ?
A. Virginia Woolf has two step brothers and two step sisters. George Herbert Duckworth, Stella Duckworth, Gerald Duckworth, Laura Makepeace Stephen.

18. Does she have an arranged or love marriage?
A. It was a love marriage.

19. What era does she belongs to ?
A. Virginia Woolf belongs to Modern era or age which starts from 1901 to 1960.

20. Who are the major novelists  of modern age ? Name some Indian novelists of that age ?
A. Virginia Woolf, D.H Lawrence, James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Somerset Maugham, H.W.Wells, Joseph Conrad, Aldous Huxley etc. Are all modern age novelists, whereas some of the Indian novelists  of Modern age are R.K. Narayan, Khushwant Singh, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Arundati Roy, Kiran Desai etc.   

21. What literary techniques and themes does Virginia Woolf used in her novels?
A. There various literary techniques and themes Virginia used in her novels are stream of consciousness, interior monologue, androgyny, time and timelessness, feminism,  thanatos, sanity and insanity, oedipus complex, symbolism, war fare, gender discrimination,  impressionistic technique etc.

22. Give some famous  quotes written by Virginia Woolf.

  • A.   "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." 
  • "You can find peace by avoiding life"
  • "My heart currently resembles the ashes of my cigarettes."

23. Who was Sigmund Freud ? What were the quotes which makes Virginia Woolf vulnerable and ignited in her the power of feminism ?
A. Sigmund Freud an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis. Freud regarded women as the ‘tender sex’, which suitable for caring for the household and nurturing children but not equal to men in scientific and scholarly affairs. He believes that women all want the same things and that their wants are somehow different from those of men. Whereas Friedrich Nietzsche says: “Woman is a second sex, and has no mind”, “Woman was God’s second mistake”. Freud says: “An Atomy is Destiny’. Charles Bukowski says: “Don’t wait for a good woman, she doesn’t exist”. These misbelieves ignited spirit of feminism in Virginia 's mind.

24. Name the sibling of Virginia Woolf who was mentally ill and was insane since her childhood.
A.  Laura  Makepeace Stephen was declared insane since her birth.

25. Does insanity exists genetically  in Virginia Woolf's family ? Who was the example of it ?
A.  Yes it exists in her genes. Leslie Stephen and Harriet’s daughter Laura was insane genetically

26. Does Virginia Woolf's parents married previously?
A. Virginia’s parents had been married previously and been widowed, consequently the household contained the children of three marriages. Julia had three children from her previous husband, Herbert Duckworth: George, Stella and Gerald Duckworth. On the other hand Leslie had first married to Harriet Marian Thackeray; they had one daughter named Laura Makepeace Stephen, who was insane. Leslie and Julia had four children together: Vanessa Stephen (1879), Thoby Stephen (1880), Virginia (1882), and Adrian Stephen (1883).

27. Out of all the siblings, with whom Virginia Woolf was immensely close to? Is their love normal or more than that ?
A. 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.


28. Who has molested Virginia Woolf in her childhood ? What was her age at that time?
A. Virginia Woolf was molested by her step brother Gerald Duckworth in her childhood, when she was only six.

29. As Virginia Woolf mostly wtites about her life in her novels  (autobiographical ) , does she discussed about her childhood molestation in any of her works?
A. She makes no written reference to this incident until 1939 but when she starts SKETCH OF THE PAST, In this book she described this horrible experience as one of her strongest memories, a feeling of shame and embarrassment.

30. As insanity occurs biologically in Virgjnia Woolf's case, from which side it has arrived in her genes ? Mother's or father's ?
A. There is a  problem of insanity somewhere in her genes from her father’s side. Laura is the great example for this.

31. Name the press from where Virginia Woolf gets her books published?
A. Hogarth press is her own press for publishing her books.

32. What are the diseases Virginia Woolf suffering from ?
A. She was suffering from manic depressive pychosis, schizophrenia, anorexia nervosa, delusions and hallucinations.  

33. Does Virginia has an affair with a girl ?
A. Yes, she has a love affair with her friend Vita Sackville West.

34. What is the name of the book which Virginia  dedicated to her lady love Vita Sackville West ?
A. Orlando is the famous book which Virginia has entirely dedicated to Vita.

35. Does Virginia showed concept of liaisons in any of her novels?  If yes, what are they ?
A. Yes, She represented these unnatural love and affection with same sex in most of her novels. Like example, character of Rachel and Helen in The Voyage Out, Katherine and Mary in Night and Day, Sally and Clarissa in Mrs Dalloway, Lily and Mrs. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse: these are all love stories.

36. Who was  Leonard Woolf ? When did Virginia meet him ?
A. Leonard Woolf was Virginia Woolf's husband. Virginia Stephen and Leonard Woolf first met while Virginia was visiting her brother Thoby at Trinity College in the year 1900. 

37. Who suggested Leonard Woolf to propose Virginia Stephen for marriage? 
A. One of their mutual friends named Lytton Strachey wrote to him to propose Virginia. 

38. Was Leonard Woolf confident enough to propose Virginia for marriage?  How much time did he take to propose her ?
A. No, Leonard Woolf always had fear of rejection. He took six months to collect the courage to propose Virginia for marriage. 

39. Did Virginia accepted Leonard' s proposal at first time ?
A. No,   Virginia did not accept his proposal. Leonards proposed her thrice then she accepted. The couple got engaged and later got married in the year 1912, August 10.

40. Which technique does Virginia Woolf chose to get closer look to the minds of the readers through her characters.
A. Stream of consciousness is the technique she chose to get closer to the readers.

41. From whom does Virginia Woolf learned this technique of stream of consciousness? 
A. James Joyce is the person with whom she learned it.

42. When did Virginia Woolf start her career of writing? 
A. Woolf began writing professionally in 1900, initially for the Times Literary Supplement with a journalistic piece about Haworth, home of the Bronte family.

43. Does Virginia adopted the Freud's theory of Psychoanalysis in her novels ? If yes. What are they ? Give some other author's examples who adopted this ?
A. Yes, Virginia Woolf adopted the psychoanalytical technique in her works quite often. To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway and Orlando are some good examples of it. Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are the complex novels based on the theme of psychoanalysis. William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Samuel Beckett's Malone Dies are also some of the examples of it.

 44. Virginia has used stream of consciousness technique in her novels but who is the pioneer of this ?
A. 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.

 45. What was Virginia Woolf's threat ?
A. Woolf always has a threat in her mind regarding the anxiety of her works. She always thinks that what would happened with her literacy works after her death, she believes that she would be forgotten and her works would be counted as nothing by time, and that threat  helped her a lot to be a polished novelist. It pushed her to be more qualified in her writings. 



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