WHAT WAS VIRGINIA WOOLF'S THREAT ?

" Virginia Woolf / Through the Looking Gla" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Christiaan Tonnis

INTRODUCTION

“She engaged with courage and painful honesty in the extremely difficult work of understanding the meaning of her childhood.”

(Lee 126)

People usually find the memories of childhood as a beautiful souvenir of life, but for Woolf it is the life threatening experience full of horrible moments. Still she showed courage and painful honesty while revealing the real meaning of her past experiences with childhood.

FEAR OF LOOSING NEAR & DEAR ONE

Death was the painful horrible content which was unintentionally lying in almost all of her novels. The content of her books were dominated by this experience of loosing someone. The reason is quite simple because she faced the experience of losing her near and dear ones since her childhood, whether it’s about her mother, father or her siblings. This is the reason why unintentionally Woolf discussed about death in her novels.

“Mrs Ramsay stumbling along a passage stretched his arms out one dark morning, but, Mrs Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, he stretched his arms out. They remained empty.”

(Lee 127)

This is how she described the death of the mother in To the Lighthouse. After the strong emotions collected around the character of Mrs Ramsay in the initial part of the book, the abrupt death was shocking.

LONLINESS KILLS

Even in her novel The Voyage Out she discussed about the character called Rachel the young heroine whose mother died when she was eleven. It was easy for Woolf to pen down these experiences because of her life string of calamities that could have resulted in a youth was deeply disturbed but she was courageous, resilient and bold enough to face the consequences, but how long one can fight all alone. Although she always tried to divert her mind and inner consciousness to think in a positive direction but she did not get success in it. She had no friends, no relatives, and no companions to share her loneliness.

“Virginia Stephen had no school friends to confide in, no college girls to become intimate with.”

(Lee 157)

There is nothing more terrifying than being alone with your own thoughts, weighing your existence, letting your problems grown up like weeds that come back faster than they can be plucked. Loneliness leads to writing because it is a catharsis: in which one can put down his thoughts and feelings in a character’s mouth for a needed breath. Whatever she has written is the result of her thought process her shared experiences with life in different situations.

Bibliography:

Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. New York: Vintage, 1999. Print.

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