Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Woolf was born in London on January 25, 1882, the third child of Leslie and Julia Stephen. It was the second marriage for both her parents, and the two partners had inherited kids from the initial matrimony. One of the children, Laura, was mentally unbalanced, and her father was treating her with scant affection. After the death of Julia, he placed her in a psychological residence where she resided till her death at age 75. The first wife of Leslie can have meant little to Virginia except the tragedy of their untimely demise and the cousin’s progeny mainly Vaughans and Fishers that they established. The family group was large, with diverse members entering the life of Virginia with diverse levels of persistence and intimacy. Madge Vaughan and Emma were among her earliest friends; though they were never the final long in her affections.
The people who had the most impact in her childhood were her parents and siblings. Julia was John Jackson’s daughter who spent a greater part of his career as a doctor in Maria Pattle and Calcutta. Julia, like her mother, was extremely gorgeous. While young, she posed for Burne-Jones, Watts and her aunt Julia Margaret Cameron who left a picture of her that is particularly pre-Raphaelite, tragic in countenance but always beautiful but never pretty. She notes that it is difficult to keep a smirk for longer than an instant unless it turns into appearing fake. Virginia shows us another side of the character of her mother. She is impatient of stupidity, decisive, swift, incapable of unkindness, but quick tempered.
Leslie had reverence for Julia, and she was controlling him by her submissiveness. She dominated quietly, which showed that she had the stronger character of the two; however, Leslie was not a weakling. Leslie developed from a shy man to a formidable and tough. He got ordination as a clergy while still a youth though she lost his conviction and went to London, where he was earning his living as a political and literary journalist.
Therefore, the childhood of Virginia was comfortably middle class and rationally inspiring. In their family, tensions were mitigated by shared affection. The younger members amused the elders, and the older gave support to the young ones. The talent for fiction by Virginia developed early. When she was a child, Virginia was a keen hunter of moths and butterflies; she could smear tree trunks with treacle for attracting and capturing insects, hence pinning their natural corpses to boards with their wings being spread. This interest continued in his adult life.
They spent their holidays in Cornwall, where Leslie had rented Talland House for 13 summers until the demise of Julia. The choice was curious for a man who was naturally a beachcomber, and careful with his money. Cornwall was distant from London, and the cost of transporting his enormous family together with the servants was significant. The children were extremely satisfied, and Leslie showed them his side of kindness, paternal and relaxed. This was after recovering from a long journey. Two years prior to her demise, Woolf wrote that St. Ives had given her a pure delight that was before his eyes, even at that moment.
After the death of Julia, life for all of them changed. Religion never consoled them, both parents of Virginia were agonistic. Though their children had sponsors, they were not baptized. Leslie got exhaustion from his grief and by the surge of relatives who had washed up the Hyde Park Gate for satisfaction of their compassion and overpower him with extreme compassion. He was groaning aloud when eating and complained weekly after Stella who had taken the role of her mother as a housekeeper presented the weekly bills for payment. He went through an exceptional self pity dramatization.
He feared to lose the affection of his child. They felt imprisoned by him. The boys were able to escape to schools though the girls were restricted to be within the house. After Stella was in love with Jack Hills, the attitude of Leslie resembled that of Mr. Woodhouse in Emma, he thought that he would be dispossessed of her company and help after marrying; he got solace after taking a house across the street. After the demise of Stella, after three months of being wedded, he never seemed to care. He was exhausted of her capacity for grieve by the demise of Julia and Vanessa was able to take over the house’s management.
Later in life, Virginia complained that she was deprived of education that was offered to boys automatically. However, her protests never showed consistency or were without justification. At middle age, she indicated that she had no chance of acquiring jolly vulgarity. When she visited Oxford at age 25, she illustrated its environment as being chilly ad least known to her. She stated to have seen brains floating like many sea-anemones without shape or color.
Two years following a different visit, she stated to have met Regis professors in a dinner together with undergraduates after wining prizes without number; hence they could not talk. In the Oxford chapter of The years, she lampooned the life of University with brilliance. This life could have sucked her dry. She had not been denied tuition while young. She had been allowed to run the library by Leslie; she talked to her about what she had read and encouraged her to write, and these occasions she felt stimulated, soothed and full of love for this adorable, distinguished and unworldly man.
She discovered the pleasure the pleasure of understanding language deeply for expression of the precise meaning, partly by writing a diary and essays, but chiefly in a form of letters for expressing her exact meaning. She was writing often to Thoby, her brother while at school and later at Cambridge. She honed her observation gift and was concerned not so much in the bizarre as in the mystery of the ordinary. She was scarcely in need of formal education. She guided herself through literature and history; she had been learning in her entire life.
She also had a darker side of her childhood. Her brothers Gerald Duckworth and George regarded Virginia and Vanessa as sex objects first of desire then of wonder. Virginia recalls how at one moment while at St. Ives Gerald raised her into the table. Then from curiosity inserted her hands in her skirts and proceeded to examine her private parts. George showed violent behavior; after the death of Julia, he would enter the bedroom of Virginia, toss himself into her, taking her in his arms. It is suggested that he attempted to commit incest with the young girls. The behavior of George is said to have been responsible for the sexual timidity of Virginia and even it may have contributed to her periodic insanity fits.
The most formative and central feature of Virginia’s early life was sexual abuse. George together with her sister stopped short of any reasonable accusation. It was almost unimaginable that a girl who had been subjected to cruel actions could call her seducer my dearest George, or my dear old bar. However, whatever the lust for George could have been, he never raped her sister. The instincts of George were incestuous, though his actions were different.
The attempt of George to introduce his sisters to the polite society of London failed. George was socially ambitious and handsome. He undoubtedly sought to magnify his popularity by associating with girls who were incredibly gorgeous. He played the role played by his later mother. He perceived all parties to be a challenge to the marriage ability of Vanessa and Virginia. He could not understand why they were extremely unappreciative. The beauty of Vanessa and Virginia made him proud. The girls never acted the part their brother had planned for them, and for this, they were failures.
Leslie was taken ill with abdominal cancer, and after two years he died. His decline course was described by Virginia in almost all daily bulletins to her freshly acquired confidant, Violet Dickson. Dickson had been a friend to Stella, and though she was seventeen years older than the child, Virginia was pregnant for her with almost passionate affection.
All through the room of one’s own, Woolf gives emphasis on the fact that women are treated unequally in the society, and this explains on producing work that is less impressive in writing as compared to men. In illustrating her point, the narrator creates a picture of a woman referred to as Judith Shakespeare. This is an imaginary sister to William Shakespeare. Judith is used by the narrator in showing the way the society has systematically discriminated against women. Judith has talent that matches that her William, her brother. However, though her talent is acknowledged and encouraged by their family and society the girls are been underestimated and shown little concern from the society.
Judith is a writer though she is confident about the whole thing. She becomes engaged while still young and she begs to avoid the marriage. Following this, she is beaten by her father; later she commits suicide. The tragic figure of Judith is invented to prove that a talented woman like Shakespeare was not able to attain such accomplishment. Talent is a vital component of the success of Shakespeare. However, since women are treated extremely differently, a female Shakespeare would perform differently even if she had a talent like that of Shakespeare.
The main point of a room of one’s own is that all women require a room of hers. This is a thing men enjoy without any question. A room of her own would offer a woman with the time and space for engaging in writing without interruptions. During the time of Woolf, women were deprived of these luxuries. They were always elusive to women, which made their art suffer. The room is used as a symbol for bigger issues. These include financial independence, privacy, leisure time, and these are all vital components of the myriad inequalities between women and men. Woolf notes that, until the rectification of these inequalities, women will continue being second class citizens, with their literacy accomplishments been branded the same.
The narrator in a room of one’s own states that money is the primary element that hinders women from enjoying a room of theirs, and hence having money is of utmost importance since women lack power. The narrator notes that intellectual freedom is depended on material things. ‘Women have been poor, not just for 200 years but since the beginning…’ This quotation is used for explaining the reason why few women have written poetry successfully. It is stated that women ought to content with recurrent interruptions since they are denied their own room of writing. With the lack of money, women are said to remain in their second part of their imaginative male counterparts.
The manner in which the book gives a description, it appears to be an odd way of starting a speech, but it makes sense. After reading the entire speech, I am in agreement with it and like the example. The entire concept promoted by Woolf is that since women have not been given the similar opportunities as their male counterparts, the number of renowned male authors is greater than that of renowned women authors. She makes the argument that ladies were to have a noteworthy place in the account of literature. In addition, her informal way of introduction carries over to the rest of hers speech and this makes it perfect for a speech to a woman college. Virginia Woolf showed immense rhetoric by establishing her ethos and relating the ethos to her audience.
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