The Life Of Virginia Woolf Essay Research free essay sample

The Life Of Virginia Woolf Essay, Research Paper Driven by unmanageable circumctances and internal struggle, her life was cut short by self-destruction. One of the greatest female writers of all times, Virginia Woolf, produced a organic structure of writtings respected universe broad. Her function in feminsim, along with the personal relationships in her life, influanced her literary. Virginias relationships throughout her life contributed non merely to her literature, but the quality of her life as good. Possibly the greatest influence in Virginia # 8217 ; s life is her female parent, Julia Stephen. # 8220 ; Julia Stephen was the most sensational figure which her girl [ Virginia Woolf ] tried to raise and continue # 8221 ; ( Gordon 4 ) . Woolf, a manic-depressive, found herself invariably seeking for blessing. # 8220 ; Virginia needed her female parent # 8217 ; s blessing in order to # 8216 ; step her ain stature # 8221 ; ( Bond 38 ) . Battling with a sense of ineptitude, Virginia # 8217 ; s female parent helped her tempor arily free herself of self-criticism and uncertainty. We will write a custom essay sample on The Life Of Virginia Woolf Essay Research or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page This nevertheless was ephemeral. When Mrs. Stephen rejected Virginia, she felt her female parent # 8217 ; s disapproval straight related to the quality of her authorship. # 8220 ; Virginia Woolf could non bear to reread anything she had written # 8230 ; Mrs. Stephen # 8217 ; s rejection of Virginia may hold been the paradigm of her failure to run into her ain criterions # 8221 ; ( Bond 39 ) . With the decease of her female parent Woolf used her novel, To the Lighthouse to # 8220 ; reconstruct and preserve # 8221 ; the memories that still remained. Harmonizing to Woolf, # 8220 ; the character of Mrs. Ramsey in To the Lighthouse was modeled wholly upon that of her female parent # 8221 ; ( Bond 27 ) . This helped Virginia in her closing when covering with the loss and compulsion with her female parent. Although Virginia clung to the relationship with her female parent, she favored her male parent, Leslie Stephen. Virginia resembled her male parent uncannily in character traits , in her authorship and diffidences, in her great and malicious sense of wit, in her matrimony, in her frugalness, in her fright of aging, and in her societal consciousness. ( Bond 59 ) They were both highly outspoken while saving no one # 8217 ; s feelings with their remarks. Virginia and Leslie both had strong personalities and rapid temper alterations. Woolf portrayed her male parent, like her female parent, through word picture in To the Lighthouse. Mr. Ramsey captures her male parent as a adult male of # 8220 ; perplexing mutableness, a buoy uping switch from the most loveable of work forces, to a # 8216 ; famished wolfhound # 8217 ; and back once more # 8221 ; ( Gordon 22 ) . This portraiture of Leslie Stephens relates to his unmanageable furies and temper swings. Leslie Stephen non merely controlled Virginia # 8217 ; s mental development, but her rational development every bit good. He became his girls # 8217 ; wise man, and # 8220 ; trained her to go his rational Air e # 8221 ; ( Bond 60 ) . Mr. Ramsey parallels Woolf # 8217 ; s male parent in # 8220 ; his demand to go through his rational nature onto his kids # 8221 ; ( Gordon 26 ) . Leslie Stephen saw no job with his unmanageable behaviour. Virginia, on the other manus, found it exasperating. She established: In the creative activity of this character # 8230 ; the scrutiny of Mr. Ramsey # 8230 ; is like a informant box history of the pros and cons of his [ Leslie Stephens ] behaviour. ( Gordon 22 ) Despite their differences, Virginia and her male parent formed a particular bond non understood by anyone but each other. His insecurities and defects became hers, which added to the already tremendous battles in her life. The relationship between the two influenced Virginia # 8217 ; s life, every bit good as her decease. By watching her male parent dice of a terminal unwellness, Virginia wrote: The waiting in unbearable # 8230 ; the worst of it is he is so tired and worn out, and wants to d ecease # 8230 ; I shall make my best to destroy my fundamental law before I get to this age, so as to decease quicker # 8230 ; I can non bear to go the wretch my male parent became when he reached my phase of life. ( Bond 62 ) . Virginia had great troubles composing towards that end, and she feared her work would merely go on to decline with age. At the age of fifty-nine on the Eve of her birthday, Virginia drowned herself. Her male parent # 8217 ; s decease did non entirely act upon her self-destruction, but her designation with him was so strong that he was # 8220 ; instrumental in her pick of decease # 8221 ; ( Bond 62 ) . While Virginia Woolf # 8217 ; s parents contributed greatly to her unstable life, her hubby, Leonard, took on the duty of maintaining her temporarily together. Leonard # 8217 ; s function as Virginia # 8217 ; s hubby is a complicated 1. He non merely helped her through he manic-depressive episodes, but besides worked to keep her self-esteem. Because of Virginia # 8217 ; s mental province the matrimony between the two endured many struggles. Shortly after they were married, Virginia became sick, suffered legion dislocations, and attempted self-destruction. Their matrimony resembled that of Virginia # 8217 ; s parents, in that both matrimonies # 8220 ; were based on supposed grounds of superiority-inferiority # 8221 ; ( Bond 96 ) . Virginia had problem in showing her choler, and because of this she took retaliation out on Leonard. She non merely refused to hold sex with him, but she besides psychologically abused him. Exhibited in Virginias # 8217 ; literary work Mrs. Dalloway. Virginia, # 8220 ; like her # 8216 ; chaste # 8217 ; heroine, Mrs. Dalloway, needed to forbear from sex with her hubby in order to keep her discreteness # 8221 ; ( Bond 96 ) . Despite all of the convulsion, their matrimony survived. The matrimony became necessary for Virginia # 8217 ; s mental endurance every bit good as the endurance of her composi ng calling, which Leonard was an plus to. He kept Virginia focused on her authorship, and kept her sane for drawn-out periods of clip. He # 8220 ; experienced vicarious satisfaction from Virginia # 8217 ; s composing # 8221 ; ( Bond 96 ) . When Leonard criticized Virginia # 8217 ; s composing, as with her female parent, she fell back into depression and psychosis. Virginia # 8217 ; s inability to map with out Leonard # 8217 ; s support finally contributed to her self-destruction. Despite Virginia # 8217 ; s matrimony to Leonard he was non her true love. The love of Virginia # 8217 ; s life, Vita Sackville, and Virginia met while Virginia was in her mid-fortiess. They continued an on and off relationship # 8220 ; which contributed to the care of Virginia # 8217 ; s wellness and saneness for 18 old ages # 8221 ; ( Marcus 109 ) . The relationship betw een the two â€Å"was of primary importance in finding the class for Virginia Woolf in both her psychosis and her guineas† ( Marcus 150 ) . The relationship manifested Virginia’s childhood memories every bit good as offering a curative facet. Vita filled the nothingnesss for Virginia, which enabled her to restart her emotional development. Vita instigated the blossoming of Virginia’s growing and creativeness and served as the primary beginning of inspiration and creativeness for Woolf’s most of import plants, To the Lighthouse, The moving ridges, and Orlando. ( Bond 119 ) Even though Vita helped Virginia, because she was incapable of being faithful and left Virginia for other relationships after a few months. â€Å"Virginia was heartbroken, and reacted to a minor breakdown† ( Bond 118 ) . Vita returned to Virginia, and regenerate her creativeness and better her wellness, but when the â€Å"love matter with Vita eventually ended, the visible radiati on of Virginia’s mastermind dimmed† ( Bond 154 ) . The relationship between Virginia and her sister Vanessa offered a different of relationship from all the others in her life. From the clip Vanessa and Virginia were kids, Vanessa acted as a safety cyberspace for Virginia. Virginia looked to her sister for comfort in a motherly function, and this continued with each new crisis. However, Vanessa failed to populate up to the outlooks Virginia had on her as a replacement female parent. The first case occurred with the decease of their male parent, Leslie Stephen. Virginia â€Å"found herself emotionally drained and exhausted, † while Vanessa â€Å"was obviously delighted at recovering her freedom, and being released from the attention and sick pique of this oppressive man† ( Bond 100 ) . Because of their differences in get bying with Leslie Stephens’ decease, Vanessa did non offer much solace to Virginia. Virginia found Vanessa’s felicity imposs ible to bear†¦ Vanessa’s indifference to Virginia’s province of head contributed to her heartache and subsequent mental breakdown†¦ At the decease of Sir Leslie, Virginia lost her male parent and her sister, the two people closest to her. ( Bond 111 ) . Their deteriorating relationship continued to decline with each new wrangle. Each clip they would reason, Virginia would endure a dislocation, and Vanessa would accommodate with Virginia. When Vita and Virginia met, she and Vanessa went their separate ways. The sisters continued to hold no contact while the relationship between Vita and Virginia prospered, but when Vita would go forth her, the sisters would do damagess yet once more. Their relationship remained unstable because of the outlooks placed on the relationship by Virginia. By neglecting to make full the function of female parent that Virginia required, and by non being psychologically present for her at the decease of their male parent, Vanessa was w oven into the cloth of Virginia’s breakdowns†¦ by non being emotionally available to Virginia, Vanessa indirectly helped her to precipitate Virginia’s homosexual love affair†¦ and the ensuing indifference to Virginia’s hurting contributed to her heartache and subsequent self-destruction. ( Bond 109 ) Virginia portrayed her relationship with Vanessa through her literary work, The Waves. A character in the narrative, Susan, presents Vanessa as an â€Å"uninhibited kid of nature, as a animal of the wild, independent of the demands of civilization† ( Bond 110 ) , which was how Virginia viewed her sister. The difficult ships between Virginia and her sister may hold arisen because Virginia asked excessively much of her sister, Vanessa could non accept the duty asked of her. Insanity did non halt Virginia Woolf from accomplishing great achievements, including feminism. As one of the earliest womens rightists, Woolf’s function in feminism was due to relationships with others throughout her life. Woolf shied off from feminist groups, yet she was intensely critical of patriarchal societal and political system of values, peculiarly related to adult females, and her fiction became a vehicle of her unfavorable judgments. Woolf felt her male parent was a autocrat and she became â€Å"the voice against male tyranny† ( Bond 52 ) . Her literature was a voice for suppressed adult females. She spoke out non merely against her male parent, but against her female parent every bit good. She blamed her male parent for her mother’s decease because he expected her to give her whole life to his demands. Sing this as a kid, Virginia placed most of the incrimination on her female parent for losing her personal sense of ego and individuality, doing her to decease immature. Although Virginia refused to settle for a life like her mother’s, she fell into a similar form with her hubby Leonard. Her matrimony paralleled her paren ts because Leonard controlled every facet of Virginia’s life. For Virginia, it was necessary to depend on Leonard in order to prolong life, but she rebelled against him, and the full male sex. Virginia blamed work forces for most of the negative events in her life. For the feminist Virginia Woolf, who turned down decorations and doctors degrees at universities, which discriminated against adult females, second-class citizenship was unacceptable. ( Bond 40 ) Virginia dedicated many of her plants to the womens rightist cause, including one of her most celebrated, A Room of One’s Own, presents the favoritism of adult females in a humourous manner. She writes about university bookmans go toing a dinner where work forces are served the finest nutrient with the best gustatory sensation, and the adult females are given bland, tiring nutrient. Although the work forces and adult females hold equal places their intervention is far from equal. Woolf felt this comparing represente d the mundane intervention of adult females. Virginia Woolf used her leading and literary endowment to contend for women’s rights, and to convey justness to the unjust obstructions adult females were challenged with. â€Å"Only composing, † Virginia Woolf said, â€Å"could compose ‘the synthesis of my being† ( Gordon 7 ) . Virginia Woolf greatly affected the feminist motion with her ideas and composing. Her relationships with others fired her originative endowment all the clip driving her to suicide. Chemical bond, Ala Halbert. Who Killed Virginia Woolf? : Human Sciences Inc, 1989. Gordon, Lyndall. Virginia Woolf: University of New York Press, 1986 Marcus, Jane. 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