Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf, born on January 25, 1882, was an English novelist and feminist, known for pioneering the modernist style and influencing literature significantly to this day. Virginia Woolf grew up in Kensington, London, and was privately tutored while her brothers were sent to Cambridge. During her time at home, Woolf read and studied from her father’s collection of books, but later she would rebuke her father for not offering her a true education along with her brothers. In 1895, Woolf’s mother passed away, causing her to have a mental breakdown at age thirteen, and another breakdown in 1904 after her father’s death, leading to her first attempt at suicide and her being institutionalized. Today we recognize Woolf’s symptoms as bipolar disorder, and it affected Virginia Woolf’s life greatly until her suicide in 1941.

During her life, Woolf critiqued patriarchal society and recognized how social constructs affected women and this translated into her writing. To the Lighthouse (1927) and A Room of One’s Own (1929) are the main examples of Woolf’s novels that discuss themes of feminism and patriarchal gender roles. Virginia Woolf incorporated many aspects of her life and the world around her into her novels, such as her mental health struggles, experiences with the patriarchy, homosexuality, and the effects of World War I. These novels included Jacob’s Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), and To the Lighthouse (1927). In addition to her work with novels, Woolf also took to journalism by writing reviews on contemporary and classic literature through a modernist lens. Although Woolf was married to Leonard Woolf, she had multiple relationships with women throughout their marriage, most notably with Vita Sackville-West, who inspired the fictional biography written by Woolf, Orlando (1928). This novel quickly became a best-seller, and it solidified Woolf’s position as one of the greatest and most well-known contemporary writers.

In her last years, many of Woolf’s friends had passed, and she felt that she would not be able to recover again. She explained this to her husband Leonard in a letter and later died by suicide on March 28, 1941, at age 59. She had told Leonard to destroy all of her papers, but he disregarded this and kept or published the rest of her work. Although Virginia Woolf struggled immensely throughout her life due to both external and internal issues, she was incredibly influential in contemporary literature and the development of literature into the modern day. Literature would not be what it is without Virginia Woolf.