Virginia Woolf
Life
Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882. She came from an upper class, in fact both her parents were
intellectual. There were many tragic event in her life, such as the death of her mother and two sisters
marked a nervous breakdown that will led to migraine attacks and phantom voices in her head. After the
death of her father, she moved to Bloomsbury where she founded a circle of intellectuals known as
Bloomsbury group, and here she met her future husband, Leonard Woolf. In 1915 she published her first
novel “the voyage out”, and then she attempted.
Later, Virginia and her husband founded the Hogarth press that will publish all the works of Virginia, like
“Mrs. Dalloway”, “Orlando”. She gave lecture, she was also a researcher, in fact she wrote “the common
reader”, but in particular “a room of one’s own” is considered her most feminist work. Virginia drowns
herself in a river in 1941.
Interior time
Virginia Woolf uses the technique of indirect interior monologue, in fact we can enter in characters’ inner
world without the help of the narrator. The concepts of time and space are the same of the Joyce: they are
compressed or dilated, in fact a single moment can cast for a long time. She is interested in everything
happens inside, in particular in the impressions of the characters. She is interest in women’s sensibility
which has made her a heroine to many feminist. In Virginia Woolf’s indirect monologue there is still
occasional presence of the narrator, who however invisible, gives some order to character’s thoughts, and
gives us some guideline.
Moments of being
Moment of being is very similar to Joyce’s epiphany. It is a moment of intensity, perception or vision that
illuminate our lives so we be become aware of something that has peach our consciousness. Virginia
explains this concept examining an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. We receive many impressions that
come to us in every moment of our life. Life is not divided into bit but it is something completed, like a halo
that surrounds us. When we receive them so we became aware of something, and this is a moment of
being.
Mrs. Dalloway – The plot
The story is set in London in one day. The protagonist is Clarissa Dalloway, she is 51 and she is the wife of a
politician. She goes to buy some flowers for a party. when she was the florist for the event saw Septimus
Smith, a war veteran who suffers from mental disorders, and this should be locked up in a clinic. at the end
of the story Septimus throws out the window before the eyes of his wife. in the meantime had started the
party Clarissa. At the party, Dr. William Bradshaw, Septimus’ psychologist, arrives late and gives the bad
news to clarrissa, and although it did not know the suicide feels a strong sense of unease. The novel ends
when Clarissa meets Peter, a man that she loved and she appears to him in all her vitality.
