Talk:Virginia Woolf

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[edit] Grammar

Just a thought, maybe the grammar could be cleaned up a bit in the biography portion of the article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.206.57.78 (talk) 16:11, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] James Joyce's writing

I disagree with the statement that Virginia Woolf disagreed with the modernist writer, James Joyce. In her essay, "Modern Fiction," she outwardly praises him for capturing LIFE within his writing, which she states is essential to writing. If writing does not have anything to do with life, Woolf believed it was absolutely worthless. I am going to remove the James Joyce mention because I believe it is inaccurate. Aurora 18:10, 23 December 2005 (UTC)


I believe that Virginia Woolf did ultimately dismiss Joyce's work, at least Ulysses, as tedious, or "common" or something to the effect of both. Where is the author of this page on this? You have this statement: She has been hailed as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century and one of the foremost Modernists, though she disdained some artists in this category. --but no examples of the Modernists she may have disdained are given. This is also a serious problem in the section which follows, concerning her reputation as an author: throughout that section NO examples are given of either the critics who have attacked her or those who have built her reputation, besides the EM Forster quote. PLEASE GIVE US AT LEAST SOME SPECIFIC EXAMPLES FOR ALL THE CONCLUSIONS YOU MAKE REGARDING HER CRITICAL REPUTATION.

According to the Virginia Woolf biography by Herminoe Lee, Virginia Woolf did voice her disappointment with James Joyce, especially Ulysses, and when she met him once she was not particularly impressed. I believe the original source is her diaries but I haven't read them all yet! --Karina.l.k 10:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Her dismissal of Ulysses is in her letters. Read the second volume. "We've been asked to print Mr. Joyce's new novel, every printer in London and most in the provinces having refused. First there's a dog that p's - then there's a man that forths, and one can be monotonous even on that subject - moreover, I don't believe that his method, which is highly developed, means much more than cutting out the explanations and putting in the thoughts between dashes" (p. 234). "Never did I read such tosh" (p. 551). Tomasboij 02:06, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sexuality

I noticed that there's been a small revert war about Virginia Woolf's sexual orientation. She is listed as a famous gay, lesbian, bi person but the text only mentions that her work has feniminist and lesbian themes. So, was she or was she not a lesbian/bisexual? EnSamulili 10:00, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Woolf's sexuality is a point of some contention amongst scholars, especially those who wish to claim her for the history of lesian/bisexual literature. What is clear is that Woolf formed intimate personal relationships with both men and women, including with her husband Leonard Woolf and with fellow female writer Vita Sackville-West. Whether either of these relationships was consummated sexually is uncertain, although I'm inclined to believe that both were. The letters between Virginia and Leonard, and Virginia and Vita, contain numerous playfully sexual references, and one of Vita's letters to her own husband mentions sex with Virginia.
Homosexuality and bisexuality were much less stigmatised within the Bloomsbury circle than in wider early 20th century society, and many of Woolf's closest male friends were gay. It's not unlikely that she too was expressively bisexual. However, I do think that Woolf's relationships with men and women are of different qualities, and that its difficult to assign her a definitive sexuality with any certainty.

Is there any point to the line "Woolf and her beloved sister Vanessa Bell were also close friends."? It seems arbitrary, especially because the whole section is about Woolf's sexuality. --90.194.237.3 16:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bipolar disorder

How can an article about Virginia Woolf not mention bipolar disorder? Karada 03:03, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I think you should add references to that claim. Post mortem psychological diagnoses are not the most reliable ones... EnSamulili 08:00, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

There is quite a bit of good work done on the diagnosis of Woolf. While it is often difficult to do post mortem diagnosis, it is a bit easier with Woolf because of the volumes of her letters and diaries. She writes quite a bit about her periods of mania and depression. These can be used to make a DSM-IV tr (psych diagnostic tool) of bipolar. See also, The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf's Art and Manic Depressive Illness, by Thomas Caramagno

[edit] "shant"

This was a minor edit, but I thought it might deserve a mention. I put an appostrophe in "shant" because that is proper, however, I do not know whether this is what she wrote.

A quotation cannot be changed because there is an error in it. Instead it is shown as written with a [sic] to denote that a usage is incorrect, but part of a quotation that can't be changed. I changed shan't to shant [sic].

[edit] Orlando as fiction

Orlando of course references Vita Sackville-West, but it is clearly a work of fiction for the most part, and I believe it should be listed there rather than under "Biography." When a work claims to be a biography of a fictional character, then it becomes a work of fiction. eeesh 6:08 PM May 14, 2006

Orlando can't be thought of as anything other than a novel. Woolf acknowledged that it was inspired by Vita Sackville-West, but it was in no way an attempt at biography. Yallery Brown 10:48, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A new book about Virginia Woolf

There is a new book about her written by Thomas Szasz "My Madness Saved Me": The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf ISBN: 0765803216 , 2006, here one can find some opinions on this book http://www.szasz.com/woolf.html Quotation Bela Buda: "She put an end to her life by a conscious and deliberate act, according to Szasz, and not driven by the irrational motives of an illness." Austerlitz 88.72.1.11 11:15, 30 July 2006 (UTC) According to the letters she has left which have been cited on the main page she has committed suicide because of deep unhappiness and hopelessness. That's what Alice Miller says, too, and it is plainly true. Austerlitz 88.72.1.11 11:19, 30 July 2006 (UTC) Miller has written about Virginia Woolf in her book The body never lies and in her book Thou Shalt Not Be Aware revised edition 1998 http://www.alice-miller.com/books_en.php?page=3 . Austerlitz 88.72.2.223 11:08, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dreadnought hoax

this should get a mention in here. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:31, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Feminist"

I think talking about her dislike of the "feminist" term in the lead paragraph is a bit weird - it's a minor detail given undue prominence. It's also unsourced. A whole section, with sources, on her relationship to the feminists of her time (she greatly admired suffragette crusaders such as Ethel Smythe) should be added.

Yes, I know -- I should do it myself if I want it done. I'm just making this note so people won't be startled when I move the discussion of the "feminist" label out of the lead paragraph.

Dybryd 05:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Storing this cut text here until I can get more accurate version sourced:

Though she is commonly regarded by many as feminist, it should be noted that she herself deplored the term, as she felt it suggested an obsession with women and women's concerns. She preferred to be referred to as a humanist (see Three Guineas).

Dybryd 05:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


Maybe you can get the quotation from here: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91tg/ (tyger 05:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC))
Thanks for the link. I don't think it supports the text I cut. Dybryd 05:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is Commentary a reliable source?

I'm not sure about the material that's just been added sourced to Commentary magazine. Commentary is a polemical publication, and one of the things it specializes in is hatchet-job articles on writers whose politics are not its editor's. A few months ago, I was involved in a discussion over at the Michel Foucault article, in which claims about Foucault were added to the article based on Commentary's review of a biography. It was eventually found that the biography being reviewed did not in fact support the lurid, sensationalistic assertions made in the review.

I suspect something very similar is happening here. The paragraph on Leonard I just added is also sourced to a review of the same biography Commentary discusses in its article. The picture that review paints of the book--and of the Woolfs' marriage--is a good deal less highly colored and polemical.

In any case, I feel that phrases like "corrosive contempt" are in themselves POV and out of place in an encyclopedia article. Dybryd 20:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, actually, having read the article carefully it looks fine, and "corrosive contempt" is quoted to Glendinning, not to the reviewer. Dybryd 04:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you. It is a fine article, describing -besides other- the tragedy of Leonard Woolf having married a woman suffering from repulsive anti-semitism. Austerlitz 88.72.25.173 12:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Irrelevant material removed from Flush: A Biography

This was appended after the footer of the article about Flush. I suspect it was just a bit of linkwhoring and it doesn't seem to fit WP, what with the subjectiveness and the questions and the what-have-you, but I thought I should leave it here (since there is no page for Kew Gardens) just in case:

[edit] Kew Gardens

Plot Summary The story begins by setting the garden scene: a mild, breezy, summer day in July with "perhaps a hundred stalks" of colorful flowers, petals unfurled to meet the sunlight. The light hits not only the flowers in an "oval-shaped flower-bed" but the brown earth from which they spring and across which a small snail is slowly making its way. As human characters saunter thoughtfully or chattily through the garden and through the story, the narrator returns again and again to descriptions of the garden and the snail's slow progression. Men and women meander down the garden paths, zigzagging like butterflies, as the narrator hones in on particular conversations.

Characters The wife of Simon and the mother of two children (Caroline and Hubert), Eleanor walks through the garden chatting with her husband who tells her of his failed marriage proposal to Lily years before in Kew Garden. Eleanor remembers herself as a little girl, painting by the lake with five other girls. As Eleanor painted, a "grey haired woman with a wart on her nose" suddenly kissed her on the back of the neck, a precious kiss that became Eleanor's "mother of all [her] kisses all [her] life." When her husband asks whether she minds if he talks about the past, she responds that she does not mind and asks, "'Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees . . . one's happiness, one's reality?"'

Themes Each human character in the story seems lost in his or her own reminiscences. Despite walking with someone in Kew Gardens, the narrator emphasizes ways in which their thoughts are their own. Some of the characters are merely alone with their thoughts, like the first couple who remember by themselves and then talk with each other about their memories. Other characters, like William and the "ponderous woman," seem lonely. They walk with a companion who does not seem to notice them. In the end, the man and the "ponderous woman" are perhaps not merely lonely but alienated from those around them. The old man's strange behavior seems to keep him locked into a world all his own, unable to connect with anyone around him.

Narrative The narrator is an omniscient third person. The narrator sets the scene and is able to delve into each character's private thoughts. The true narrative insight appears not so much in what is said or illustrated but in the demonstrated inadequacy of the characters' conversations. The narrator illustrates the garden scene in a fashion that deflects emphasis from an individual person or group of persons. People appear in a series that is implicitly continuous and repetitive. The snail offers the only consistent character and even "his" progress is not only mundane, but it is not narrated to completion; the story ends with the snail in the act of tentative progression. The descriptions of the garden are omniscient about the visual impression of the garden—the play of light, the shape, angle, and placement of garden objects, and the diffusion of color. As a result of these narrative emphases, the story de.....

Analysis Guide Compare the four different groups of people who stroll through Kew Gardens. Do you see any similarities among them? How do Eleanor and Trissie compare? How do Simon and the young man compare with Trissie? Why is so much attention paid to a snail walking across the garden floor? What is unique about this story? Can you formulate a plot? What is the story trying to do by skipping around from group to group and why doesn't the story tell the reader more about what happens to each of its characters?

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-kewgardens/

Mwillia9 03:14, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


Woolf alumna of king's college london? the oxford world's classics edition of 'to the lighthouse' has a woolf timeline which says that she studied history and greek at kcl...please update

[edit] Neopagan

Woolf was part of the group called the Neopagans, but I'm unsure how this relates to the category:neopagans she's been put in here; was she really a neopagan in the sense of Neopagans? 131.111.8.104 10:33, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

No, she wasn't at all. Woolf coined the term "neopagan" as a joke and a backhanded insult - she didn't really consider herself a member of the group, it was what she called the group surrounding Rupert Brooke who were less literary and more funloving.
Here's an NPR story that talks about it - [1] Dybryd 20:20, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] suicide note: "believed by most"?

The article has been changed to read "In what is believed by most to be her last note to her husband she wrote"

Is there expert debate about this really being her suicide note? If so, then I think that's notable and deserves fuller discussion and sourcing. If not, then I'm not sure why the uncertainty and the weaselly-vague language "believed by most" has been introduced.

Dybryd 19:25, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discouraging exclusivity subtle POV

This may seem nitpicky, but there is a subtle POV issue with this sentence in the Personal life section:

The ethos of Bloomsbury discouraged sexual exclusivity, and in 1922, Woolf met Vita Sackville-West.

This implies that she entered into the relationship because exclusivity was discouraged--that seems doubtful considering its length. Can we rephrase this? It would be like saying "The ethos of England discourages sexual inclusivity, and in 1912, Virginia Stephen met Leonard Woolf." Its implicitly attributing motivations to them which there may or may not be evidence for. Now if there is evidence that it was a relationship which entered into because exclusivity was discouraged, such as diaries stating as much, and a respectable biographer has seen the evidence and written about it, then please source. Brentt (talk) 19:54, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Correct name?

In his foreword to the abridged diaries, Quentin Bell wrote that Woolf's given name was "Adeline Virginia." Can anyone confirm this, and modify her full name here? Thanks. Huntington (talk) 23:31, 15 March 2008 (UTC)