You must have heard the name Virginia Woolf at least once in your life. She’s one of the most important writers of the 20th century and a woman who committed her life and career to the cause of gender equality. However, not everybody knows about the sad events that scarred her life.
She was born in a cultured environment, surrounded by intellectuals. However, she couldn’t receive the same education as her brothers who, instead, studied at university.
She still managed to study the classics and start her career as a female writer in a male world.
She experienced suffering since her early youth. In 1895, when she was just 13 years old, her mother died. This event deeply affected her mental health and gave start to depression and a series of mental crisis.
In addition, as she herself recalled in her autobiography, she suffered from the abuses of her stepbrothers. For that reason she would always have trust issues towards men.
In 1905, her tyrannical and bigot father died because of cancer and in her 20s she had already attempted suicide. The failure of the attempt increased her nervous breakdowns.
She found her people around the Bloomsbury group, they were artists and intellectuals who criticized the Victorian morality and believed in equality, love for art detached from traditionalism, and in feminism.
Virginia Woolf is remembered for her support to the movement of the Suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst.
Despite her mental disorder, she married Leonard Woolf, a Jew. Because of the nazist regime, the couple planned that if Hitler had conquered England, they would have killed themselves by locking themselves in the garage and inhaling the fumes of their car.
Apparently, Leonard didn’t really help her get out of her depression.
Between 1913 and 1915 she attempted suicide again: she ingested a hundred grams of acid (Veronal) but managed to survive.
Parallel to her pain of living, she was experiencing great success with her novels. It is remarkable the fame she got when she published Mrs Dalloway, whose protagonist seems to be the projection of her life.
Many wonder whether her depression worsened with writing or writing actually helped her. Her doctors said that her most serious breakdowns came after an intense writing session.
Anyway, she was terrified of solitude, of losing her mind and suffered from terrible sense of guilt.
Writing might have helped her, but it didn’t stop her from committing her last desperate act: she wore her coat, went to the river Ouse, filled her pockets with rocks and drowned herself.
Before the tragic decision, she’d left two letters: one for Leonard and the other for her sister, the two most important people in her life. In those letters, all her suffering and illness come out, as well as the great love she had for her husband and sister.
“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.” - Virginia Woolf
MARIA D., 5scB
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