It's one of the peculiarities of her posthumous reputation that the full, immense extent of her life's work has only revealed itself gradually, changing the twentieth-century perception of her from the delicate She used most about her mental states, "apprehensive") for her.Īnd her remains are fearsome, too. Reading and writing her life, I am often afraid (or, in one of the words I am afraid of not being intelligent enough for her. I think I would have been afraid of meeting her. There are many times, writing this, when I have been afraid of Virginia Woolf. Who reads books has an opinion of some kind about Virginia Woolf, even if derived only from the title of Albee's play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Same four questions: Is it true that she was sexually abused as a child? What was her madness and why did she kill herself? Was Leonard a good or a wicked husband? Wasn't she the most terrible snob? It began to seem that everyone I have noticed that in the course of any conversation about this book I would, without fail, be asked one or more of the Positions have been taken, myths have been made.
There is no such thing as an objective biography, particularly not in this case. Of National Biography, and of Julia Stephen, née Jackson." What no longer seems possible is to start: "Adeline Virginia Stephen was born on 25 January 1882, the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, editor of the Dictionary She is a writer who lends herself to infinitely various interpretation. They can start with a theory or a belief and see her always in terms of it, since, like Shakespeare, They can start by thinking of her as a victim, as someone who is going to kill herself. Social and intellectual group and its reputation. They can start with Bloomsbury, fixing her inside her
They can start at source, with her family history, and see her in the context of ancestry, country, class. The different openings suggest some of the choices for Virginia Woolf's biographers. "Was Virginia Woolf 'insane'?"4 "Was Virginia Woolf mad?"5 "Virginia Woolf said that 'if life has a base' it is a memory."6 Or: "Yet another book about Bloomsbury."7 How do they begin? "Virginia Woolf was a Miss Stephen."2 "Virginia Woolf was a sexually abused child: she was an incest-survivor."3 "My God, how does one write a Biography?"1 Virginia Woolf's question haunts her own biographers.
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