Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): Spokeswoman

1. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): Spokeswoman

2. Young Woolf age 20

3. Time and Place • Born in Kensington, United Kingdom on January 25, 1882 as Adeline Virginia Woolf Stephen. • Early education by parents; took courses at the Ladies Department of the King’s College London. • Dissatisfied with the Victorian “Angel of the House” status reserved for women of nobility. • Died March 28, 1941 by drowning.

4. Professional Career • Began professional career in 1910 with Times Literary Supplement. • First novel The Voyage Out was published in 1915. • Started Hogarth Press with husband Leonard Woolf; published some of Woolf’s and T.S. Eliot’s work. • The Bloomsbury Group; a group of intellectuals who lived in Bloomsbury district of London created “The Dreadnought Hoax.”

5. Cultural Influence • She taught literature and composition at Morley College, an institution that provided educational opportunities for the volunteer faculty. • Worked for both a feminist group and the women’s suffrage movement. • Woolf reviewed articles for the Times Literary Supplement before writing novels. • Acquainted with E.M. Forster (novelist) and Lytton Strachey (historian).

6. Rhetorical Discourse • Challenged notion of women’s subjugation to men. • Impressed upon her readers that nature and creativity are androgynous. • Believed that subjectivity is always at work in literature and everyday life. • Concerned about the predicament of women writers.

7. Major Works • The Voyage Out (1915) • Mrs. Dalloway (1925) • To the Lighthouse (1927) • Orlando: A Biography (1928) • A Room of One’s Own (1929) • Jacob’s Room (1932) • The Waves (1938) • Between the Acts (published after Woolf’s death in 1941)

8. Personal Tragedies • Contracted whooping cough at the age of six. • First major nervous breakdown at the age of thirteen after the death of her mother. • Half sister died two years after the death of their mother. • Institutionalized in 1904 after her father’s death and possible sexual abuse from her half brothers. • Continued writing during times of institutionalization. • London home destroyed by Nazis during the Blitz. • Committed suicide by drowning herself in a lake near her home.

9. Virginia’s Quotes • “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”Woolf, Virginia. • “What had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us? Powdering their noses? Looking in at shop windows? Flaunting in the sun at Monte Carlo?” • “Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority.”

10. Works Cited • The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nded. Vol.2. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2009. Print • Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989. Print. • National Portrait Gallery - Large Image - NPG P1293; “The Dreadnought Hoax.” National Portrait Gallery - Large Image - NPG P1293; The Dreadnought Hoax. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.

11. Works Cited (cont.) • Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1928. Print.