Virginia Woolf Biography

Virginia Woolf used the pretense of universality in her writing as a front for her struggle for women’s liberty. Despite her rejection of the feminist label, Virginia Woolf’s goal in writing To The Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway was to fight for feminist causes, not universal equality. “It seems to me difficult to defend Mrs. Dalloway from moral judgments that call Woolf’s stance wholly nihilistic.†(Bloom, Modern Critical Views: Virginia Woolf pp. 1-6) Woolf was motivated by her feminist causes in writing To The Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway: Although these novels do not explicitly state feminist doctrines, the main characters in both are independent women who are either unsatisfied with their present lives and husband or are the matriarchal leaders of their families and Brahman of their social circles. “The lack of economic freedom breeds resentment, the noisy assertive resentment of the male, who insists on claiming his superiority, and the shrill nagging resentment of the female who clamors for rights.†(Bell, Virginia Woolf Volume II: Mrs. Woolf 1912-1941 p.144) The protagonist in these novels were spawned from Woolf’s personal experiences with female repression and mental illness. The novel’s biting social

Woolf and the Androgynous Vision pp. 3-4) If Woolf tried, to the best of her abilities, to represent both male and female perspectives equally, then her feminist label would be unjustified. Woolf often stated that she fought for universal equality, not just for feminism. Although reform in women’s liberties is one of Woolf’s top priorities, it is not necessarily her only priority.

to use the stream of consciousness poetically and to integrate it into the design

course of a day that she is dissatisfied with the unfulfilling life of decadence that she has been leading and regrets not having chosen a more challenging path through life. The husband to Mrs. Dalloway, the protagonist, is a pseudo-antagonist who subjects his wife to the passive abuse of neglect as does the husband in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. Mrs. Dalloway’s husband, as Woolf and other feminists believed, was depriving Mrs. Dalloway of the life she should have led had she not married, taking the easy way out of uncertainty. As with other feminist works, male influence on women leads to women getting hurt in Mrs. Dalloway. The only exception to this male stereotype comes in the form of one of Mrs. Dalloway’s previous lovers to whom she now looks for comfort and an escape to what-might-have-been. However, this positive portrayal of a man is superficial as Woolf is using this man as an escape so Mrs. Dalloway can fantasize about leaving her husband. As in To The Lighthouse, the female protagonist thinks on a higher level than does her husband and is a symbol for the feminist cause, a symbol for a woman’s life ruined by a man.

Instead of becoming more moderate in the later years of her life, as is the stereotype of age, Woolf became more fervent and outspoken about her feminist views. Her increasingly feminist tone was Woolf’s attempt to hold on to life as mental illness took her life away. There is a direct relationship between mental illness and the feminism in Woolf’s works. As the periods between her bouts of depression shortened and her manic depressive states became progressively worse, Woolf wrote from and increasingly feminist perspective. Her increasingly fervent attitude towards feminism was not purely reactionary, it was the culmination of her life’s work and final attempt to hold onto life.