Writer Virginia Woolf Opened Doors for Housebound Women

I suppose anytime we read something, our interpretation will depend partly upon what kind of mood we're in, or the kind of day we've had, and so my interpretations of Virginia Woolf's essays may be based upon that precept.

A pervasive mood of melancholy seems to me to touch all of Virginia Woolf's writings. Pensive contemplation and sober reflection are always somehow there, whether obvious, or just beneath the surface. Her description of being subtly undermined as a writer by a phantom -- "The Angel in the House" -- was strange and new to me. When her point became clear to me, however, it made sense. Still, it seemed strange, and the product of a mind immersed in an intense inner struggle.

Women, she said, should not be subjected to a life of "house". They can do more than be angelic servants of sacrifice, never opinionated, and never belonging anywhere else. (Hurrah, Virginia!) They can be writers, for instance. To break the household bonds, she had to "kill" that "Angel". And she claimed self defense in order to gain freedom of self-expression.

But I'm wondering if she really killed the "Angel", because her writing never seems to really be loose of those stated bonds. She wanted to kill a falsehood -- that women shouldn't have as full a range of thoughts and expressions as male artists and writers, and they shouldn't be allowed to openly express them.

Whether or not she killed the "Angel" in herself is what I question.

Throughout her writings, I detect that doubt of self that I imagine rattles the best of artists. Did the killing really free her, or only the world of women in general, from the falsehood? She describes a life-long inability to look into a mirror, and gives several possible reasons for this handicap, except the one most obvious to me. She lived with a preoccupation concerning death, and she saw her own death whenever looking into a mirror. Who would want to view that?

In The Death of A Moth, seemingly an expression of trivia, I believe she parallelled the moth's existence to her own. It was constricted, again because of the undying "Angel", full of great possibilities, but meager opportunities.

She remembers vividly a friend of her family who was suddenly gone, a suicide, she learned later. A paralysis of her own body overtook her, and she said she would never be able to accept people hurting others. Perhaps this is the reason for her observation of living part of each day "unconsciously". Was that a mental trick she learned so she could ease her own troubled mind, or did she really think most everyone did that? I'm inclined to think the former -- it was her way of escaping reality, of avoiding the "dark side uppermost in solitude".

The power of exceptional moments in life was another of her strong feelings. She had a great need to have these moments explained, accounted for, to make something "whole" of them. In writing about them, she stubbornly refused to pass by the opportunity to describe them from her point of view, and not as from a male viewpoint, which was one of the stumbling blocks for women writers of her time. She wanted to put together severed parts almost as if an obsession seized her. Perhaps it did. Perhaps it was her inner struggle to put together her own character that really obsessed her. It seemed a continuing failing prospect. It is difficult to say which power held her -- that of life, or the prospect of death.

All this struggle with self came through in her writings, for me as a reader. Since she had no worry of physical maintenance -- her finances were secure -- she was afforded much leisure of existence, and her mind developed an unusual perspective for the mental and emotional. But this ease of life may have been her undoing. She who needn't worry about how to pay the next bill, or how to put food on the table will naturally search for some other way to occupy mind and spirit. Virginia Woolf turned to books.

She literally lost herself in them and then wrote about the experience. She developed classifications for books based on what she thought readers wanted, that certain preconceptions -- fiction should be truth; poetry should be false; biography should be flattering; history should enforce natural prejudices -- should be banished.

She read to open her mind to escape, letting imagination run wild and unconscious float freely. She thought, too, that readers should experience writing in order to better appreciate the book in hand.

Her views on others' writings wasn't terribly critical. She expected one perspective and not separate realities in the same work. The thing that did upset her was the buried personalities in biographies and memoirs. She felt the personality of the person described was usually non-existent, only talked about.

Fictional heroes sometimes can seem to be better developed characters and live longer lives. We readers remember longer those who never were than those who lived. Perhaps that is a chosen mental outlook, a catharsis of sorts, instigated to forget real happenings that disagree with our souls.

Facts are an inferior form of fiction, Virginia Woolf believed. Now this seems a strange thought to me. I disagree. What fiction is not based on facts of life, or life experiences? The steel girders are there. Fiction only adds the mortar and brick. But I do agree on her thought of poetry always being contemporary, for it is a capsule look at life always applicable to parts and wholes of lives.

Readers of books, Woolf said, should follow their own instincts in their choices of books, become familiar with works of famous writers, and exercise their creative powers. Books can take their readers anywhere. There will be in reading, she admits, the experience of rubbish-reading, discovery of those volumes with not a whole lot to offer. But these should be tolerated as a way to cultivate the reader's taste. A good volume a reader should absorb and pass judgment on, taking care not to become entangled in the glory of the critics, but to remain sympathetic and sensitive to the author's effort.

That's a winning attitude, I'd say. Books aren't easily written. Their writing requires an absorption and concentration discovered through the degree of desire to achieve.

Despite Woolf's inner preoccupations, she has much to offer as an artist even today. The shadow of death can be detected when one reads her works. For me, it was definitely present. But underneath we can see her messages. Enjoyment of all types of writings seems to be one. Another is for women writers to continue the struggle to beat the "Angel" and rise above the household. Continue expression of self, cherish memories, and become better readers by experiencing writing, Woolf advises. I can't argue with any of these.

Unfortunately for Virginia Woolf, her suicide signifies an emphatic loss of the battle with herself, but she did win prestige and open opportunities for other women as authors. She helped pave a path, even though she remained enslaved.