Today I finished reading Virginia Woolf: A Biography by Quentin Bell. I took my time with this one, solely because I wanted to. Getting to know Virginia more and more only gave me the pleasure that I didn’t know I very much needed. While I couldn’t stop reading more about her at times, the other times it was hard to go through. I cheered for her as often as I got depressed with her.
The book helps experiencing Virginia’s life in ways unknown to others. I don’t think that Bell made her aunt a hero and he certainly didn’t glorify her. Virginia Woolf was one of the brightest women of her time and indeed a hero to so many of us, but she was also real, she lived, and struggled. She was never free of "those horrible voices."
Bell described her saying: "In a sense then she was precocious and old for her years, but in another way she was still very much a child and a very timid child at that" and "her social gaffers were painful to her (...) she hated pouring out tea and talking like a lady". "She was terried of the world, terrified of exposing herself (…) she for her part really more than half wanted to be invisible. The whole business of clothes was a nightmare to her; and she was happiest when she could forget that anyone looked at her". “ I found some pieces of my soul in her.
When I moved on to the part to find out; "Hitherto men, as lovers, seem to have played no role at all in her imagination. There is nothing in her letters or diaries to suggest that any man had inspired her with the slightest erotic excitement. All her passions, had jealousies and tenderness are kept for her own sex", then of course, I wanted to discover Vita more. Because Vita, Virginia felt, was invented for her own pleasure. This was the point of the book where I thought it went a bit awkward. To say that Vita was the most important person in Virginia’s life along with her sister Vanessa and her husband Leonard, then to give the impression of “maybe they were just good friends” and moving onto the stories of the people who maybe was the least important in her life didn’t sit right with me. “Vita was very much in love with Virginia” but on her side “Virginia felt as a lover feels” only while we all now have the proof of the lengths that they went together. He carefully interrupted and dampened it. I do believe that he did his best to make no attempt to conceal Virginia’s sexuality, but the obvious reason he wrote about this the way he did was because he had an abiding love for Leonard.
I found two facts for me as the most painful part of the book. One was to realize that she was fully aware of her mental illness. Though she also strongly resisted, she did her best to cope with sorrow and use this to shape her art. The other was how cruelty of the war affected them. Their houses were bombed twice, Leonard was Jewish and they were both aware of what Hitler was doing to the them. I did not know that right before her death, Leonard was convinced that the Nazis would seize them and they had the cyanide pills ready. It seems to have given her the final push..
It is hard to not be personally affected by the life of undoubtedly one of the most important literary figures in history and personally, a true hero of mine and someone who I hold very close to my heart.
Who can blame me for wanting more?
