Virginia Woolf killed herself. She was 59 years old when she decided to end her life. She’d had enough.
So many talented, artistic, creative people end their own lives. I think the pendulum swings back and forth, from the “seeing” to the “not seeing.”
Her full name at birth was Adeline Virginia Woolf. Today is her birthday, coming into this world on January 25, 1882.
What might have happened between the moment of her first breath at birth to the time she drowned herself, drawing in that last watery breath in the fast-moving River Ouse?
Woolf’s suicide note revealed the immense pain the writer was in before she took her life.
It happened on an early spring day in 1941. She filled her pockets with rocks and walked into a chilly, swift river.
She seemed haunted by her demons amidst all that knowledge and talent. She battled tragedy and mental illness for most of her life. And finally, ultimately, she surrendered to her own distress.
Her parents were well-to-do. Virginia and her sister Vanessa were home-schooled amidst their father’s incredible library. But not long after, they attended the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London.
I love what Virginia Woolf once said about childhood. It was this:
“Growing up is losing some illusions in order to acquire others.”
I was thinking about this just yesterday — about the things we believe are true as children — and then, at some point, the world tells us they are not.
Anyway. Virginia Woolf Woolf lost many of her childhood innocence — and beliefs — through instances of trauma. The first of these came when her half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth, began to sexually abuse her. She revealed in her essays that she suffered abuse from the time she was six until she moved out of her family home at the age of 23.
This ongoing sexual abuse most likely prompted many of her battles with mental illness. But when her mother died in 1895, her mental stability really began to fail. Just after she turned 13, Woolf had her first mental breakdown.
But through it all, she wrote. After she graduated college, she joined the world of literature. She became closely associated with a circle of artists and intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group. This is where she met her husband, Leonard Woolf, also a writer.
A fun little bit. They were married in 1912. Right after, they purchased a printing press. Hogarth Press. They began publishing works by some famous writers, including Sigmund Freud and T.S. Eliot.
Woolf started publishing her own writing too. Her first novel came out in 1915 with The Voyage. But it wasn’t until her fourth novel, Mrs. Dalloway, that she gained notoriety.
However, throughout this time, she had several failed suicide attempts. After her mother died, her half-sister passed away. Then her father died from stomach cancer. Things continued to weigh on her. She tried treatments and was even institutionalized for a bit.
But then. On the morning of March 28, 1941, Leonard Woolf knew something was wrong with his wife of 29 years. He spoke with her in her writing “lodge” outside their home in Sussex. He told her she should go inside and rest. This was the last time Leonard saw his wife alive.
Later, he found two suicide notes. One was addressed to him, and the other to her sister, Vanessa.
He searched for her and found her footprints and walking stick on the river bank. But that was all. Her body would not be found for another three weeks, washed up on shore near Southease, England.
So that is just a small capsule of Virginia Woolf’s life. She is thought of as one of the most innovative writers of the 20th century. Her writing captured the ever-changing world in which she lived. And now long gone physically, her spirit lives on timelessly in her work.
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I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.
— Virginia Woolf
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You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
— Virginia Woolf
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Arrange whatever pieces come your way.
— Virginia Woolf
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A different kind of Woolf. We see.
