Oral LELE Virginia Woolf

The eye/I of the writter, the game of the writting

The notion The eye/I of the writer, the game of the writting is an interesting wordplay which includes several genres of writting such as the autobiography, memoir, diary and allow us, the readers, to understand better the writers and see writing as an esthetic enjoyment, an expression of feelings.

The notion can perfectly envelop a person as Virginia Woolf who was an English writer and a significant figure in the twentieth century. Member of the Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals, she was born in 1882 and died in 1941. She suffered of mental illness such as bipolar disorder that led her to commit suicide.

Thanks to my three document which a portrait drawn by her sister Vanessa Bell, her short story Kew Gardens and finally her suicide note, I will anwser the question :

→ How does Virginia Woolf's writting reveal who she was ?

Vanessa Bell's portrait of Virginia Woolf

« No painting of Virginia has ever rendered her more profoundly », in fact we can see on the portrait Virginia sitting on a chair holding what seems to be a cloth between her hands. What's the most interesting in this portrait is that her face seems blurred, specially her eyes. That can reveals her bipolar personnality, the fact that she changed frenquetly her moods which were never stable.

Virginia once's said «  I'm not one and simple, I'm complex and many », that shows us that she knew her condition, and it's seems that she wasn't afraid of it, Vanessa paints as she see the world and her sister, how her feeling are, and it is the same in Virginia's writing like in her short story Kew Gardens.

Kew Gardens

Published in 1919, the narrative focuses on the flowerbed and the characters that pass by it, passing from one mind to another to allow the readers brief insights into their thoughts and conversations. When we read the story, it's almost like we're some type of mind-reading ghost: all seeing, but invisible.

It reveals one of the many side of personnality of Virginia, because here we can clearly see that she has her own type of observation of the wrold, in the passage it's seems that she is as small as an insect, ranging from flower to flower.

It relates to my first document because on Vanessa's portrait her eyes are blurred like she can't see the world as everyone see it which is at the same time similar and conversely : in Kew Garden, Virginia is seeing the world like nobody esle, like an insect.

It also reveals who she was because she seems to be like a child who discovers the world, looking at each details, and seeing the world bigger than ever.

Suicide note

Before she committed her suicide, Virginia wrote a suicide note to her husband, Leonard Woolf.

It is interesting to analyse it because as a writer, it is the last thing she left in this world.

She says that she « can't even write this properly », it seems that she was running out of time, she was determinate to kill herself and she wrote it at the last minute, what is kind of cruel because it's the

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