Virginia Woolf's Women Book

Most of what's written about Virginia Woolf nowadays focuses on her mental illness and suicide. People are obsessed with the idea of the mad genius, the artists who must have been able to produce such great works only
This biography has a clear goal that very much goes against that. While it is impossible to narrate her life without telling the story of the series of deaths that made her the "tortured" writer she's known as, it attempts to showcase a much more interesting side of her that is hardly common knowledge. She loved to gossip! She called everyone she loved by various animal nicknames! She craved the attention of her most beloved friends, begged for visits, especially when she was in a bad place, and was very insecure about her friends' opinions of her work.

I did my graduate's thesis on Virginia Woolf's letters, and like this book, my greater goal was to gain insights into who Virginia was through her written interactions with close friends, family and acquaintances. This book tells the story of her life through her relationships with women. So I knew that, if I was going to finally read an entire biography of Virginia's, it was going to be this one.

Listen, I had gigantic expectations. As much as I am interested in Virginia Woolf alone, I'm fascinated by her relationship with Vita Sackville-West and obsessed with their correspondence. So there's that. And besides, I've read tons of her letters with other friends and plenty of papers about them too. So I knew what I wanted from this book, and I can't say it didn't deliver. I finished it with my heart heavy and full of love for Virginia, having gained a new perspective of my admiration for her and a new understanding of just why I like her so much. It presented me with a bunch of little things I didn't yet know and made me appreciate her more. Not necessarily good things about her, I think is worth emphasizing; just that she was human and flawed as well, and not just mentally ill and brilliant, as she's often unjustly described.

While I did like this book a lot, I had some issues with a couple of chapters. See, it follows a loose chronological order, starting from the first women in her life up until the women that were her closest friends before she died. It is, however, separated in chapters by the women they will focus on. I found myself questioning this format a few times, because it meant that, in the beginning, a lot of it overlapped in the timeline. I read about Julia and Stella, her mom and her step-sister, and their tragic deaths, and then the book goes into a chapter about Violet Dickinson and for a little while Julia and Stella are alive again, and then they aren't, and then it goes into Vanessa's and the book yet again jumps back to family life with everyone alive.

I'd say my main problem was with Vanessa's chapter, actually, for two reasons. One is what I just mentioned. Vanessa was arguably the person closest to Virginia's heart, in her entire life, except maybe for her husband Leonard. As sisters, they'd known each other since they were little and Vanessa outlived Virginia. What this means for this book is that, inside an entire book that spans Virginia's life, there's Vanessa's part that also sums up her entire life, from when they were born up until Virginia's suicide letter to Vanessa. And I feel like the author could've maybe handled that one a bit better. I don't know how to articulate this but I just felt like the author didn't care much for Vanessa. It wasn't as entertaining as Ethel Smyth's or Dora Carrington's, or as heartfelt as the one about Julia and Stella, or even heartfelt in itself -- it was one of the chapters I was most interested in, for the immensely important role that Vanessa had in Virginia's life, and I found it disappointing.

The chapter about Ottoline and Katherine was also weird to me -- I think they were grouped together because they incited similar feelings in Virginia (?), but their stories were told in sequence anyway. And Vita's... I've decided I won't go into detail about Vita's because I'm very biased due to the fact that I am completely obsessed with her, so I've settled for telling myself that if I want more, I can read whole other books about their relationship solely. I did feel like the author didn't much care for their relationship either, or for Vita, and sensed lots of biting irony in the way the author talked about Vita's relationships with other women and how she used to fall in love hard and fast and write poetry in response to declarations of love. She was just that person and I love her so much for all of it but I guess I can't force everyone else to feel the same. I just expected better from a chapter about their whole very close friendship and the fact that Virginia wrote the entirety of one of her greatest works inspired by Vita's life and personality. (I say I won't talk about it and start rambling, I know.)

The last chapter almost made me take back all my criticism as the quote right under the title "Virginia" brought tears to my eyes. I genuinely like her so much and this book did a nice job of fueling that for weeks to come as I re-read letters and look for more biographies, more papers, everything. Not perfect, but still a pretty awesome read.