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The Neo Protagonist
virginia woolf portrait

VIRGINIA WOOLF: A Life and Legacy

by Saba Fatima

I wish I had the skill of Virginia,

to spark your interest,

in the most trivial of things,

like ‘A mark on the wall’,

or make you wonder,

whether it’s

‘Monday or Tuesday’,

as if it is as important

as having

“A Room of One’s Own”,

To contemplate,

To paint,

To write,

A room where one can have

No gender, No classification,

where one can love,

a man or a woman alike,

or even simple

‘Solid objects’.

In 1882, her life had begun,

within an upper-class family,

in Kensington,

Her parents, both

enlightened intellectuals,

ensured their children

could think and learn,

and had in their circle,

distinguished friends,

Henry James, George Eliot,

and even Lord Tennyson.

Summers of her childhood

were spent amongst

‘The Waves’,

where whiled away they,

their time,

in some cricket,

play and fun.

But short-lived was

the childhood

so happy and secure,

Virginia’s gentle heart

had much more to endure.

First, in 1895,

her mother passed away,

Leading to

her nervous breakdown;

she was no longer gay.

Then her sister Stella,

was by a fever taken,

She was only

two and twenty,

when even

her father’s

companionship

was forsaken.

Too many losses.

too hard to bear,

Then the sexual advances

by a half-brother, so unfair!

There was no one

to confide in,

No parent’s bosom

to hide in,

While the brothers

were to the university sent,

The sisters

were homeschooled,

With the

twists and turns

of the modern society,

they were

sometimes enamoured

and often fooled.

Sister Vanessa turned to painting,

and Virginia would write,

even with all obstacles,

both would have

a career, bright;

But Virginia’s mental state

became unstable,

For her heart clogged with grief;

She approached utmost madness

and heard a bird sing in Greek;

Jumped out of her window she,

The first attempt at suicide,

The family decided to leave

the house

where so many had died.

From Hyde Park Gate

to Bloomsbury, they moved,

which had the British Museum beside;

An area where with no restrictions,

the society was ever tied.

Here the fate of the novelist changed,

For destiny had for her so arranged,

the friendship of individuals such

with whom her thoughts

could be exchanged,

For each in their own field

was a master,

The likes of John Maynard Keynes,

or the well known EM Forster.

Vanessa and Virginia were a perfect fit

For the Bloomsbury Group,

which demanded vision and wit.

At Morley College,

Virginia began to teach

the minds of working men and women

were now in her reach;

but still the deaths

she couldn’t avoid

For in 1906,

her brother, Toby, died of typhoid.

To an old friend,

Violet Dickinson,

Virginia would often

write, and tell,

That Vanessa got engaged,

With a member: Clyde Bell,

Also that in 1911,

arrived in the group

a man, Intelligent,

and sensitive too,

whose marriage proposal

Virginia accepted,

and wrote to Dickinson,

that she was marrying,

‘a penniless Jew’,

For Leonard Woolf gave up

his post of a civil servant

which he had back in Ceylon,

And turned to writing after marriage,

And remained

by his wife alone.

Virginia continued to love and write,

With Leonard

her days were a little bright,

Yet depression swallowed her again,

as per her life’s usual trend,

a second attempt to die came by,

just when her second novel

was about to end.

Shocked this her husband completely,

yet instead of remorse,

he looked after her lovingly.

What an unsung hero,

this husband proved to be!

In his spousal care,

she was stable and steady.

Her novels were published,

and admired,

For success, this couple was perfectly wired.

The Hogarth Press, together they bought,

and published books,

even of T.S. Eliot.

Virginia Woolf became

a feminist icon,

And argued if

Shakespeare had a sister,

who could similarly write,

could as many

hearts as her brother

she would have won?

In 1923, she fell for

Vita Sackville-West

due to whom her novel

‘Orlando’ was born,

Their platonic intimacy

survives in letters,

But then their lives by the

First World War was torn.

Just like Septimus, her

character from ‘Mrs. Dalloway’,

her mental state became,

The war clouded her mind,

she couldn’t remain the same.

When their London house

was bombed,

Leonard and Virginia moved

to their country house,

But fearful she remained,

For German planes flew above,

And a Jew was her spouse.

The thought of losing Leonard

opened her old pain.

The war overwhelmed her,

she was deeply depressed again,

When things became too much to bear,

When Leonard was at a lecture, unaware,

She left him a letter and rose

With an overcoat filled with stones.

Thus completed she her last prose.

Suffered by melancholia,

stepped into the river she

and signed off in 1941

serving through her death,

A poetry.

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