Virginia Woolf is one of my favourite Women British writers of the the 20th century who published short stories novels, including, "Mrs. Dalloways", "To the Lighthouse", and "The Waves" "A Room of One's Own" which focused on women's history in writing.Recognized as one of the major figures of modern literature, Woolf is
highly regarded both for her innovative fiction techniques and
insightful contributions to literary criticism. In her short fiction,
she explored such themes as the elusive nature of storytelling and
character study, the nature of truth and reality, and the role of women
in society. Like her novels, these highly individualized, stylistic
works are noted for their subjective explorations and detailed poetic
narratives that capture ordinary experience while depicting the workings
and perceptions of the human mind.
Virginia Adeline Stephen was born on the 25th of January 1882 the third child of Leslie Stephen, a Victorian man of letters, and Julia Duckworth. The Stephen family lived at Hyde Park Gate in Kensington, a respectable English middle class neighborhood. While her brothers Thoby and Adrian were sent to Cambridge, Virginia was educated by private tutors and copiously read from her father’s vast library of literary classics.
She later resented the degradation of women in a patriarchal society, rebuking her own father for automatically sending her brothers to schools and university, while she was never offered a formal education.Woolf’s Victorian upbringing would later influence her decision to participate in the Bloomsbury circle, noted for their original ideas and unorthodox relationships.
Virginia’s mother died from rheumatic fever. Her unexpected and tragic death caused Virginia to have a mental breakdown at age 13. A second severe breakdown followed the death of her father, Leslie Stephen, in 1904. During this time, Virginia first attempted suicide and was institutionalized. According to nephew and biographer Quentin Bell, “All that summer she was mad.” The death of her close brother Thoby Stephen, from typhoid fever in November 1906 had a similar effect on Woolf, to such a degree that he would later be re-imagined as Jacob in her first experimental novel Jacob’s Room and later as Percival in The Waves. These were the first of her many mental collapses that would sporadically occur throughout her life, until her suicide in March 1941.
Virginia Woolf wrote the following essay "The Death of the Moth" before she drowned herself on the 28th of March 1941. In the essay she describes the circumstances revolving around a moth's death .In this powerful meditation she allows the reader to respect death and the power it has over us. She illustrates the
universal struggle between life and death, portraying the valiance of the fight.but at same time acknowledging it's futility.As she examines the struggle of a moth trying to achieve something impossible by going through a windowpane to reach the outdoors, Woolf sees the moth in a new light, a light that identifies the moth not as insignificent and in demand of pity, but a small creature of the world, a pure being that was afforded the gift of being "nothing but life."
The moths purpose is pure. The moth does not fear death, it fears losing the struggle. This is worse than death for the moth, and the moths ability to overcome the living fear of death is what draws Woolf to her and causes her not to pity, but to admire it for it's simple existence and the courage to dance upon the windowpane that brings his death.
An admirable essay and sentiment, but one that still fills my heart with fear and dread, not for me per say, but for those other gentle beings that I do not want to see departing anyday soon.It has however helped me understand a little more,about the eternal power that death has over us all, and although we may stop and stand still or pass away, life continues without us for everyone else.Virginia Woolf was more than just a women's writer she was a delicate observer of everyday life.
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The Death of the Moth - Virginia Woolf
"Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths;
they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and
ivy-blossom which the commonest yellow-underwing asleep in the
shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us. They are hybrid
creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own
species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow
hay-coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour,
seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning,
mid-September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than
that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the
field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the
earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour
came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was
difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book. The
rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring
round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with
thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air;
which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until
every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then,
suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider
circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as
though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the
tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the
horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare-backed downs, sent the
moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the
window-pane. One could not help watching him. One was, indeed,
conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities
of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that
to have only a moth's part in life, and a day moth's at that,
appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre
opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one
corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second,
flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a
third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in
spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off
smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a
steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it
seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy
of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body.
As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of
vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but
life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the
energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way
through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain
and in those of other human beings, there was something
marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone
had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as
possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and
zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed
one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to
forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished
and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest
circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life
might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to
view his simple activities with a kind of pity.
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on
the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an
end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by
him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so
stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of
the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed.
Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for
a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume
his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped
momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its
failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the
wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on
the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It
flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer
raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out
a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me
that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I
laid the pencil down again.
The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the
enemy against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had
happened there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields
had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous
animation. The birds had taken themselves off to feed in the
brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the
same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to
anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little
hay-coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One
could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny
legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have
submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human
beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death.
Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered
again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he
succeeded at last in righting himself. One's sympathies, of
course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody
to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an
insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to
retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one
strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted
the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I
did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The
body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over.
The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at
the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force
over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life
had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as
strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently
and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is
stronger than I am."
