Today is Virginia Woolf’s birthday. If she was alive today and people tried to make a big deal out of it, she would probably have smirked, picked up a coffee, denied having a party and retired to her studio with a book. I get her, I think we would have been great pals. Or not :) She would definitely be one of those interesting people in your friend circle.
Virginia Woolf is so good yet very few read her works. I was just speaking the other day to a couple of friends who are all avid readers and none of them had attempted to read Woolf. Why?
One of them said something quite innocently which really stuck with me - it’s too difficult. Or it is made out to be so, by the keepers of literary eliticism.
I have come across these people quite a lot in my life and they are nothing short of humbugs, so do not get deterred from getting a taste of great writing when they just drop names like Proust and Blake. Most of them have only read of them.
Virginia Woolf is best known for her “Stream of consciousness” style, which is, if you read it, one of the most easy reads. If you have never read her works, I would suggest you start off with Mrs. Dalloway and get transported into Clarissa Dalloway’s life and mind and effortlessly travel through timelines. Next pick up Orlando, which Woolf had written for her friend Vita Sackville-West. In fact Woolf had gifted the manuscript to Vita, now would you not want to be a friend who gifts you a manuscript? It is funny and charming as it pokes fun at serious issues like the creative life of women and rules of succession. To the Lighthouse requires a little more focus to comprehend, I agree, as it hardly has any physical action and is mostly about the thoughts and reflections.
Another work of hers which is very powerful is one of her essays - A Room of One’s Own. She makes some very scathing and insightful points about women’s power of expression. One of the points she makes really sticks with me long after I have read, it talks about how women are not free to think of any idea. As soon as she starts thinking of one, rules are imposed upon her and she has forgets it. Today we are living in an age, when much of those rules have been chiseled down, yet there.
If Woolf was alive today, she would be a poster girl of so many things, I just cannot list them down here. Also, I bet her Twitter following would be bursting. She is very cool, read her.
No comments:
Post a Comment