Virginia Woolf: Becoming a Writer

by Katherine Dalsimer

By the time she was twenty-four, Virginia Woolf had suffered a series of devastating losses that later she would describe as “sledge-hammer blows,” beginning with the death of her mother when she was thirteen years old and followed by those of her half-sister, father, and brother. Yet vulnerable as she was (“skinless” was her word) she began, through these years, to practice her art―and to discover how it could serve her. Ultimately, she came to feel that it was her “shock-receiving capacity” that had made her a writer.
Astonishingly gifted from the start, Woolf learned to be attentive to the movements of her own mind. Through self-reflection she found a language for the ebb and flow of thought, fantasy, feeling, and memory, for the shifts of light and dark. And in her writing she preserved, recreated, and altered the dead, altering in the process her internal relationship with their “invisible presences.” “I will go backwards & forwards” she remarked in her diary, a comment on both her imaginative and writerly practice.
Following Woolf’s lead, psychologist Katherine Dalsimer moves backward and forward between the work of Woolf’s maturity and her early journals, letters, and unpublished juvenilia to illuminate the process by which Woolf became a writer. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory as well as on Woolf’s life and work, and trusting Woolf’s own self-observations, Dalsimer offers a compelling account of a young artist’s voyage out―a voyage that Virginia Woolf began by looking inward and completed by looking back.

Genres: Biography

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[lindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up on a whim in the bargain bin at Politics and Prose; I was having a bad day and feeling sorry for myself, and here is the first sentence on the jacket: "By the time she was twenty-four, Virginia Woolf had suffered a series of devastating losses that later she would describe as 'sledge-hammer blows'" -- and I had gasped and taken it to the cashier and walked it home before reading the rest of the sentence: "beginning with the death of her mother when she was thirteen years old and followed by those of her half-sister, father and brother." Woolf puts my grief in perspective, always.

This is a book by a psychologist analyzing the writings in Woolf's diaries and tracing how she became a writer. There are chapters on The Writer at 22 and then at 23 and 24 and 25, and I am at that age where the gradation between those moments feels immense.

Also, a perfect Pale King companion piece for this: "Astonishingly gifted from the start, Woolf learned to be attentive to the movements of her own mind."

[Moira]

This book started off well, but ultimately landed in the 'interesting but flawed' category. For one thing, it's just too short for its subject matter -- was there ever a life so well-documented, especially from the inside? -- and while the first few chapters, dwelling on young Virginia's early diaries and reviews, are excellent, the storyline wobbles with a superficial yet tedious account of The Voyage Out (including lots of Freudian bits) (this is especially disappointing because in the first chapter, To the Lighthouse is analyzed beautifully -- perhaps it's the fault of the subject matter?) and a concluding examination of 'On Being Ill,' with an almost humorous tacked-on last page or so about how Woolf wasn't sick all the time. It was written by a psychoanalyst, so while the book is refreshingly free of literary jargon there are still unfortunate 'In this chapter I will show' stylistic tics and the odd repetitions you get when someone first announces a premise and then supports a conclusion, in an academic fashion. What I found most interesting was her work on memory and recollection; Woolf's late memoir about her parents and background, 'A Sketch of the Past,' is rather well-known, but earlier memoir writings and the newsletter she and her siblings wrote as children aren't, and there is a fascinating textual/psychological comparison of memoirs, newsletters, and earlier and later diary entries (including the one where Woolf says if her father had lived her own life would not have been possible). I was reminded that Proust and Woolf are both preoccupied with the question of memory -- how much do we remake what we remember? -- and its inadequacy in the loss of actual experience, through the passage of time.

Another interesting thing is that so much of Woolf's interior writing has been published -- diaries, letters, early diaries, early letters, drafts, sketches -- it is almost possible to assemble a study like this without apparently referring to the original sources, although some of the more gripping passages are detailed descriptions of fragments and doodles in Woolf's teenage journals. As it stands this volume is pretty much a good introduction if you want to go on and read A Passionate Apprentice or Melymbrosia, but not much more.

[G Vahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love how diaries and journals of our most revered artists and writers can really give so much insight to their personal lives and brain during their lives. how all of the sledgehammer blows to virginia’s life through her personal journal entries gave so much context to her life and her art. how she translated her real life into stories was brought into context and history through her journals. this book is everything you want — a retrospective in a way of all of virginia’s works dissected piece by piece using her journals to gain insight — all very helpful and inspiring as a writer to translate my own nonfiction life into fiction as ways of processing, coping, existing.

[ebbl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed the psychoanalytical analyses of To the Lighthouse and The Voyage Out, although the stuff in the middle was not as much my vibe. Weird how the book spends so much time talking about her distaste for men and marriage without using the word lowercase-L lesbian. Huh?

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is welcome addition to the exegesis relating to the life and work of Virginia Woolf. It is written by a clinical psychologist and presents a number of interesting insights into Mrs. Woolf's life and work. Given the number of books written about Mrs. Woolf, it is refreshing to encounter a fresh viewpoint and a discussion of the life and work from something of a different perspective. I very much enjoyed this book and came away with several new ideas to ponder.

[Aimee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't believe how fast I flew through this. I've had it on my shelf forever, but I never knew it was more of psychoanalytical book. Still very illuminating and now I have to read Woolf's books minus Mrs. Dalloway.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marvelous.