Founding member of the Bloomsbury group, a group of avant-garde English intellectuals and artists, Virginia Woolf turned literature upside down at the start of the 20th century.
Virginia Stephen was born in London to a family of English high society intellectuals and grew up among books. Mourned – she lost her mother at 13, and her father at 20 – she broke up with good Victorian society, sold the family home in central London with her brothers and sister, and moved to Bloomsbury, a more popular neighborhood.
She lives with her brothers and sister, which allows her to mix with their friends from Cambridge University and the artistic world. Together they form a trendy band of young artists and intellectuals: the Bloomsbury group.
We understand that for two girls – Virginia and her sister Vanessa – who come from a very framed environment, it must have been intellectual, emotional, and physiological happiness too. They became aware of their bodies, of desire, of flirting, with these boys who were returning from Cambridge. Claire Davison, Professor of Modernist Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University
In this context, the sisters decide to become artists: Vanessa will be a painter, Virginia writer, but she will not publish her first novel, that 10 years later, in 1915, The Crossing of appearances, on a young girl’s self-quest. Virginia, who suffered several depressions during her life, described Bloomsbury as a “magical” place where “melancholy does not exist”.
Since the gender identity was less known at the time, the reports were much more fluid. Relations between women between men, one feels tenderness, friendships, confessions of love, does that necessarily mean that they were homosexual? Maybe not. Claire Davison, Professor of Modernist Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University
Over the years, other friends are added to the group, more intimate ties are forged. Virginia married Léonard Woolf in 1912 with whom she founded a publishing house, The Hogarth Press. Her sister Vanessa married Clive Bell in 1907. Virginia also had other very strong relationships, with her friend her childhood friend, Violet Dickinson and with the gay essayist Lytton Strachey, who even asked for her marriage in 1909 .
I deeply believe that there was a little boy in Virginia who was in love with other boys and that that part of her that embarrassed her a lot, was good with Lytton Strachey. This is the reason why in Virginia Woolf’s novels, with a few exceptions, desire, when it is told, is a homosexual desire, it is visible in “Waves”, it’s very visible in “Between the Acts”. Basically, a man’s passion for a woman is very absent from his text. Jean-Paul Martin Fugier, author
At 40, Virginia Woolf makes a decisive encounter: the poet Vita Sackville-West. At that time, she signed three novels and is preparing to publish Mrs Dalloway, she begins to enjoy literary recognition. The two women live a passionate relationship and inspire each other, becoming in turn the artist and the muse. One of Virginia’s major novels was born out of this relationship, Orlando: A Biography, whose main character is inspired by Vita. She will say of the book: “This is the longest and most beautiful love letter ever written”.
Their relationship is symbolic of the Bloomsbery’s attitude and the openness of the group, their taking of sexual freedom, the idea that we should be free to love whoever we want, regardless of the gender of the person. Nino Strachey, writer and research director at the National Trust
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