The works in this branch are all of the novels we read by Virginia Woolf, but I also included the film version of Orlando because it is similar to the novel, just through a different medium.

The works in this branch point out the many similarities and application of Woolf's life into her work. The film "The Hours" shows her suicide, connecting her mental health to the novel Mrs. Dalloway. "The Sense of Unending" shows the connection between the character Orlando and Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West. "Virginia Woolf and the Flesh of the World" describes the incorporations of the state of the world into the novels, things such as the war in To the Lighthouse for example. "On Seeing Illness" shows how Woolf's contraction of the Spanish flu influenced the characters in Mrs. Dalloway and how her state of mind changes because of experiencing illness this way.

This branch groups together Virginia Woolf's long essays. These are book-length essays that give insight into Woolf's beliefs. Although they present similar points, they are written in different styles. "A Room of One's Own" is more of a Utopian style that ends by proposing an ideal world where gender is not a factor in producing art. "Three Guineas" on the other hand, is written as a letter to an individual she labels as an educated man and appears surprised to have received a question from him in the first place.

This branch groups together different essays that mention societal problems addressed in Woolf's works. Zwerdling Analyzes the approach that Woolf has to criticize the upper class of the Victorian era and whether writing from their perspective in Mrs. Dalloway is a form of "exoneration." While Walker uses "A Room of One's Own" and applies it to the perspective of a black woman, illustrating how the concept of inhibited potential is prevalent for black ancestry, even more so if one was a woman.

Stephen Daldry, dir., The Hours

Elizabeth Outka, “On Seeing Illness: Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway”

Most if not all fo the connections to Orlando also apply to the film as there are not drastic differences between them

Melanie Micir, "The Sense of Unending: Revisiting Virginia Woolf's Orlando"
In the sense of unending we see Micir explaining the extent to which Orlando was poking fun at the writers and biographers of the time. She explains the background behind this, as Woolf's father was a biographer, and elaborates of the techniques used.

• Dismisses the authenticity of a biography by writing a novel and labeling it so
• plays with intimacy and publicity, showing biographers of the time that this is something that makes an individual human but should also be respected (incorporates blank sections in the book open to the readers interpretation)

"In Search of our Mothers Gardens" expresses the sad reality that society allowed for a lot of unexplored potential by censoring a whole group of people through obstacles such as illiteracy and poverty.
-"Then you may begin to comprehend the lives of our "crazy," "Sainted" mothers and grandmothers. The agony of the lives of women who might have been Poets, Novelists, Essayists, and Short-Story Writers (over a period of centuries), who died with their real gifts stifled within them" (Walker,403).

"In Search of Our Mothers Gardens"Walker is clear just how heartbreaking it could be to have the desire to create art and to use that outlet. She uses examples of the abuse black women faced through slavery, and contrasted this with the desire to paint or make sculptures (Walker, 402).

In "In Search of our Mothers Gardens" Walker points out the culprit of the hundreds of years of art and legacy loss, and this is the social structure that allowed for slavery and continued to oppress women and people of color even after the end of it.

"In Search of Our Mothers Gardens" adds the factor of race into the concepts presented by A Room of One's Own. How it is true that being a woman made it hard to create, but being a black woman took away the privileges of literacy and any sort of ownership at the time. As Woolf presents the idea of generational wealth when it comes to men's education, we see the impact of slavery and how this led to to wealth whatsoever.

Alex Zwerdling, “Mrs. Dalloway’s Social System”
Zwerdling responds to the question of whether Woolf's critique of the social system in Mrs. Dalloway is effective. He breaks down different ways that she approaches this criticism.
-makes observations instead of direct commentary
-contrasts the changing times of post war England with the stagnant upper class society
-show the degree of compartmentalization used to hide the fact that there is an issue with unemployment and immigration threatening their position as well.

Alex Zwerdling, “Mrs. Dalloway’s Social System”
Zwerdling explains the context of Mrs. Dalloway and how the British empire was crumbling. He especially talks about India which was at the time under British control.

Alex Zwerdling, “Mrs. Dalloway’s Social System”
Zwerdling credits the war for the change in society in Mrs. Dalloway and the real world and continuously points out the inability of the upper class to adapt to these changes.
-“The sense of living in the past, of being unable to take in or respond to the transformations of the present, makes the governing class in Mrs.Dalloway seem hopelessly out of step with its time.” (Zwerdling, 72)

Alex Zwerdling, “Mrs. Dalloway’s Social System" Explains how Clarissa Dalloway has to hide herself in order to fit into the rigid constraints of upper class society in England.

Elizabeth Outka, “On Seeing Illness: Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway”
Outka explains the essay written by Woolf "On Being Ill" and how experiencing the Spanish influenza various times contributed to her depleating mental health. Also she explains the way Woolf combines the survivors in order to emphasize the trauma that comes with an outbreak such as the Spanish flu, despite her too being a denier of the severity of it initially.

Elizabeth Outka, “On Seeing Illness: Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway”
Outka describes this as a pandemic novel as she uses Mrs. Dalloway's status as a survivor of the pandemic to truly illustrate the impact that this disease had. It was not just something one could get over once they were cured.
-"In detailing the vast impact of illness and its puzzling erasure, Woolf constructs a parallel between the devastation of illness and war, subtly equating the two cataclysmic events of the preceding years" (Outka, 107).

Melanie Micir, "The Sense of Unending: Revisiting Virginia Woolf's Orlando" Micir labels Orlando as "a genetic hybrid" because of the combination of social criticism, satire and fantasy in the form of a novel that "should be read as a biographical act."
-"Genre and sexuality are here inexorably entwined: in rejecting the form of a standard biography, Woolf rejects the standard form of a legible life. Instead, she offers an alternative model of a human lifetime that is bound by the limits of imagination and desire rather than by somatic facts" (Micir,129).

Melanie Micir, "The Sense of Unending: Revisiting Virginia Woolf's Orlando"
Micir explains the connection between the character Orlando and Woolf's lover Vita. Argues that writing this biography was a way to extend her legacy and to tribute her, but also to acknowledge that like Orlando, her story was not over yet at the time of the publication and that she has the ability to continue this story through time.
"I suggest that Woolf ’s pedagogical process extends beyond the text itself: in giving the biography back to Sackville-West on the day that it ends, historical time is folded into living time, and Woolf indicates that such intimate biographical practices can—and perhaps should—make a difference in the unfinished life and legacy of their subjects" (Micir, 129).

Melanie Micir, "The Sense of Unending: Revisiting Virginia Woolf's Orlando"
Micir mentions the description of Orlando as "The longest and most charming love letter in literature" by Nigel Nicolson and then proceeds to go in depth to the strategies Woolf uses to praise Vita secretly. She makes sure to emphasize that this relationship was not public and therefore not evident as one of the intentions by the readers at the time.

Melanie Micir, "The Sense of Unending: Revisiting Virginia Woolf's Orlando"
Because Orlando is written for her female lover at the time there are gay undertones throughout the work and Micir connects these to the relationship between Woolf and Sackville-West
-"I suggest that, in reading its modernist frustration with normative temporality as queer frustration with the mandates of heteronormative temporality, we open up productive new avenues for understanding Orlando’s cultural work"(Micir, 114).

"Then you may begin to comprehend the lives of our "crazy," "Sainted" mothers and grandmothers. The agony of the lives of women who might have been Poets, Novelists, Essayists, and Short-Story Writers (over a period of centuries), who diedvwith their real gifts stifled within them."

Louise Westling, "Virginia Woolf and the Flesh of the World" (excerpt)
"The Window" the long opening section of the novel carefully establishes the transcendent Platonic heritage of Western culture through the figure of Mr. Ramsay, a quintessential Victorian patriarch and philosopher who is a satiric portrait of Woolf s own father, Sir Leslie Stephen" (Westling, 860).
Westling even goes as far as to say that Woolf is criticizing western concepts of space and reality. Instead of taking humans out of the equation, she responds by valuing the relationship between nature and human consciousness.

Louise Westling, "Virginia Woolf and the Flesh of the World" (excerpt)
-“Such an embeddedness is what Virginia Woolf conjured in the "Time Passes" section of To the Lighthouse, but on
so cosmic a scale that individual human lives are only droplets thrown briefly into the air by the vast sea of dynamic being”(Westling, 865)

Louise Westling, "Virginia Woolf and the Flesh of the World" (excerpt)
Westling explains the prevalent aspect of community used by Woolf in the novel To the Lighthouse. The community has a patriarch and a matriarch, Mr. Ramsey and Mrs. Ramsey, and their interactions with the rest of their community on the Isle are essential for Woolf to show how these can coexist with the intrinsic aspects of nature.

Alice Walker, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”
Walker makes sure to mention the added obstacles of being a woman of color. Not only did none have to face the prejudice from race but also deal with the expectations of women.

Melanie Micir, "The Sense of Unending: Revisiting Virginia Woolf's Orlando"
Explains how Orlando's inability to inherit is similar to the struggles faced by Vita when wanting to inherit the Knole house.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
In Mrs. Dalloway Woolf focuses on the upper class with Clarissa Dalloway as the main character, although she does show side characters that are feeling the effects of the war such as Septimus, a war veteran. She wants to demonstrate the limitations of the upper class when it comes to conforming to society and also the irony of their political discussions as the choices being made have little impact on their own well being.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
In the novel Mrs. Dalloway is still experiencing a lot of trauma from the Spanish Influenza, but it is Septimus that Woolf really uses to show the mental health struggle. Especially with the ending in which he decides to commit suicide after struggling with PTSD, previously known as “Shell Shock.” His death serves as a way to break Clarissa’s composure, demonstrating a more humane side to her where she contemplates her happiness with her current lifestyle. It breaks the consistent focus she has on planning and hosting her party and allows her to see the beauty of life in front of her. “The party's splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come in alone in her finery” (Woolf, 202).

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Clarissa Dalloway is a survivor of the Spanish influenza, a detail that is continuously mentioned through the book through the limitations in her health. In the beginning there is mention of her heart condition that was a result of fighting the disease and how she appears to Lady Bruton as an inconvenience for the success of her husband, who took time off of politics to help her healing.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Clarissa Dalloway reminisces about the love that she felt for Sally, how “All this was only a background for Sally. She stood by the fireplace talking, in that beautiful voice which made everything she said sound like a caress, to Papa, who had begun to be attracted rather against his will” (Woolf). They even share a kiss in this scene demonstrating that although Clarissa eventually marries a man, she has experienced romantic love for women, a concept that was only spoken about in secret at the time.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Societal expectations: Clarissa Dalloway is forced to confine herself to the societal expectations of the time. She marries Richard who although she may not feel as passionate about in comparison to peter walsh, is more dependable as he is involved in politics and proud of his position in the upper class. Walsh expresses jealousy “there's nothing in the world so bad for some women as marriage, he thought; and politics; and having a Conservative husband, like the admirable Richard” (Woolf, 47).

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Peter goes to India for five years and his sentiments towards Indian women is clear through the statement “But those Indian women did presumably--silly, pretty, flimsy nincompoops” (Woolf, 10). He attributes these characteristics to Indian women, viewing them as inferior and less educated than the white women back home.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
In the novel we see many relationships unfolding, some examples are...

• Lucrezia and Septimus: she loves him but does not know what to do to help him with his trauma. She is in part disappointed by the marriage since she expected a lot more from her decision to move away from family and marry a British man.
• Richard and Clarissa Dalloway: They care a lot for each other, Richard puts his career on hold to take care of her, but Clarissa holds on to her past too.
• Clarissa and Sally: Clarissa seems to love Sally but the time did not permit them to be together, they both end up with someone else
• Peter and Clarissa: Love each other but cannot be together, marrying Peter would have ruined her plan to stick to the status quo.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
We see the effects of war towards the end in the section “Time Passes' ' where it is revealed that Mrs. Ramseys son, Andrew, was killed in the war.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Mr. Ramsey has an obsession with leaving a mark, he fears that he will be mediocre in the world when it comes to his philosophy. He depends on Mrs. Ramsey to ease this fear, but still tends to project this fear upon the other people of the Isle including his own children.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
There seems to be a connection between Lily Briscoe and Mrs. Ramsey although this relationship shifts from simply being her muse to being a source of obsession. Ultimately the nature of their relationship is contended but it should be listed for its potential romantic attraction.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Lily Briscoe struggles with her painting, fearing that it will not be good with the thoughts of Mr. Tansley adding to this doubt. “ And it would never be seen; never be hung even, and there was Mr. Tansley whispering in her ear, "Women can't paint, women can't write ..." She ultimately realizes that there is too much focus on the idea of genius, people cared about the painting being good without realizing that one should paint for the sake of painting and producing art. “ One might say, even of this scrawl, not of that actual picture, perhaps, but of what it attempted, that it "remained for ever" (Woolf).

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Lily’s character demonstrates the impact of art and the end in which her art seems to bring back Mrs. Ramsey, a character which was very much missed after her death. “and of their anguish left, as antidote, a relief that was balm in itself, and also, but more mysteriously, a sense of some one there, of Mrs. Ramsay, relieved for a moment of the weight that the world had put on her, staying lightly by her side and then (for this was Mrs. Ramsay in all her beauty) raising to her forehead a wreath of white flowers with which she went”

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
To the Lighthouse explores time by separating the novel into three sections. “The Window” establishes the setting exposing the relationships between the characters in the Isle, but they demonstrate impermanence as Woolf uses a section “Time Passes” separating the initial visit to the one year later. In this later visit three of the characters are dead, one of them being Mrs. Ramsey, showing the way everything changes. This concept is also shown through nature as the beginning of time passes shows the deterioration of the house and the changes in trees and the ocean.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse:
Mrs. Ramsey serves as an example of the perfect matriarch in the time dealing with her husband's shortcomings while being a caring mother for her eight children and also being respected by even the most misogynistic characters in the isle.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey seem to not share much in common and although there is a sharp contrast between their characters, one could see the need they have for one another. At the end of “The Window'' they share a moment of unspoken love. “And as she looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not said a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him. He could not deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and said (thinking to herself, Nothing on earth can equal this happiness)” (Woolf, 100).

Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Woolf creates a character who lives hundreds of years, but this allows the audience to see the change of time and how Orlando has to adapt to these changes. The impermanence of even the individual self is clear in the way that Orlando changes gender and perspective on marriage.

Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Orlando is part of the upper class which in part allows her to have so much freedom when she does transition into a woman, but Orlando does experience different treatment due to this change, pointing out the sexism in society. She struggles to get her estate because of inheritance laws and it takes her marrying a man to be able to own it.

Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Orlando’s character transistions gender in the begining of the book, but they also seem to have little consideration for gender when it comes to their attraction to others.

• Their first love is Princess Sasha who appears to be a boy at first because of her ability to iceskate and her androgynous appearance.
• Harriet the Romanian Archduchess who is actually a man named Harry
• Nelly the prostitute who is attracted to Orlando thinking she is a man.
• Shelmerdine is the man she ends up marrying, he admits that that he is a woman
  

Virginia Woolf, Orlando
This is a big womens rights issue that Woolf wants to address because her lover Vita, who the character Orlando is based off of, was going through the same situation. In the book she ultimately allows Orlando to keep the estate by marrying Shelmerdine, but this is not what happened in real life with Vita as her uncle ends up inheriting her home.

Virginia Woolf, Orlando
The novel begins with Orlando slicing the head of a Moor which is a person of African descent. This completely dehumanized the individual and shows the belief of racial superiority, a belief that was strengthened at the time with British colonialism.

Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Orlando is a poet at heart and sees great value in art as he pays Nicholas Greene, a poet of the time, to even sponsors him to continue writing poems. “Had I a pension of three hundred pounds a year paid quarterly, I would live for Glawr alone. I would lie in bed every morning reading Cicero. I would imitate his style so that you couldn't tell the difference between us. That's what I call fine writing,' said Greene; 'that's what I call Glawr. But it's necessary to have a pension to do it” (Woolf).

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Woolf uses the story of Judith Shakespeare, beautiful name, unfortunate ending. She is an example of how it would go for a woman with the same genius as Shaekspeare but the limitations of her gender. Ultimately she kills herself with her genius still untapped because of the constant doubt by men in charge. “any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at” (Woolf, 41).

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Woolf talks about how much of a woman’s story is erased because women in literature are written in relation to men instead of their own individuals and if this weren't the case maybe we would see more instances of different relationships between women. “Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these—'Chloe liked Olivia… ' Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women” (Woolf, 69). She also appeals to the idea of androgyny in writing quoting coleridge who says that the great mind is androgenous.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Towards the end of the essay Woolf is proposing a utopian society in which gender is irrelevant to the production of art. Although it seems to be counterintuitive for a woman so set on increasing the number of female writers to want to erase gender, her argument is that erasing the idea of gender will lead to more people to just write and at the end that is the purpose.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
In a way Virginia Woolf states that while she loves women, she also loves art and she believes the best art- specifically literature and writing- could be created with this androgynous existance. ​​”My motives, let me admit, are partly selfish. Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading—I like reading books in the bulk.…Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast.”

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Woolf begins the essay by talking about the funding for men’s education and how women do not have the same privilege. Education is important because even if one has ideas and talent for writing, this talent goes unnoticed without the ability to write. This ability is developed with education.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Woolf really emphasizes the impact of women being able to make their own money. She is clear about the freedom that comes with income and how in order to have the time and freedom to write, one must have the money to continue.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
So much legacy is lost because of the hundreds of years in which women were not allowed to write and then the lack of publication and attention to their works when they were finally allowed to do so. Similar to the concept of untapped genius we see how few women authors are the ones forming the entire legacy of women in literature, and she points out that their ability to do so was indeed a privilege. “. For all the dinners are cooked; the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone out into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie” (Woolf, 75).

Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
Woolf claims that investing in women’s education can be the way to end war. “ To you it is your old school; Eton or Harrow; your old university, Oxford or Cambridge; the source of memories and of traditions innumerable. But to us, who see it through the shadow of Arthur’s Education Fund, it is a schoolroom table; an omnibus going to a class; a little woman with a red nose who is not well educated herself but has an invalid mother to support; an allowance of £50 a year with which to buy clothes, give presents and take journeys on coming to maturity” (Woolf, 5).

Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
The entire essay is answering the question on the way to prevent war. This essay was written around the time of the Spanish Revolution in which pictures exposed the atrocities of war and therefore throughout the essay, although there are various other topics such as women's rights, she continues to return to that central theme and question.

Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
Woolf advocated for women's rights in income and education, claiming that with the right tools they will be the ones to help prevent war. Also the value of money “In place of the admirations and antipathies which were often unconsciously dictated by the need of money she can declare her genuine likes and dislikes” (Woolf

Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
The potential that women hold is undeniable, but they must have the tools to be able to use it. “For to help women to earn their livings in the professions is to help them to possess that weapon of independent opinion which is still their most powerful weapon. It is to help them to have a mind of their own and a will of their own with which to help you to prevent war” (Woolf, 16).

Stephen Daldry, dir., The Hours
In the movie “The Hours” we see a parallel with Mrs. Dalloway as Richard, the friend of Clarissa Vaughan is dying of AIDS and eventually decides to commit suicide, like Septimus. The entire movie shows the unhappiness of the characters involved as Virginia Woolf is a character in the film, committing suicide in the begining of the film. Clarissa Vaughan is unhappy and confused because although she is in a relationship with a woman she still has feeling from Richard. Also, there is the Laura Brown who has a family but is terribly unhappy and decides to run away from it. This shows the struggle of mental health and what it means to be happy.

Stephen Daldry, dir., The Hours
Although all of the characters are unsatisfied to an extent, they still have very strong relationships with those around them. Woolf thanks her husband in her suicide letter saying that he made her happy. Clarissa struggles to but ultimately shows the love for her daughter and also has a very strong connection to Richard. And Laura Brown loves her family but decides to leave them because she feels that she can not fully be there for them.

Stephen Daldry, dir., The Hours
Richard is receiving an award for his poetry and Clarissa and Virginia are both writing a novel. Both are to an extent concerned about the marks they leave and the art they produce.

Sally Potter, dir., Orlando
In the film we can visually see the disappointment in Orlando when Greene makes fun of her poetry. She places such a large value on his opinion and admires his work, even sponsoring. Regardless of the humiliation she continues to provide money to him because she genuinely values the art produced.