Reflecting on human progress and nature in Evening in Sussex, Woolf reveals how our basic biological needs are equally as important to our satisfaction as our loftier intellectual pursuits. We refuse to believe that we simply exist without a greater purpose and so we philosophize, write stories, and create legends…
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Suicide in “Mrs. Old Grey”
In Old Mrs. Grey, Woolf highlights the lack of autonomy of an elderly woman through comparisons to puppets and descriptions of death as freedom to suggest that death is a rational answer when confronted with overwhelming misery and nonexistent prospects. Woolf describes death as a field where one is unburdened,…
Writing as Communication in “The Modern Essay”
In “The Modern Essay”, Woolf theorizes on the meaning of art and analyzes how essays have changed as an art form to determine what constitutes a good essay. The first point that Virginia Woolf makes is that an essay should not aim to arouse but rather to please. When we…
Persistence in the Face of the Inevitable: “The Death of a Moth”
Using the struggle of a moth to stay alive on her windowsill as a backdrop for her essay, Woolf wonders about the persistence of life against the inevitability of death. From the beginning, the day moth that Woolf observes on her windowsill is an outsider to the grand scheme of…