Virginia Woolf: Collected Essays

In my readings of Virginia Woolf’s Essays, the main theme I’ve come across is “writing.” Woolf is an extraordinarily sensitive person when it comes to considering the meaning of writing it relation to herself and others. A bulk of her essays speak on how to write, what to write, and what writing means as a form of art. Her sensitivity can be seen in moments across this collection of essays such as The Modern Essay (obviously), The Patron and the Crocus, and Street Haunting. More than anything, I believe that it is because writing is so necessary to Woolf feeling that she has purpose and satisfaction in her life that her essays are all so affecting: she writes with a conviction and feeling that I aspire to have myself, but lack somewhat.

Other than that, Woolf also writes broadly about life and death. The Death of the Moth is an extraordinary piece that questions the persistence of life against the inexorable march of decay, while Mrs. Old Grey is a haunting piece on the slow end that many infirm elderly undergo. Her tone leans toward objective, but her prose is sharp and lush with description: the stifling heat, the overabundance of life can be felt in her descriptions of the fields outside in The Death of the Moth; we feel the pain of the elderly woman in Mrs. Old Grey as she is flung about by her physical pain like a “marionette.”

Woolf’s essays also hide a deeper emotional core. Though she mostly remains distant and aloof in her analysis and observations, we glimpse a trace of sorrow in “Street Haunting”. Here, Woolf recounts a story of when she went walking through the streets, and walks to the bridge to look over the water, only to find it totally gray. We know that Woolf fought a long battle with depression, and we can infer that the occasional sorrow that flows into her pieces, almost unwittingly, may have been a result or cause. 

Woolf’s essays are still valuable reading today. The events she narrates may be bound to a particular time period, but the topics are eternal. Her ruminations on life and death, on the meaning of writing remain as relevant today as they did a hundred years ago, and Street Haunting even by itself overwhelms with its pathos. 

As I read, I wrote essays analyzing the themes of each essay, what the essay reflected about Woolf as a person, and how the essay could still be applicable today.

I did not write essays for the following essays:

• The Common Reader
• “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights”
• The Patron and the Crocus

But I did for these: 

• The Modern Essay
• The Death of the Moth
• Evening Over Sussex: Reflections in a Motor Car
• Three Pictures
• Old Mrs. Grey
• Street Haunting
• Hones and Wilkonson
• Madame de Sevigne