"Imaginative work...is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.... But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering, human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in." --A Room of One's Own
In 1911, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a respected left-wing political journalist. Together, they began Hogarth Press, whose publications included works from Freud and T.S. Eliot. Also, they were famous additions to the group of writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group. This group also included E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Clive and Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant. This collection of creative people was together until the 1930's.
Throughout her life, Virginia had several emotional breakdowns and periods of extreme depression. She was treated for these breakdowns, but the treatments did not seem to work. In 1941, she placed a large stone in her pocket and drowned herself in the river. Her body was found 18 days later by children playing on the bank.
One of her writings, A Room of One's Own, expresses the frustration women writers past and present have felt. In the past, women were not allowed the schooling let alone the recognition of the men of their eras. Woolf creates Shakespeare's sister, a woman who would have the same creativity and ambition as good ol' Will, but would lack the support he was given by the public. She would not have the ability to write his works, for her family would not allow her his schooling. She would run away from home and attempt to find her creative outlet in the real world. In her frustration, she would eventually kill herself.
Woolf's attention and sensitivity towards women allowed her to be one of the most important writers of the 20th century. To this day she remains one of the most famous feminist writers in the world.