Virginia Wollf was born into a large, talented uper class, intellectually family in London. She was the daughter of Lesly Stephen, a famous victorian bibliographer, critic and philosopher. Her mother died when she was 13, after wich she suffered her first of many nervous break downs.

Her father exerted a poweful inhibiting influence over her, and she later confesed that she could never written her stories and her novels while he was alive.

After his dead, she was at the center of the “Bloonsbury Group”- an artistic and literary groupre knownned for their revelion against the Victorian Puritanism and wich had a great influence on british culture from 1920 to 1940.

Mental illness afectedVirginia Woolf´s throught her live. In 1941, at the time of deep personal depression with the second world war and deeply dessatisfied with her own writing she comitted suicide.

Virgina Woolf first novels were relativily traditional in form, But she later reveled against what she called the “materialism” of novelists such as H.G Wells, Arnold Bennet,and John Galswothy. Novelits such as D.H. Laurence and more paticularly Virginia Woolf and James Joyce felt that demads of the traditional novel with its enfasis on the external realism were resticting. Such a form of the novel enphasised a plot development and logical order wich was not consistent with experience. New stylistic techniques were needed to reflect that experiene.

Virginia Woolf literry trajectory began in 1915 with  voyage out. This is an inspired tagic and extrange novel about some english tourists in an imaginary South American hotel. Here already apears her love to the true and to the knowledge. This book caused a geat impression to the few who read it.

The following book was  Night and day  this book dissapointed the readers; it was a classic realistic book wich have the same characteristiques than the last two centuries English novels: Inclination for the interpersonal relationships, humor allusios, accuracy in the geographic information and insistence in the social diferences.Simutaneosly published two short story wich are neither boring nor normal. They are two wonderful books wich prophes her stule and voice.

Her characteristic method appearsin her third novel, Jacobs room, published in 1922. She renders the flow of experience though the steam of conciousnesstechnique, but her work is also characterised by an intensely poetic style. She utilises poetic rithms and imaginary to to create lyrical impresionism in order to capture her charater´s  moods with great delicacy and detail. The novel shows her breaking free form traditional forms and the traditional concerns with the external reality- the materialism wich she felt to be untue to life.

Virginia Woolf main novels are  Mrs dalloway (1925) To the light house(1927) and the waves

Mrs Dalloway describes the events of a single day in central London through the mind of one charater, Clarissa Dalloway, who is to be the hostess of a party for high- society friends later the same evening.In this summer day pass flying in spiral two detiny: The delicated and wortly host´s destiny and the complicated maniac. Although never arrive to touch each other, both are intimately linked and linked remain in our memory.This work is a refined book wich was wrote according to the author´s personal experience.
 
 

“Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herslf.
For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rupermayer´s men were coming. And then thought Clarissa Dalloway, What morning- freh as if ussued to children on beach...”
 
 

It is a finely shaded portrait of an individual personality. The novel contains many flashbacks to Clarissa Dalloway´s past  exparience as she seeks to bring together past memory and present action and she endevorous to balance a need for privacy with a need for comunication wth other people.
 

Into the light house two days in the life of a family on holiday are recorded: One before the great war, one after when some of the characters have died. Again, Virginia Woolf is more interested in her character´s mental processing than in their vissible actions. Mrs  Ramsays is a powerful figure in the family who is searching for  a true wich lies beneath surface facts. Her husband; Mr Ramsay, is more literal winded and contrasts with Mrs Ramsay.In the second part of the novel we learn that Mrs Ramsay has died , but she continues to exert a spiritual influence over allthose who return to the holliday home years later.The narrative and emotional focus of the novel is on Mrs Ramsay, but the inner worlds of many of the characters are comunicated. Some readers have felt that in places the novel breaks away from prose and become something closer to poetry. The novel is also marked by the use of poetic symbolism. The lighthouse is a suggestive and ambiguous symbol wich takes on unequaly different meaning for each character in the novel and for each reader who attempts to interpret it.
 

For the ost of the critics the light house is in terms of charaters the  beter work.The two protagonists Mr and Mrs Ramsy, dazzle the rader. It is also said that it is a novel in terms of sonata and that is true the slow central part , Which imitated the passing of time, Can be compared with the musik.
 

Several modernists novels during this period are centred on key poetic(rather than realistic) Symbols. Other examples are the raimbow, the waves, Kangaroo and heart of darkness. This contrast with the normal practice of the nineteeth- centurynovelists. The nineteenth- century novelists do not avoid simbolism but it is associated with clearly identifiable places, people or human qualities. The use of poetic symbolssuggests a more indirect oblique, and tenous approach to reality. For a writer such as Virginia Woolf, who has no definite or fixed vision to reality, the suggestiveness of these symbols in an essential part of her art.
 

Then come the waves . Here the structuring work reaches its high level. The result is exelent. Virginia Woolf take six characters who are all at diferent stages in their life. She explores how each of the characters is affected by the death of a person they all knew well. .Between the sun´s and water movement spreed out the dialogue, uninterruptedly, with inverted phrases. It deals with an estrange conversation in wich six characters, Bernard, Neville, Louis, Susan, Jinny and Rhoda, with rave exeptions speeck eachother. As well has Mrs. Dalloway and septimus, they are differents faces of the same person. This doesn´t mean that they compose interior monologue; they have a reciproal relationship and all are in touch with, the character that never speak. At the end in order to balance the squeme in the most perfect way, Bernard abridge the situation and with this the structura is dissolved.

 The waves is one of her greatest success. This work is on the limit: with less it would lose the poetic style and with more it wouls become monotonous and falsely artist.
 

 As virginia Woolf fictional style developed beyond the relatively conventional parameters of the voyage out (1915) to the experimental representation of conciousness in Mrs Dalloway (1925) to The lighthouse(1927), and The waves(1931), specific chracterisation  recedes and the exploration of the idividual identity tends to melt into a larger and freer expresion. The discontinuities , fragmentation and desintegration wich her avant- garde artistic contemporaries observed in both the external and the spiritual world becomes focused for woolf the idea, noted in her diary in 1924, of the character “ Disipated into shreds” . Her novels attempt both to dissipate character and reintegrate human experience within an aesthetic shape or “form” . She seeks to represent the nature of transient sensations , or of concious and uncocious mental activity and then to relate it outwards to a more universal awareness of pattern and rithm.
 

 the years.It is another experience in the traditional Realism field. Virginia Woolf reports the life of the 2 wealthy family during a very characteristic historial period. As in the book night and day, she abandon the poetic style and fail again.

 In her following novel beetwen acts she returns to the dominant method; the argument is about a representation in a village in wich pass all the English history. At the end of the representation the audience have to continue that history.It is a poetic theme and the text is writen mainly in verse. Virginia Woolf loved her country, she show throughthe poetic vageness that ther is something more important than the native land history and for what it is worthy to die.

 Apart from this narrative labour one might point out another woks.Virginia Woolf was also a higly influential journalist and critic The two volums of a common reader Show the great knowledge she had and the great interest in the literature.What Woolf seek to defend in her essays is not necessarily a new range of subjects    for the novel, but new ways of rendering and designind the novel . She reaches out to a new aesthetic of realism.She also wrote some feminsts boks and essays. Some critics think than here she in more novelist than in the novels. In a room of one´s ownshe gives unique account of why a woman must have money and a room for her own in order to write fiction.It has become a classic statment on feminism.Virginia with her husband, Leonard Woolf, founded the Hogarth press in 1917.
 

 She also has bibliographic works.This works are charaterized for being fantastic as well as real. As an instance of this she wrote orlando .Orlando is a very original and well wroten book.. She returns to the problem of a disssipated identity. She  seem both to seek both to dissolve and define character in a faincifull conocation of English historyand shifting gender.The Frost´s decription is considered nowadys as as “antology-text” of the english literature. The bibliography finishes not in a brilliant way but in acorrect one.

 Flush, on the other hand, reaches a huge succes and achieved what she proposed to do: The instruments, the method,and the extension, bring into harmony in a perfect way.This bibliography is a barroc work but without being ordinary. She adapts to one structure but neither imposing her personality nor manipulating the languge.

 The bibliographies are used to called “love works” and Roger Fry is indeed a love work..in other words, an artist writes about another person to be recognised and reminded.

After this general view we can already talk about her worries as a writer. As the majority of good novelits she keep away of the narrative rules ; she dreams, prejets, jokes, begs and observe. But she never tell a story nor shape an argument. Her esential concern was to be able to create a character. The argument and the narrative System can be avoided in favour of another unity action.When one write about a person what is actually desired is to have own life.

In the narrative ther are two kinds of life:Literary life and inmortal life.Woolf was able to comunicate literary life; her characters never seem to be irreal persons. But it was not probable she painted a character who could be remainded in the future Inmortal life was only achieved in few ocassions.This was one of the most important worries of Virginia Woolf to inmorlalize her characters.She had dificulties to achive this because of her poetic style.Virginia woolf remained firm to the poetic in order to achive something which is more easily to achieve without the poetic. In spite of thid dificulties she achived in some of her books:Mr and Mrs Ramsay as well as Clarissa Dolloway remain in the reader after reading the book.

Another aspesct in her narrative is the sociological poin of view. She confines the midle-uper professional classand she does not create a lot of types.We can find in her worksthe intellectual, honest and shy(S.t. JhonHirst, Charles Tansley, Louis, William Dodge), the noble hero (Jacob, Percival), the humanity benefactor (Richard Dolloway, HughWithbread), The erudit who is only interested in the boys (Bonamy Neville), The lonelytouchy(Mr Peper, Mrbankes).

She was a poetess who wished to write novel. She wrote both in serious and hapy way at the same time and the results are sponaniety and unity.

Virginia Woolf had a great sensuality and this can be found in her . works. A clear instance of this is the  florist´spassage in Mrs Dalloway. She make the reader think about the impotanceof the sensitive things.

Appart from the senses it is important also to talk about the intelligence. Virginia Woolf had a great respect to the knowledge, but she as a poetessexpress it in abstract terms.She was not worried about the trinph of the knowledgebut about abstract concepts like order, fair,and true and tried to express it through symbols.

Another obsesion tht has to be analised is the society. She was not a woman limited to the intellectual and senses world; she was a social being with cordial and shrewd ideas at the same time.But they were very peculiar ideas that can be undrstood betterif we pay attention to a very characteristic aspect: The Feminism.

The feminism inspired one of her mostimportant works One owns room but it is also the responsable of her worst book three guineas and the unfortunated passages of Orlando.

Her work is splashed with feminism, a problem she was allways thinking of. She was sure that the society was made in proportion to men . She complained that women use to run into man oposition when they try to arrive to the top.There is a high presence of women characters in her novels. The womens sesibility contrasts with the factual materialism of a world dominated by the kind of men who “Negotiaded treakesruled India , controled finance”. Virginia Woolf most complete representation of the life of a woman characte´s mind is Mrs Dalloway.

She consider herself not only a woman but a lady. That provides another prespective of her social mentality. Related to this she did´nt make cocessions. She was a lady since born and education and she have not to be ashamed. She was a snob but it was a brave snobism. It is related to her honesty. It was not like Clarissa Dolloway tasteless and superfluous snobism.
 To read Virginia Woolf prose is an extaordinary experience.: The fleeting intensity and inmediacy of image, sensation feeling , Thogh, the fusion of reveire and specculation and the passage of this in prcess, or flux, as a narrative experience, is an achivement of such virtuosity and lyrical power that she seem to stand alone among modernists writers.

Neo realism and magic realism is combined in a new grand narrative . That was the ambition of of Virginia Woolf prject. Ther is one element in Virginia Woolf fiction wich provide a new form. This is the unique poetyc register . It is a mode wich searches into the concious, floating semiotic material into the realm of concious experience and making it ask questions of the very bases of that experience, its nature, its history, the culture it belongs to.
 

 “Virginia Woolf stands as the chief figure of modernism in England and must be included with Joyce and Proust in the realization of experimental achiovements that have complettly broken with tradition”

      New York Times.

Woolf, internationally aclaimed as a novelist crityc and  stylist gave acute plassure in new ways, and pushed the light of the English language a little further against darkness.