"A hint of the fang" : Virginia Woolf's personal portraits of women

Abstract

Virginia Woolf's private writing shows that her perceptions were not "the usual." Her diaries, letters, and memoirs, non intended for publication, reveal her almost in the act of perceiving. Acute perceptions and subjective sensibilities make her personal portraits highly impressionistic; they vacillate with her moods, health, or circumstances. Women were vital to Woolf because of her mother's early death, her father's domination, and her half-brothers' molestation. Despite marriage to a nurturing husband, Woolf never fully trusted men; she turned to women for emotional sustenance. Their portraits in her private writing reveal the quality of Woolf's perception. Compelled to record truth as she saw it, Woolf never considered an experience complete or a person understood unless captured in words. Imaginative, intuitive, possessing a highly associative memory, Woolf often used nature imagery to express her impressions, recording details of voice, dress, manner, education, appearance, physiognomy, make-up, and ambience. Her love of truth gave most portraits a "hint of the fang": some unkind comment or gratuitous insult highlights nearly every one. Conversely, Woolf's sense of fairness would not permit a totally negative picture; even the denigrating portraits usually contain some mitigating touch. The closer to the center of Woolf's life the portraits get, the more detailed and impressionistic they become; those extending over several years often "level out," ceasing to vacillate with her moods. At the periphery of Woolf's life were strangers, casual friends, less favored relatives; the outer circle included closer friends and more favored relatives. Maternal women and "sweethearts" comprised the inner circle; at the center of her life was Vita Sackville-West, her only lover. Orlando, starring Vita as a man/woman who lives for 3 1/2 centuries, was Woolf's longest love letter and consummate portrait; it, like all the others, contains its "hint of fang," a quality which Vita was the first to name. When Woolf felt herself losing the ability to capture people and impressions in words, she took her life: she could never shirk truth.