A Haunted House

Her Story

ADELINE VIRGINIA WOOLF, 1882-1941

• she wrote for a weekly journal at the age of nine
• she struggled with poor health and depression throughout her life after the death of her mother when Virginia was only thirteen years old which brought an unprecedented depth and sympathy to her writing

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• Woolf was a talented photographer, fusing her love of storytelling with her talent for capturing meaningful images
• She and her husband Leonard Woolf founded the hogarth press publishing house together five years after their marriage in 1912

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• While mental illness did inform her work, it did not overshadow it.
• Mia Carter suggests that ''one of the great signs of health in Woolf's life was her ability to maintain a child's exquisite outlandishness and irreverence...' (69).

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• She ended her life in 1941, still struggling with depression, leaving behind a vibrant body of work and a letter for her husband, leonard woolf: ''If anybody could have saved me it would have been you... I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. -V'' (calcada).

Her Ghost story

A Haunted house is woolf's short story of a husband and wife who haunt the halls of their earthly home.

The reader quickly realizes these ghosts are not sinister, but in love and looking for something together.

The imagery is eerie and lovely as Woolf describes the house as having a pulse that somehow sets the owners at ease.

'''Here we slept,' she says. And he adds, 'Kisses without number'''(woolf) ...

Her Point

Should one ever endeavor to speak where woolf has not?

''Nearer they come; cease at the doorway.''

Woolf's goal would seem to be the reader's own lovely terror at having loved and lost...

Woolf's goal would seem to be the reader's own lovely terror at having loved and lost...

Lost and yet found again. '''Long years—' he sighs. 'Again you found me'''(woolf).

her methodology

Woolf steps beyond what fiction has been made of to include what it can be made of.

In ''modern fiction'' she states '''the proper stuff of fiction' does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction...

every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss'' (164).

Woolf's characteristic personal voice is used in this piece to draw the reader into the position of the haunted.

Laura Rodríguez suggests that woolf's success in fiction is a direct result of her past work with the personal essay (76).

her results

Critic marguerite young viewed A Haunted house as one of woolf's ''essays on the nature of reality'' (149).

author kim coats notes that Woolf uses a strategy ''braided with complexities of phantoms [and] fancies'' (1).

using such tactics, woolf produced a modern short story that is both realist fiction and fantasy, but we can not be sure of the latter.

''to admit that ... modern nerves are immune to the ... terror which ghosts have always inspired would be to throw up the sponge too easily. If the old methods are obsolete, it is the business of a writer to discover new ones ...

...The public can feel again what it has once felt—there can be no doubt about that; only from time to time the point of attack must be changed.''
- Virginia Woolf,
Granite and Rainbow

her voice

works cited

• Calcada, Laura. ''Virginia Woolf and the poetics of depression.'' Culturacolectiva, https://culturacolectiva.com/books/virginia-woolf-committed-suicide.
• Carter, Mia, and ﻛﺎﺭﺗﺭ ﻣﻴﺎ. “History's Child: Virginia Woolf, Heritage, and Historical Consciousness / ﻃﻔﻠﺔ ﺍﻟﺘﺎﺭﻳﺦ: ﭬﺮﺟﻴﻨﻴﺎ ﻭﻭﻟﻒ ﻭﺍﻟﻤﻮﺭﻭﺙ ﻭﺍﻟﻮﻋﻲ ﺍﻟﺘﺎﺭﻳﺨﻲ.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, no. 27, 2007, pp. 68–95. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30197973
• Coates, Kimberly Engdahl. “Phantoms, Fancy (And) Symptoms: Virginia Woolf and The Art Of Being III.” Woolf Studies Annual, vol. 18, 2012, pp. 1–28. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24906895.
• Woolf, Virginia. Granite and rainbow. Harcourt, Brace and company, 1958.
• ---. A Haunted House. Adelaide.edu, https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91h/chapter1.html.
• ---. ''Modern fiction.'' The essays of virginia woolf, edited by andrew mcneille, hogarth press, 1984.
• Rodríguez, Laura Mª Lojo. “‘A NEW TRADITION’: VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE PERSONAL ESSAY.” Atlantis, vol. 23, no. 1, 2001, pp. 75–90. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41055010
• Young, Marguerite. “Fictions Mystical and Epical.” The Kenyon Review, vol. 7, no. 1, 1945, pp. 149–154. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4332580.