Intertextual Language of Trauma: Woolf

TW: Mentions of sexual assault, sexual abuse, incest, and other extreme themes of trauma. Virginia Woolf was a well-known female author of a huge turning point in a century where female writers were surging in later success. What's lesser known is the abuse that Woolf experience.

The sort of traumas Woolf endured were not uncommon between the late 1800's and early 1900's--where women were usually vulnerable to male family members with very little ways to report to police, seek refuge, or even find sanctuary from.

In a psycho-analysis paper done to the play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" by Edward Albee, contains the history of Woolf's assault and an analysis into Albee's portrayal of the assault. Without reading too much into someone else's analysis just yet, the play is stated to contain hints to the abuse whereas there's mention about Woolf's fiction.

The fiction is said to contain main characters with similar traits that Woolf had due to said assaults and was meant to create a sense of "with boredom, disbelief, and failure to respond." in the reader as how many people tend to respond to abuse victims, according to Terr.

To give context, Woolf survived repeated abuse from her eldest half-brother. I won't even bother saying his name as I do not believe he deserves credit and he's far too dead to receive any accountability. The abuse started when she was a child and was on/off way past her teenage years as well. This affected Woolf in more than just her writing, she had classic symptoms of someone who underwent childhood trauma and a multitude of breakdowns throughout her adult life that were well documented and even are portrayed in many of her works.

One of my most favorite pieces of hers is, "The Mark on the Wall"--a short story of a woman hyper fixating on a spot above her fireplace that she can barely see that turns out to be just a bug. The entire short story is a deep thought of what the mark could be.

This could be classified as a satirical piece. This could be classified as Woolf's disassociation portrayed in a piece of fiction. The narrator experiences boredom, distance, and emotional disconnect from not only her husband, but seemingly the rest of the world.

This symptom alone is similar to abuse victims: disassociation.

Why is it important to even acknowledge the trauma portraying itself in art? It gives voices and strength to victims who are experiencing abuse and other trauma and that feeling of being seen. There's less loneliness in knowing that someone else has gone through something similar, as absolutely horrible as that sounds. Misery loves company.

A personal, academic critique essay portrays the author's own experiences with sexual assault and how Woolf's works is important to her personally but also why it's so important to talk about. This essay, without looking too deeply into it yet, expresses how the author also witnessed how her own trauma appeared in her own creative writing thanks to Virginia Woolf's clues and integration of her own trauma in her works.

Something like this is so broad but just so important, and I want to look into this more. Sources I've used and will reference a lot and quote a lot and also cite properly some day

(A deep-dive into Woolf's assault and how that impacted her physically and mentally and emotionally) https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1642&context=gvr

(A comparison between Woolf's fiction, her trauma, and the play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2251325/

(Personal essay that's also still an academic critique about Woolf's fiction and the author's own experiences with sexual assault and creative writing) https://pshares.org/blog/virginia-woolf-and-the-language-of-trauma/