The Death of the Moth and Virginia Woolfe

"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?"

~Virginia Woolfe

This woman is quite frankly one of the most badass authors I have ever had the pleasure of analyzing. As an introspective, sharp-tongued, bisexual, feminist in an open-relationship with her husband, Woolfe screams about her contemporary ideals in a world that was not ready for her. If Woolfe were alive today I am confident that she would be a proud spokeswoman for the LGBTQ+ movement. Her bestselling novel Mrs. Dalloway implies several same-sex relationships that really hit home in the way they so rawly they portrayed the experience of realizing one's attraction to the same sex. Being an outspoken and empowered woman it is clear that Woolfe is not exactly hot for humility; she cares more about getting her message out into the world rather than trying to stay humble. In my personal opinion everyone would do well to fondly look back on authors such as Virginia Woolfe, who used her powerful control over the english language to speak truth into the homophobic and patriarchally-driven society of her time. In The Death of a Moth, Woolfe not only documents her thesis: Death has power over all living things, but also reveals to her audience as well as the world key traits that peg her as a potentially suicidal individual. A preoccupation or fascination with death is a key red flag for someone who is considering suicide. The fact that this message was so clearly conveyed in some of Woolfe's final works is a sort of final haiku on her part of making peace with her suicidal decision. Woolfe's publishing of The Death of the Moth and Other Essays was her final hurrah before she went on to kill herself. Hereafter, she decided, there would be no more words, there would only be the Death that eventually came to claim all living

Woolfe's Suicide Note

things and now came to claim herself. Woolfe treats Death like (to use Rowling's words) an old friend, in that she utilizes the rhetorical strategy of personification indirectly. Instead of directly stating that Death is a being, Woolfe implies it through her analysis of the Moth's life and death. By doing this she personifies Death in a way that leaves him with an eerie, ghostly, image that is half-real and half-abstract. Woolfe created for herself a persona of eloquence and confidence. She made the world believe she was a strong-minded woman who did what she wanted to do. Even this woman who is on level with Ghandi in terms of eloquence and revere still was not a perfect human being. This woman who was a brilliant artist of vernacular still committed suicide. I think what makes Woolfe great is not her command of language nor her powerful demeanor, but her rawness. Woolfe's utter realness as a person makes no apologies. She is looked up to because she was a normal person who wasn't afraid to go after what she wanted. She asked for no apologies. She asked for no one's permission, Woolfe did what Woolfe wanted. And Woolfe was absolutely brilliant.