“Sketch of the Past” was my first Virginia Woolf experience. At first glance her writing is very dense and a bit disturbing. After reading a biography on her life it would be impossible not to understand why her work is the way that it is. She writes in a blunt tone. When I read works I usually take into the account the likely possibility that the author has embellished his or her story in order to make it more interesting and in many cases more entertaining.
Virginia Woolf beings “Sketch of the Past” by acknowledging that there are different forms of writing a memoir. She also states that she cannot recall them and will not decide on which way to write because she is confident “it will find itself.” I love the way she goes from this first paragraph about form and immediately jumps into her first memory. This memory is of the red and purple flowers on her mothers dress. Woolf states that they were returning to London but prefers to remember returning to St. Ives instead. I love that she admits to her own embellishments in her memoir. This is proof of how refreshingly honest she writes, or at least how I perceive her to write in this first encounter.
Her writing seems so unconventional especially when she states reasons that many memoirs are failures. It is because they do not explain the person that these memories and events happened to. She writes in a conversational tone and asks, “Who was I then?” After asking this question she immediately answers it first by giving her full name then those of her parents and continues from there. In this way Woolf sees herself as a character. She introduces herself to the reader so that they understand who she is in order to reach full interest in the memoir.
In the first few days of class we spoke a lot about themes such as flowers, nature, color, and water. The sound of the waves in St. Ives clearly made a large impression on Virginia’s life. She also describes the colors of the flowers on her mothers dress. This memory is the first and as she claims, it is the memory on which all others stand.
Woolf also writes about a yellow room in St. Ives. This immediately reminded me of a short story that I read last year, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” It is by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I believe that Gilman and Woolf have a few similarities in their writing. Both seem to be a bit disturbed. Gilman was known to be unhappy with treatment of woman in her time and struggled with it throughout her life. Woolf has clearly been through quite a bit as well. I cannot say for certain how similar the two authors are because I have only read one piece by each. However, in both works I feel depression and hardships.
“A Sketch of the Past” was most interesting because of the tone that Woolf used. She was so descriptive, which allows the reader to travel back to her memories and hear the waves breaking in St. Ives.
