Virginia Woolf and Her Avatars. Creating an Icon and Appropriating the Writer’s Image in Popular Culture and Literature

The act of fictionalising the lives of historical figures, which is the major motivation for this article, has become a common practice and literary phenomenon rather than a short-lived fad. The author analyses several literary works that consciously follow this practice and incorporate Virginia Woolf, an icon and a priestess of Modernism, into the cast of fictional characters. Each writer, representing various tendencies within this practice, creates different avatars – literary representations of Virginia Woolf’s figure which either (partially) correspond or defy the image of this historical figure.
Sigrid Nunez in Mitz, the Marmoset of Bloomsbury – ,,unauthorised biography” – appropriates the Woolfian invention of an animal narrator to fictionalise the Woolfs and their domestic life. Looking through the lenses of such an observer casts a different light on this historical figure as well as on the circle of family and friends who frequent the pages of Mitz. Susan Selers’s Vanessa and Virginia, likewise incorporating elements of a biography, focuses on the symbiotic bond between the Stephen sisters, highlighting their rivalry. In The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s literary endeavour and homage to Woolf’s legacy, the writer aims, through one of the three intertwined narratives, to recreate the last day of Virginia Woolf’s life. The author focuses onher daily writing regime which in turn portrays her as a neurotic figure, obsessed with death and how her work might be received. In Passing for Human and I, Vampire Jody Scott plays with the image of Virginia Woolf ad libitum, customising her vision to an image hardly affiliated to Woolf.
Generically diverse literary works presented in this study create a multifaceted fictionalised portrait of Virginia Woolf that largely corresponds with biographical facts. At the same time, as in case of Cunningham or Scott, it shows abuse and misuse of certain facts in an attempt to fictionally authenticate the life of the real-life figure

The act of fictionalising the lives of historical figures, which is the major motivation for this article, has become a common practice and literary phenomenon rather than a short-lived fad. The author analyses several literary works that consciously follow this practice and incorporate Virginia Woolf, an icon and a priestess of Modernism, into the cast of fictional characters. Each writer, representing various tendencies within this practice, creates different avatars – literary representations of Virginia Woolf’s figure which either (partially) correspond or defy the image of this historical figure.
Sigrid Nunez in Mitz, the Marmoset of Bloomsbury – ,,unauthorised biography” – appropriates the Woolfian invention of an animal narrator to fictionalise the Woolfs and their domestic life. Looking through the lenses of such an observer casts a different light on this historical figure as well as on the circle of family and friends who frequent the pages of Mitz. Susan Selers’s Vanessa and Virginia, likewise incorporating elements of a biography, focuses on the symbiotic bond between the Stephen sisters, highlighting their rivalry. In The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s literary endeavour and homage to Woolf’s legacy, the writer aims, through one of the three intertwined narratives, to recreate the last day of Virginia Woolf’s life. The author focuses onher daily writing regime which in turn portrays her as a neurotic figure, obsessed with death and how her work might be received. In Passing for Human and I, Vampire Jody Scott plays with the image of Virginia Woolf ad libitum, customising her vision to an image hardly affiliated to Woolf.
Generically diverse literary works presented in this study create a multifaceted fictionalised portrait of Virginia Woolf that largely corresponds with biographical facts. At the same time, as in case of Cunningham or Scott, it shows abuse and misuse of certain facts in an attempt to fictionally authenticate the life of the real-life figure