John Steinbeck in 1939 Born

Virginia Woolf and her mother[edit]

The intense scrutiny of Virginia Woolf's literary output (see Bibliography) has led to speculation as to her mother's influence, including psychoanalytic studies of mother and daughter.^{[364][365][366][367]} Woolf states that, "my first memory, and in fact it is the most important of all my memories"^[368] is of her mother. Her memories of her mother are memories of an obsession,^[369][370] starting with her first major breakdown on her mother's death in 1895, the loss having a profound lifelong effect.^[371] In many ways, her mother's profound influence on Virginia Woolf is conveyed in the latter's recollections, "there she is; beautiful, emphatic ... closer than any of the living are, lighting our random lives as with a burning torch, infinitely noble and delightful to her children".^[372]

Woolf described her mother as an "invisible presence" in her life, and Ellen Rosenman argues that the mother-daughter relationship is a constant in Woolf's writing.^[373] She describes how Woolf's modernism needs to be viewed in relationship to her ambivalence towards her Victorian mother, the centre of the former's female identity, and her voyage to her own sense of autonomy. To Woolf, "Saint Julia" was both a martyr whose perfectionism was intimidating and a source of deprivation, by her absences real and virtual and premature death.^[374] Julia's influence and memory pervades Woolf's life and work. "She has haunted me", she wrote.^[134]