| Virginia Woolf has deep roots with biography. She is the first one who discovered and named the new biography, as well as a wealth practice of biography writing. In addition to some lengthy autobiographies, she has a lot of autobiographical texts such as letters, diaries, etc. Several representative ones compile an autobiography named Moments of being. In this thesis, the research is going on with the autobiography as the core, some of Woolf’s diaries, letters, essays, novels and autobiographical works are reference objects. The main purpose is to analysis the process of Woolfs identity construction. This paper mainly discusses the following aspects:The introduction part summarized the relationship between Woolf and modern biography briefly, put forward the main contents and ideas of this paper that based on the overview of related research domestic and overseas.The first chapter focuses on the influence of Woolfs family to her identity as a writer. Woolf confirmed the positive role played by her family heritage in her recognition of the identity as a writer by narrative, she confirmed that there is a presence of a "correlation" between her family and herself. Woolfs family narrative was like a dirge. Family members’ death made her fell into a mood of skepticism, but eventually she turned to self-concern from this skepticism, also turned into a detailed inquiry of one’s own life from focusing on the death of her family. She tried to make a dialogue with death through writing. Death in the family can be seen as the motivation to Woolfs writing. The strike of sexual assault by her two half brothers caused her unforgettable "dumb" memory, after that she had the desire to make her voice being heard by writing when she grew up, and addicted in it to confirm her presence. She thought the ability to accept beating made her being a writer.The second chapter focus on the effect of the aesthetic ideal for Woolf’s self shaping. During confirming the identity of a writer, Woolf expressed her further demands of an identity as an aestheticism artist to realize both of the art and life. Her aesthetic ideal was closely intertwined with Feminism. She found her spiritual sense of belonging in the rebel of the social culture idea in Victorian from the Bloombury group. At the same time, the self-construction process showed her chase of "Pater’s" aesthetic philosophy.The third chapter mainly discussed Woolf s identity dilemma during the identity construction. In her autobiography, she repeatedly referred to a puddle that can’t be crossed. This statement implies that she may move towards the plight of the identity. First, the recognition of her father leads Woolf to shape her mother as an angel in the house of the Victorian. However her identity as an artist was built on the rebel of the women norms of Victorian, which makes her identity was split. Second, the aesthetic ideal inside of Woolf always tore together with the cruel reality, it was difficult to be reconcile so that the identity plight went through Woolf’s autobiography.The conclusion part is a summary for this paper. On one hand, Woolf try to construct a complete self by writing autobiography, on the other hand, the self construction include split inside. |
