Loving the absent mother: Loss and reparation in the novels in Virginia Woolf

With the posthumous publication of Moments of Being, Virginia Woolf afforded her readers an intimate view of her childhood in late Victorian England. The signal event in that childhood was the death of Woolf\u27s mother, Julia Stephen. By Woolfs own admission, her lost parent obsessed her until the completion of To the Lighthouse. Using the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein, which stresses the primacy of mother-child relations, and the more recent identity theory of Hans Lichtenstein, which postulates that one\u27s way of being is dictated by early maternal experience, this study contends that Woolf\u27s obsession never ends. Indeed, maternal loss, coupled with what Klein calls the urge towards reparation, are central motivating factors in Woolf\u27s continuing creative process. This reading considers the author\u27s nine novels, in order to highlight Woolf\u27s lifelong, recurrent vision of Julia Stephen. Woolf\u27s vision is encoded in several symbolic variations of her identity theme, including the use of the mother figure as writer, as moral progenitor, and as prognosticator of a twofold philosophy of resignation and melancholy. Virginia Woolf writes to recreate the lost figure of Julia Stephen, and to recapture the love denied by her mother\u27s death