Transcript bloomsbury_group - English

Bloomsbury Group
Virginia Woolf’s Friends and
Lovers
Who Were they?
Most of them were in some way
associated with the university of
Cambridge in England in the early
1900’s they were artists, writers,
economists, intellectuals, and art
critics that often met for discussion on
those matters and other ideas of their
time.
Time and Place
The name Bloomsbury simply comes
from the area of London which they
occupied during that time of 19001930’s for which they were in their
prime.
Sex A La Carte
The romantic record of the group's
members is noteworthy, because they
demonstrated a sexual freedom that was
ahead of their time.
For Example, Virginia Woolf had a least
one romantic liaison with a woman in the
group, Vita Sackville-West and Clive Bell,
married to her sister, Vanessa had a
mistress, Mary Hutchins.
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Don’t feel sorry for Vanessa Stephen
(Woolf’s sister). The great love of her life
was Duncan Grant who while sexually
intimate with her, preferred men, including
her brother, Aidan.
In fact, they even shared one once.
Duncan and Vanessa both had the same
man who lived them David “Bunny” Garnett
for at least a year during World War one.
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While Triangular relationships with a
gay twist were common within the
Bloomsbury circle. Strachey was gay,
but in the early days of Bloomsbury,
he proposed marriage to Virginia
Stephen (Woolf). In the 1920s, he
lived in platonic bliss with surrealist
painter Dora Carrington.
Sex A La Carte
When they both fell in love with the
same man, Carrington married the
object of their mutual desire, and the
three set up housekeeping together.
The cross-dressing Carrington had
affairs with women, confiding to a
friend that she had "more ecstasy"
with female lovers than with men "and no shame."
However, It Has A Serious Side Too
This group was tired of the not only
the sexuality expressed by the
Victorians, but also the political,
social, intellectual and artistic
conventions of that era and they
wanted to form new ways of thinking
and being that would make for a new
movement.
However, It Has A Serious Side Too
These were some of the best minds in
Europe. Well read, brilliant and well
traveled. They objected the war in
Europe, they envisioned a peaceful
society full of artistic and social
freedoms.
However, It Has A Serious Side Too
They experimented with literary
techniques in ways that were not
being done and in a good deal of
ways freed literature from its’
restraints and allowed it go in new
and important directions making
modern fiction, poetry and non fiction
possible. They did the same for art
as well.