Editing Virginia Woolf (section)

=== Themes ===
Woolf's fiction has been studied for its insight into many themes including war, shell shock, witchcraft, and the role of social class in contemporary modern British society.{{sfn|Harrington|2018}} In the postwar ''Mrs Dalloway'' (1925), Woolf addresses the moral dilemma of war and its effects{{sfn|Floyd|2016}}{{sfn|Bradshaw|2016}} and provides an authentic voice for soldiers returning from the First World War, suffering from shell shock, in the person of Septimus Smith.{{sfn|Church|2016}} In ''A Room of One's Own'' (1929) Woolf equates historical accusations of witchcraft with creativity and genius among women "When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils...then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen".<ref name=ROO3/> Throughout her work Woolf tried to evaluate the degree to which her privileged background [[framing (social sciences)|framed]] the lens through which she viewed class.{{sfn|Madden|2006}} She examined her own position as someone who would be considered an elitist snob but attacked the class structure of Britain as she found it. In her 1936 essay ''Am I a Snob?'' she examined her values and those of the privileged circle she existed in. She concluded she was, and subsequent critics and supporters have tried to deal with the dilemma of being both elite and a social critic.{{sfn|Hite|2004}}{{sfn|Latham|2003}}{{sfn|Bas|2008}}

The sea is a recurring motif in Woolf's work. Noting Woolf's early memory of listening to waves break in Cornwall, [[Katharine Smyth]] writes in ''[[The Paris Review]]'' that "the radiance [of] cresting water would be consecrated again and again in her writing, saturating not only essays, diaries, and letters but also ''Jacob's Room'', ''The Waves'', and ''To the Lighthouse''."<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/01/29/where-virginia-woolf-listened-to-the-waves/|work=The Paris Review|title=Where Virginia Woolf Listened to the Waves|date=29 January 2019|first=Katharine|last=Smyth|access-date=21 January 2021|archive-date=3 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210203232339/https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/01/29/where-virginia-woolf-listened-to-the-waves/|url-status=live}}</ref> Patrizia A. Muscogiuri explains that "seascapes, sailing, diving and the sea itself are aspects of nature and of human beings' relationship with it which frequently inspired Virginia Woolf's writing."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Muscogiuri|first=Patrizia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CvMwDgAAQBAJ|title=Virginia Woolf and the Natural World|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2011|isbn=9781942954149|edition=First|location=UK|pages=258|access-date=1 February 2021|archive-date=18 August 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210818052523/https://books.google.com/books?id=CvMwDgAAQBAJ|url-status=live}}</ref> This trope is deeply embedded in her texts' structure and grammar; James Antoniou notes in ''[[Sydney Morning Herald]]'' how "Woolf made a virtue of the [[semicolon]], the shape and function of which resembles the wave, her most famous motif."<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/the-punctuation-mark-that-causes-so-much-angst-20190919-p52t17.html|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|title=The punctuation mark that causes so much angst|date=27 September 2019|first=James|last=Antoniou|access-date=21 January 2021|archive-date=4 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210204063951/https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/the-punctuation-mark-that-causes-so-much-angst-20190919-p52t17.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Despite the considerable conceptual difficulties, given Woolf's idiosyncratic use of language,{{sfn|Brassard|2016}} her works have been translated into over 50 languages.{{sfn|Harrington|2018}}{{sfn|Pratt|2017}} Some writers, such as the Belgian [[Marguerite Yourcenar]], had rather tense encounters with her, while others, such as the Argentinian [[Jorge Luis Borges]], produced versions that were highly controversial.{{sfn|Brassard|2016}}{{sfn|Snodgrass|2015}}