Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a reference to acclaimed Victorian novelist and writer Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882–March 28, 1941). For most people this may bring to mind the ground-breaking Edward Albee play first staged in 1962 and later brought to the big screen by Mike Nichols in 1966. Actually it goes back even farther, as it is a play on words relating to an old song: “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” from Walt Disney’s 1933 cartoon The Three Little Pigs.
Virginia Woolf explored themes of illusion and reality, as well as social and political issues affecting women, self and identity, communication and alienation. Her with major works include novels and essays: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and A Room of One’s Own, and much more. For much of her life Virginia Woolf’s writing helped her to vanquish serious early episodes of anxiety and depression. Unfortunately in the early years of World War Two (WWII) she again became very depressed and unable to write.
The future seemed hopeless – in fact the UK was in a precarious position as the target of the German blitz from September thru May 1941. She saw with clear eyes the inability of the UK to counter the might of the Nazi war machine, together with their Axis allies at that time: Russia, Italy and Japan. (The US did not enter WWII until it was directly attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941.) Germany’s threatened invasion of Great Britain appeared imminent and Woolf felt that this signaled the end of civilization. On March 8, 1941 Virginia Woolf found herself unable go on in the world as it was. She weighted her pockets with stones and walked to her death in the sea.
So that is the back-story as relates to Virginia Woolf, who also famously wrote in Orlando that:
Over the intervening decades, “Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolf?”, has taken taken on added meaning, representing the need for each one of us question our own perceptions of reality and our place in the world, to face up to reality as it is, and not as we wish it to be.
This has been on my mind since October 7th.
In case you missed it: the barbaric October 7, 2024 assault by Hamas targeted the most dovish communities in Israel – and at the nearby Nova Peace Rave – carried out on one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar, killed more than 1200 innocents, raped hundreds and seized more than 240 hostages including babies, children, parents and grandparents. October 7th was the most deadly attack since the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, with atrocities calculated to cause the greatest possible physical, emotional and even environmental harm.
Rather than try to capture the total horrors of October 7th, I am linking here to a detailed mapping of the October 7th Massacre
October 7th has been called the 9/11 of Israel. It actually has greater similarities to India’s 26/11 Mumbai attacks which also included infiltration and sustained attacks that killed more than 60 people. October 7th though was accompanied by immediate and ongoing global spiraling of antisemitism – synchronized and apparently planned – along with surges of misinformation and fake news concomitant with ongoing attacks. Military attacks over the last 9 months have continued from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, as well as by terror proxy Hezbollah to the north in Lebanon, the Houthis to the east in Yeman, and Iraqi and Syrian terror militias from the north-east, and even direct attack by Iran. As of this writing, fully one third of the country is under attack in the north by Hezbollah.
If you know anyone in Israel, you may already know that nearly 100,000 Israelis have been unable to return to their homes – either because their communities were burned to the ground, or because of ongoing attack that makes it unsafe in the south (Hamas/PIJ) and the north (Hezbollah).
At bottom October 7th is one of those seismic events that requires us to question all of our assumptions and beliefs, our hopes and illusions.
Who is afraid of living life without illusions?
What are the illusions that you personally may be living with – consciously or otherwise?
Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?
To be continued….
Your Second-Middle Age: 