For as long as I can remember, Virginia Woolf has been one of the most revered British writers in the history of English literature. As a self-proclaimed fangirl, I told myself I would only consider myself truly literate the day I could fully understand Woolf’s writing.

Just a few days ago, as I closed the final page of A Room of One’s Own, a familiar discussion resurfaced, one that had first made waves in 2022 during the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival. William Dalrymple had claimed Virginia Woolf had Bengali roots. “I can share something about Virginia Woolf that no one knows much about the fact that she was part Bengali. We both have Bengali ancestors, and much like her, I am half-Bengali too. We have a mutual great-grandmother who was born in Chandannagore. Virginia came from Franco-Bengali origins, and we have the marriage certificate of her Bengali grandmother and a Frenchman. Her grandmother was very aware of her Bengali and Hindu origin, even when living abroad.”

Dalrymple went on to say that Woolf’s facial features resembled those of a Bengali woman. This is also true of her writing. Her works that are lyrical, introspective, and use stream-of-consciousness, bear a certain resonance with the literary voices of the Bengal Renaissance.

But resemblance and shared lineage do not necessarily translate into perspective. While critics and readers alike have compared the call for autonomy in A Room of One’s Own to Bengali author Rassundari Devi’s early memoirs, arguably India’s first female autobiography, the broader implications of Woolf’s feminism extend beyond personal identity. She called for literal, emotional, intellectual space  for a woman to flourish. She wrote for a woman, and in doing so, gave voice to every woman.

Still, reading her as an Indian woman, I cannot help but wonder what if she had known about her supposed Bengali origins? Would it have altered her worldview? Would her perception of the so-called “third world” shift?

There are unsettling moments in her writing that reflect the unconscious biases of her time. In Mrs Dalloway, Clarissa recalls hearing that Peter married an Indian woman: “…and then the horror of the moment when someone told her at a concert that he had married a woman met on the boat going to India! Never should she forget all that! Cold, heartless, a prude, he called her. Never could she understand how he cared. But those Indian women did presumably—silly, pretty, flimsy nincompoops…”

Was this jealousy? A satirical critique? Or a reflection of Woolf’s own internalised imperial gaze? As an Indian reader, I find it both fascinating and dissonant that someone who might have descended from the very culture she “others” would depict it so unkindly.

Yet, even within that discomfort, I return to the power of her pen. Her language, lucid yet elusive, invites me into her mind, her contradictions, her struggles. And I wonder had she been aware of her lineage, would she have written differently about the Indian woman?

Woolf remains, for me, a literary icon, not because she was perfect, or fully inclusive, but because she dared to write what she felt, and in doing so, allowed us to question what remains unsaid. Her work continues to shape how I see myself. As John Dewey once said, “Art is experience.” And perhaps, so too is identity.

(As I See It  is a space for bookish reflection, part personal essay and part love letter to the written word.)