Chapter 16 luxury and grandeur (3)

Her life back then was crossing the desert.She was so unconventional (she used to say "conformity and self-satisfaction is death" - a living thought) that she had to pay a high social price.Rejected by her own class and never accepted by the intellectuals she helped, Ortolan is an isolated and lonely figure.She's broke, her husband has gone half-mad, her loved ones have died, she's suffering from excruciating physical pain, her face has been disfigured, she's gone deaf, she's using a ridiculous hearing aid, and she's had to sell her beloved Garsington manor.Worst of all, her friends betray her time and time again.It started with novels that included grim portrayals of her (the most poignant ones were those of Lawrence and Huxley, since these authors were close friends of Ottoland's), and then, through friends of friends, she learned that all Laughing at her behind her back: "Think of me as a conspiratorial and dangerous, immoral and dirty woman...nobody likes me...everything I've been through for it has been overturned. I thought it was What I give to others is really only in my head--others don't like it. If I could leave Philip, there is no doubt that I would move away from here and start my life in another place. But I It can't be done," she wrote in her diary.

Mahler with Steel Claws Despite this, she tried to keep her humiliation and pain out of the way.So she continued to receive guests (though now only for tea) in her modest home in Gower Street, dressed in cheap blond rags, sloppily dyed her hair white, and doubled up on her make-up to lessen the damage of disease and time.In a word, no matter what the situation, she tries to be true to herself and is ready to continue making life a beautiful and livable place.Shocked by such composure in the face of Altolan, Virginia Woolf ended up admiring Altolan for it and loving her deeply.In fact they became close friends; when Ottoland died at the age of sixty-four from a long-suffering mysterious illness, Virginia and Eliot wrote this epitaph together: In a frail body/yet retains/a fearless and unyielding spirit." Ortolan's colossal and uncommon nobility lies in the fact that she gradually becomes, with absolute dignity (she loves absolute things so much), a decayed and pathetic characters.

bibliography ○Bertrand Russell: "Autobiography", Aidasa Press. ○ Quentin Bell: "Virginia Woolf", Lumen Press. ○Virginia Woolf: Paper Darts, Odin Press. ○ Claire Tomalin: Katherine Mansfield, Martin Press (New York). ○Michael Holroyd: Lytton Strachey, Penguin (London). ○ Miranda Seymour: Ottoland Morel, High Life, Faller Strauss Giroux (New York).