Moments of Being is a collection of five essays written by Virginia Woolf. This collection offers rare insight into the famous modernist's personal life. Although she is not attempting any astonishing confessions, she does provide a deeply thoughtful and patient description of how she experiences herself. The essays cover seasons from early childhood up to her late writing career, stopping in between for intellectual conversations which demonstrate Woolf's maturity.
Of the five essays "A Sketch of the Past" and "Reminiscences" offer a unique opportunity to the reader to observe the effect of time upon Woolf's mind. The latter is written at the beginning of her writing career, as a sort of homage to her mother whom she lost at a young age. Woolf is seeking to make peace with the end of her childhood and to understand herself better in this liminal space of young adulthood. In "A Sketch of the Past," written near the end of her career, Woolf revisits these same childhood memories with a fresh perspectives. Her life experiences have taught her to look for a more, rational, balanced truth behind her rather idealistic adolescent impulses. She names both the good and the bad of her childhood, arriving at exactly who she was and how those early memories shaped her throughout her life.
The unique insight which these five essays offer in conjunction with one another amounts to a personal acquaintance with Woolf. As a reclusive author, she didn't make a habit of inviting her audience into her personal life. These pieces, however, reflect the fears, triumphs, disappointments, and hopes of a lifetime. Her writing emerges as a sort of simultaneous processing of life events and as a self-imposed structuring of her identity. "Am I a Snob?" perfectly concludes the collection by expressing Woolf's persistent commitment to honoring her own experience above the expected or culturally accepted path.
