The Legacy

“The Legacy written by Virginia Woolf”, has drawn mass attention in different centuries. The story is a part of my syllabus in 2^nd year. So like, the other stories I began to read ‘The Legacy’ as well. I must admit that when I first read the story I was not at all aware of its popularity. Anyway it’s the aesthetic and lively narration power sort of bound me to pour all my attention to look for substantial amount of information related to the short story. 

The author Virginia Woolf undoubtedly made a fantastic job with having perfect coherence between the characters and sequence. I strongly believe no reader would ever get bored of reading this short story as it never fails to bring about the impulse of the reader at any point. The desire of unraveling the exact fact has been invariably awaken in the reader’s mind throughout the story. 

Gilbert Clandon, who is the protagonist of the story, has been immensely criticized by large number of people. Some feel that it was because of Gilbert’s negligence to his wife Angela which ultimately pushed her to end her life. However, I never felt so, because from the story we can easily grasp the fact that Gilbert was a politician and from the vantage point of view of contemporary world we must realize that how much effort a politician has to put for his party. Thus, I believe it is indeed baseless to hold Gilbert responsible for his wife’s death. Besides, we could also find that Gilbert has never deserted his wife but always gave her utmost priority. In fact he has never demotivated her to pursue her passion to engage herself in some social activities. 

On the other hand, the suicide of Angela is an epithet of her guilt to have an extramarital affair with B.M, of which she is also ashamed. She knew that her husband gave her all pleasures of life, which she has also admitted once in the story, thus her intuition perhaps made her feel guilty about her wrongdoing. The self realization seemed to be the reason that Angela denied to be with B.M when he forced her to escape with him. Nonetheless, having said that, we must not accuse Angela for her extramarital affair with B.M, because things seemed to have grown between them without any conscious effort from her side. She tried her best to stay in her limit but it was her intuition which made her fall in love with B.M. 

Thus, from my perspective neither Angela nor Gilbert made any error from their side. Apparently, it was their destiny or the circumstances which brought about such a tragic end in their marriage life.