Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,
Margaret Layton © 2013
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
1. Life (1882-1941)!
• Her father Leslie Stephen was
an eminent Victorian man of letters. !
Virginia Woolf with her father.!
• She grew up in a literary and intellectual
atmosphere with free access to her father’s library. !
• Childhood experiences of death and sexual abuse
led to depression.!
The death of her mother Her stepbrothers!
when she was 13! George and Gerald !
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
A"er
her
father’s
death,
in
1904,
she
had
a
major
nervous
breakdown
and
was
hospitalised
3
9mes.
She
also
a3empted
suicide
by
taking
drugs.
In
1904
she
moved
to
Bloomsbury
and
became
a
member
of
the
Bloomsbury
Group
(Cambridge
graduates).
She
married
Leonard
Woolf
in
1912,
a
publisher
and
author
of
Jewish
origin
and
they
founded
the
Hogarth
Press
(now
Penguin).
In
1922
she
met
aristocra9c
writer
Vita
Sackville-‐
West
and
she
began
a
rela9onship
with
her.
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
1. Life (1882-1941) !
!
The Second World War increased her anxiety and fears.
After rewriting drafts of her suicide note, she put rocks into her
pockets and drowned herself in the River Ouse in northern
Yorkshire, where they had moved in 1940, after their London
house had been bombed.!
Virginia Woolf.!
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
2. V. Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group !
The Bloomsbury Group rejected traditional
morality and artistic conventions.!
Experimentation Virginia Woolf is best known as
one of the great experimental novelists during the
modernist period.!
The Bloomsbury Group: Auberon Duckworth; Duncan Grant;
Julian Bell; Leonard Woolf. Front: Virginia Woolf; Lady Margaret
Duckworth; Clive Bell; Vanessa Bell.
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
2. Literary career!
The Voyage Out TradiConal
narraCve
(omniscient
narrator)
(1915)! Main
themes:
feminine
consciousness,
sexuality
and
death.!
Night and Day TradiConal
narraCve.
Set
in
Edwardian
London.
(1917)! Themes:
women's
suffrage,
if
love
and
marriage
can
coexist,
and
if
marriage
is
necessary
for
happiness.!
Jacob’s Room NarraCve
experimentaCon:
the
protagonist
(1922)! exists
almost
only
through
the
descrip9on
of
other
people
(mainly
the
women
of
his
life).
Mrs Dalloway (1925)! Stream-‐of-‐consciousness
technique’!
To the Lighthouse Stream-‐of-‐consciousness
technique
(1927)!
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
2. Literary career!
A feminist writer the themes of androgyny, women and writing.!
!
!
! Describes Clarissa Dalloway and Sally
Mrs Dalloway Seton’s relationship as young women,
!(1925)!
together with Clarissa’s relationship
! with Peter Walsh.!
Its hero is a male nobleman who lives
Orlando (1928)!
during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I,
becomes a woman and lives 300 years.!
A Room of One’s Shows Woolf’s concern with the
Own (1929) questions of women’s subjugation
(essay)! and the relationship between women
and writing. Based on lectures
delivered at Cambridge University in
1928.!
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
3. A modernist novelist!
• Main aim to give voice to the
complex inner world of feelings, thoughts
and memory.!
• The human personality a continuous
shift of impressions and emotions (as !
explained by philosophers W. James and !
H. Bergson). !
!
• Narrator disappearance of the
omniscient narrator.!
• Point of view shifted inside the
Vanessa Bell, Mrs St John Hutchinson, 1915, Tate
characters’ minds through flashbacks,
Gallery, London.!
associations of ideas, momentary
impressions presented as a continuous flux. !
!
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
4. Stream-of-consciousness
vs traditional technique!
Stream-of-consciousness Traditional technique!
technique!
The action or plot is revealed
…through the commentary of
through the mental processes of
an omniscient narrator !
the character!
Character development is …through dialogue or the
achieved through revelation of narrator’s description!
extremely personal thoughts !
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
4. Stream-of-consciousness
vs traditional technique!
Stream-of-consciousness Traditional technique!
technique!
The action of the plot moves
back and forth through present …corresponds to real,
time to memories of past events chronological time!
and dreams of the future.!
Interior monologue, free indirect Narration, description, dialogue
speech and free association! and commentary by the narrator!
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
5. Woolf vs Joyce!
WOOLF’S STREAM! JOYCE’S STREAM!
OF CONSCIOUSNESS! OF CONSCIOUSNESS!
never lets her characters show their thoughts
characters’ thoughts flow directly through interior
without control; monologue, sometimes in an
maintains logical and incoherent and syntactically
grammatical organisation! unorthodox way !
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
5. Woolf vs Joyce!
MOMENTS OF BEING! EPIPHANIES!
Rare moments of insight The sudden spiritual
during the characters’ manifestation caused by a trivial
daily life when they can gesture, an external object the
see reality behind character is led to a self-
appearances! realisation about himself/herself!
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
STREAM
OF
CONSCIOUSNESS
TECHNIQUE
(J.
JOYCE:
Ulysses/V.
WOOLF:
Mrs.
Dalloway)
The
stream
of
consciousness
is
a
new
style
of
wri9ng
which
has
two
techniques:
the
interior
monologue
the
free
indirect
speech
The
Interior
monologue
is
a
narra9ve
technique
that
records
thoughts,
feelings
and
emo9ons
of
the
human
mind
with
the
use
of
the
pronoun
“I”.
Example:
“I
love
flowers
Id
love
to
have
the
whole
place
swimming
in
roses
God
of
heaven
theres
nothing
like
nature
the
wild
mountains
then
the
sea
and
the
waves
rushing
then
the
beau9ful
country
with
the
fields
of
oats
and
wheat”…
(An
excerpt
from
Ulysses
by
J.
Joyce).
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
T
The
free
indirect
speech
or
discourse
rends
thoughts
as
reported
speech
(in
the
third
person,
past
tense)
but
keeps
to
the
kind
of
vocabulary
that
is
appropriate
to
the
character
and
deletes
some
of
the
tags,
like
‘she
thought’,
‘she
wondered’,
‘she
asked
herself’,
etc.
The
free
indirect
speech
is
different
from
the
interior
monologue
because
it
represents
the
thoughts
of
the
characters
without
using
the
first
personal
pronoun
“I”,
but
by
using
the
third
personal
pronoun.
Example:
"But
Lucrezia
herself
could
not
help
looking
at
the
motor
car
and
the
tree
pa@ern
on
the
blinds.
Was
it
the
Queen
in
there
–
the
Queen
going
shopping?"
Instead
of
saying
"She
wondered
if
the
queen
was
in
there
shopping,"
Woolf
just
makes
the
announcement
and
shows
that
she
has
special
access
to
the
characters’
mind.
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
6. Mrs Dalloway (1925)!
• The main character, Clarissa Dalloway, is a wealthy
London hostess. She spends her day preparing for
her evening party. She recalls her life before World
War I, before her marriage to Richard Dalloway, and
her relationship with Peter Walsh.!
!
• Septimus Smith is a shell-shocked veteran, !
!one of the first Englishmen to enlist in the war.!
!He is married to Lucrezia, an Italian woman.!
!
• The climax is Clarissa’s party: it gathers
all the people Clarissa thinks of or meets
during the day. It is at the party that !
• Dr Bradshaw, the nerve specialist, speaks !
• about Septimus’s suicide, a man she !
• doesn’t know but who is somehow similar to her.!
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
6. Mrs Dalloway: setting!
• Set on a single day in June 1923.!
• It follows the protagonist through a very
small area of London.!
• The characters enjoy the sights and
sounds of London, its parks, its
changing life.!
• Through what Woolf defined as the
‘tunnelling technique’, she allows the
reader to experience the characters’
recollection of their past sense of their
background and personal history. ! Mrs Dalloway’s walk from Dean’s Yard, Westminster,
to Bond Street.!
• Clarissa Dalloway’s party is the climax
of the novel.!
!
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
6. Mrs Dalloway:
a changing society!
Significant changes in the social life of the
time represented in the novel:!
• the spread of newspapers!
• the increasing use of cars and planes!
• the new standards in the marital relationship!
• the success of the cinema !
A leitmotif the striking of Big
Ben and of clocks in general !
A structural connection and a symbol!
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
6. Mrs Dalloway: characters!
MRS DALLOWAY!
• She is fifty-one!
• The wife of a Conservative MP, Richard Dalloway, who
has conventional views on politics and women’s rights. !
She experienced:!
• the influence of a possessive father,!
• the frustration of a genuine love,
the need to refuse Peter Walsh,
a man whom she loved but who!
• was socially inferior.!
!
!
! Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs Dalloway.
All this has weakened her emotional self awareness.!
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
6. Mrs Dalloway: characters!
MRS DALLOWAY!
She is characterised by opposing feelings: !
!
Her need
Her class
for freedom and consciousness!
independence !
To overcome her weakness
and sense of failure, she
imposes severe restrictions on
her spontaneous feelings.
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
6. Mrs Dalloway: characters!
SEPTIMUS WARREN SMITH!
!
• An extremely sensitive man.!
• He can suddenly fall prey to
panic and fear, or feelings of guilt
for the death of his best friend,
Evans, during the war.!
• He is a ‘shell-shock’ case,
a victim of war.!
• He is haunted by the spectre
of Evans, he suffers from
headaches and insomnia.!
• He cannot stand the idea
Actor Rupert Graves plays the role of Septimus
Warren Smith in the 1997 film ‘Mrs Dalloway’.!
of having a child, he is sexually impotent. !
Performer - Culture & Literature!
Jonathan Swift!
Virginia Woolf!
6. Mrs Dalloway:
Clarissa vs Septimus!
MRS DALLOWAY! SEPTIMUS SMITH!
• She responds to experience in • He responds to experience in
physical terms.! physical terms.!
• She depends upon her husband • He depends upon his wife for
for stability and protection.! stability and protection.!
• She never loses her awareness • He is not always able to
of the outside world as distinguish between his personal
something external to herself. ! response and the nature of
external reality.!
• She finally recognises her
deceptions, accepts old age and • His psychic paralysis leads him
the idea of death, and is ready to suicide. !
to go on.
Performer - Culture & Literature!
