Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf.
Virginia Woolf
1. Life (1882-1941) Her father Leslie Stephen was an eminent Victorian man of letters. She grew up in a literary and intellectual atmosphere with free access to her father’s library Leslie Stephen with Virginia Woolf.
Childhood experiences of death and sexual abuse led to depression the death of her mother when she was 13
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her stepbrothers
Virginia Woolf
1. Life (1882-1941) Suicide 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.
Virginia Woolf.
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Virginia Woolf
2. Literary career The Bloomsbury Group In 1904 she moved to Bloomsbury and became a member of the Bloomsbury Group. This meant the rejection of traditional morality and artistic convention.
Experimentation best known as one The Bloomsbury Group
of the great experimental novelists during the modernist period. Only Connect ... New Directions
Virginia Woolf
2. Literary career Evolution of her style in her main novels
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The Voyage Out (1915)
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Night and Day (1917)
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Jacob’s room (1922)
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Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
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To the Lighthouse (1927)
Traditional narratives Narrative experimentation with the novel A more completely developed “stream-of-consciousness technique”
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Virginia Woolf
2. Literary career A feminist writer the themes of androgyny, women and writing
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Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
Describes Clarissa Dalloway and Sally Seton’s relationship as young women
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Click to edit Master subtitle style Orlando (1928)
Deals with androgyny
A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Shows Woolf’s concern with the questions of women’s subjugation and the relationship between women and writing
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Virginia Woolf
3. A modernist novelist •
Main aim to give voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory.
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The human personality a continuous shift of impressions and emotions.
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Narrator disappearance of the omniscient narrator.
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Point of view shifted inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas, momentary impressions presented as a continuous flux. Only Connect ... New Directions
Vanessa Bell, Mrs St John Hutchinson, 1915, Tate Gallery, London
Virginia Woolf
4. Woolf vs Joyce Woolf’s stream of consciousness
never lets her characters’ thoughts flow without control, maintains logical and grammatical organisation
Joyce’s stream of consciousness
characters show their thoughts directly through interior monologue, sometimes in an incoherent and syntactically unorthodox way
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Virginia Woolf
4. Woolf vs Joyce Moments of being
Epiphanies
Rare moments of insight during the characters’ daily life when they can see reality behind appearances
The sudden spiritual manifestation caused by a trivial gesture, an external object the character is led to a self-realization about himself/herself
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Virginia Woolf
5. Mrs Dalloway (1925) •
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Cover for the first edition of Mrs. Dalloway, London, Hogarth Press, 1925.
Takes place on a single ordinary day in June 1923. Follows the protagonist through a very small area of London, from the morning to the night of the day on which she gives a large formal party. Clarissa Dalloway’s party is the climax of the novel and unifies the narrative by gathering all the people she thinks about during the day.
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Virginia Woolf
5. Mrs Dalloway (1925) Clarissa Dalloway •
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Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs. Dalloway in Marleen Gorris’s 1997 film adaptation
A London society lady of fifty-one, the wife of a Conservative MP, Richard Dalloway, who has conventional views on women’s rights. Had a possessive father, refused Peter Walsh, a man who would force her to share everything.
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Virginia Woolf
5. Mrs Dalloway (1925) Clarissa Dalloway •
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Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs. Dalloway in Marleen Gorris’s 1997 film adaptation
Characterized by opposing feelings: her need for freedom and independence and her class consciousness. Her life appears to be an effort towards order and peace, an attempt to overcome her weakness and sense of failure.
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Virginia Woolf
5. Mrs Dalloway (1925) Septimus Warren Smith •
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Rupert Graves as Septimus in Marleen Gorris’s 1997 film adaptation
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A young poet and lover of Shakespeare. When the war broke out, enlisted for patriotic reasons. An extremely sensitive man who can suddenly fall prey to panic and fear, or feelings of guilt.
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Virginia Woolf
5. Mrs Dalloway (1925) Septimus Warren Smith •
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Rupert Graves as Septimus in Marleen Gorris’s 1997 film adaptation
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A character specifically connected with the war. Suffers from headaches and insomnia. Finally commits suicide.
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Virginia Woolf
6. To the Lighthouse (1927) No traditional plot a series of experiences, memories, emotions and feelings held together by symbols. The story develops over a period of ten years. Divided into three sections:
1. The Window It starts just before World War I. It is set during a summer afternoon and evening in a summer home on the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides
The original St. Ives lighthouse, built by John Smeaton in 1830.
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Virginia Woolf
6. To the Lighthouse (1927) 2.
Time Passes covers about ten years. The children grow up, war breaks out, Mrs Ramsay dies suddenly one night. Her eldest son, Andrew, is killed in battle, and her daughter Prue dies too. The summerhouse falls into a state of decay for ten years until the family comes back.
The original St. Ives lighthouse, built by John Smeaton in 1830.
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Virginia Woolf
6. To the Lighthouse (1927) 3.
The Lighthouse lasts less than one day. time experienced, and especially recaptured in memory, replaces outer time. Mr Ramsay, his son James and his daughter Cam sail to the lighthouse. Lily succeeds in finishing her painting.
The original St. Ives lighthouse, built by John Smeaton in 1830.
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Virginia Woolf
7. To the Lighthouse: characters MRS RAMSAY
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A beautiful woman and loving wife, constantly provides support to the other characters in the novel. As a mother, her main objective is to preserve her son James’s sense of hope and wonder in relation to the lighthouse. Only Connect ... New Directions
Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf at Asheham, ca. 1910, National Portrait Gallery, London.
Virginia Woolf
7. To the Lighthouse: characters MRS RAMSAY •
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She realizes that the beauty of this world is ephemeral and should be protected. She has the ability to bring together different things into a whole. After her death, Lily and the other characters try to reach this unity. Only Connect ... New Directions
Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf at Asheham, ca. 1910, National Portrait Gallery, London.
Virginia Woolf
7. To the Lighthouse: characters LILY BRISCOE
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A painter who fears her work will end up in attics or under a couch. Rejects the conventional image of the woman represented by Mrs Ramsay.
Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell painting, 1915, National Galleries of Scotland.
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Virginia Woolf
7. To the Lighthouse: characters LILY BRISCOE
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Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell painting, 1915, National Galleries of Scotland.
Her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay embodies her doubts: at the beginning of the novel she cannot make sense of the shapes and colours that she tries to reproduce. Undergoes a drastic change evolving into an artist who achieves her final vision.
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Virginia Woolf
8. To the Lighthouse: themes a. Transience
the idea that nothing lasts runs through the novel
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Mrs Ramsay does not want her children to become adults.
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The house falls into decay.
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Death unexpectedly ends life. St. Ives, Cornwall, the setting for The Lighthouse
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Virginia Woolf
8. To the Lighthouse: themes b. §
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Loss
Minta loses her brooch on the beach. The family loses some of its members.
St. Ives, Cornwall, the setting for The Lighthouse
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Virginia Woolf
8. To the Lighthouse: themes c. Art the ambition to stop the flux of time is embodied by the
artist Lily Briscoe.
d. The force of love
Mrs Ramsay believes that also love can create durable memories making moments permanent. St. Ives, Cornwall, the setting for The Lighthouse
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Virginia Woolf
9. To the Lighthouse: symbolism The sound of the sea the fullness of life and the imminence of death, uncertainty.
The land and the house idea of shelter and stability.
The window the dividing and A scene from 2002’s The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry.
connecting point between the self and society.
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Virginia Woolf
9. To the Lighthouse: symbolism The lighthouse •
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A scene from 2002’s The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry.
a positive symbol linked to light, comfort, hope and enthusiasm, a reference point in a changing world. the inaccessible destination leading to frustration and threatening danger.
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Virginia Woolf
10. A Room of One’s Own (1929) •
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A contemporary edition of A Room of One’s Own.
Woolf had been invited to give a lecture on the topic of Women and Fiction. She advanced the thesis that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. Her essay is constructed as a partly-fictionalized narrative of the steps that led her to adopt this thesis.
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Virginia Woolf
10. A Room of One’s Own (1929) •
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A contemporary edition of A Room of One’s Own.
She dramatizes that mental process in the character of an imaginary narrator (“call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please--it is not a matter of any importance”). The narrator reflects on the different educational experiences available to men and women as well as on more material differences in their lives. The figure of Judith Shakespeare is generated as an example of the tragic fate a highly intelligent woman would have met.
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Virginia Woolf
10. A Room of One’s Own (1929) •
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She considers the achievements of the major women novelists of the nineteenth century and reflects on the importance of tradition to an aspiring writer. Woolf closes the essay with an exhortation to her audience of women to take up the tradition that has been so hardly bequeathed to them, and to increase the endowment for their own daughters.
A contemporary edition of A Room of One’s Own.
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Virginia Woolf
10. A Room of One’s Own (1929) MAIN THEMES q
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Women’s position in fiction and in real life. Critique of patriarchal society. Struggle for women’s rights. Only Connect ... New Directions
