Virginia WoolfIntroduction

What do you think of when you hear the words “Victorian” and “modern”?

“In or about December, 1910, human character changed.”◦Virginia Woolf

New Thinking in last half of 19th century:

◦Darwin’s theory of evolution Can we rely on religion for all the

answers like we always have?◦Freud’s theory of the unconscious Are we really in control of ourselves?

◦Immensely influential in changing human thought

1882-1941Life spans two

World Wars and the collapse of the English empire

Movie “The Hours” explores her life

BiographyFather, Leslie Stephen:

◦eminent Victorian literary critic ◦Agnostic (Woolf herself was anti-

religious)◦Educated Virginia at home.

Mother, Julia Stephen, a noted Victorian beauty: echoes of her in Mrs. Ramsay

Sister Vanessa: painter and leader of the English avant-garde

Woolf’s Later LifeSuffered a series of nervous

breakdowns beginning in 1904, the year her father died

Died of suicide by drowningMay have suffered from bipolar

disorder

Important Places to WoolfLondonSt. Ives in

Cornwall

The Bloomsbury GroupBohemian lifestyleDefying conventionVirginia married a member of it,

Leonard Woolf, in 1912

Partnership with LeonardShe and Leonard founded

Hogarth Press, which became a successful business

Female writer, publisher, literary critic

Like most women of her generation, greatly impacted by WW I

Many of her friends were killed or wounded

Inter-War Period (1919-1933)She did her major creative and

critical work During this time major fascist

and socialist dictatorships arise on the Continent

There are far away echoes of this and the war in TTL (weather/nature take on a symbolic function)

Woolf’s StyleYou will hate this book….if you

expect it to be like any novel you’ve ever read

Woolf didn’t care about writing something like what had been written over the last 100 years

Wanted to include what those novels had left out

Aiming at something NEW… and she achieved it

What if a novel were a painting?Experiment Question:

◦Can sentences (which are linear) in a linear work like a novel do what a photo or movie or painting does : convey the sense of a multitude of thoughts, feelings and actions taking place all at the same time?

Dancing at the Moulin de Galette

Conventions she uses:Stream-of-consciousness:

◦She is emulating a painter trying to reproduce an exact moment in time fully, but doing it in novel form

To The Lighthouse: collective stream-of-consciousness.◦One voice flows into another!

(Because while I am thinking thoughts you are thinking thoughts, right? So how do you represent that?)

Her Theory of the NovelShe is a woman The novel in the early 1900s was

a genre dominated by menShe believed a woman novelist

had to create her own form◦Felt Jane Austen was one woman

who had done thatShe believed the conventional

commercial novel had become a cliché

Her goal…Convey consciousness,

particularly feminine consciousness, which she felt had been left out of earlier novels◦Emotion◦Thought◦Insight

Kew Gardens

“Kew Gardens” QuestionsIf this story is an experiment,

what is Woolf experimenting with? What is she trying to represent?

What stands out to you in the story?

What is the point of view?What happens in this story?What themes or ideas can you

find in it?