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Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Born in London in very distinguished and respected family
Her father Leslie Stephen Cambridge professor and writer; one of the most educated
persons in Britain (literature, history and philosophy)
Her mother Julia died when Virginia was thirteen years old
Intellectual surrounding in their London home Virginia developed critical spirit, but was
isolated from other children as well
After her fathers death, she moved to Bloomsbury, the central part of London (close to the
British museum)
In Bloomsbury, young intellectuals and artists were gathering in Virginias home; long,
useful and influential conversations
Bloomsbury Group: from 1904-1915 meetings every Thursday
They were influenced by philosopher George Moore, a Cambridge professor (existential
questions sense of life and the mans attitude towards it)
Bloomsbury group rejected strict moral notions, Victorian hypocrisy and Puritan morality
They glorified spontaneous individual feelings, human relationship and, above all, personal
qualities of a single man
Attitude to art: bases of the Moores philosophy ethics and aesthetics are not separated
Art = Beautiful = Good
Art should not be educational in order to justify its existence; art is enough for itself
For such work, moral and didactic principles are irrelevant
The function of art is to sharpen human sense; art should respond to the question how;
what are peoples impressions about life
Bloomsburians created their assumptions on the basis of paintings: Roger Fry organized two
very influential postimpressionist exibitions in London (in 1910. and 1912.) painters
(Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso)
Fry claimed that the artist produces from his subconscious world the refined picture of the
world; artistic reality is more valuable than objective reality
In such surrounding, Virginia Woolf searched for her mode of expression; no formal
education; she read a lot of books in her home
Major influences:
Sir Walter Scott: a romantic writer, a poet, wrote about the famous Scottish past
(individualism)
Romantic poets: Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats (she appreciated the romantic subjectivity)
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Jane Austen: writing technique, the importance of the female mind and its differences from
the male mind; look on the world from female perspective
Laurence Sterne: the treatment of human consciousness, the lack of logic in human mind;
the subjective perspective; psychology of the characters from inside; treatment of time
(subjective vs. objective)
Marcel Proust: In Search of the Time Lost treatment of the human memory as smth.
belonging both to the present and past; human soul is present in past, present and future
Fyodor Dostoevsky: treatment of the human soul; the courage to explore deeply human soul
and his Christian attitude that human soul is in the centre of everything; he is merciless and
merciful to the human souls
These writers influenced Virginia Woolf very much, but Bloomsburian values had crucial
impact on her art
The voices from the artists depth address to audiences depth; art for arts sake
Virginia Woolf accepted the Bloomsburian values; she wanted to find and perceive that
real reality, spirit, consciousness, subconsciousness
The true reality we may see only in the moments of vision; the stream of these visions is
the real art
Some members of the Bloomsbury group: Roger Fry, Clive Bell (painting), E. M. Forster,
Leonard Woolf (critic of the British imperial system). Lytton Strachey, R. Brooke
George Moore: Principa Ethica beautiful equals good; what is good is beautiful
Art as the highest value of life (not new idea: Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn); Moore the
art critic, expressed new philosophy of art

E. M. Forster: Aspects of the Novel one of the most influential works about novel;
proves that traditional novel belongs to the past; introduces new novel without conventional
plot, characters; fiction within a flow of human consciousness; novel is a process, not a state
For Virginia Woolf, most dignified human quality is consciousness; the escape from the
terror of facts, the desintegration of material world
Stream of consciousness: revealing the horror (Conrad); the world is falling apart (Eliot); the
end of the old perception of the world (Laurence); aesthetics (Woolf)
Virginia Stephen married Leonard Woolf in 1912
They opened small printing house in 1917. and published their two stories and the texts of E.
M. Forster, Catherine Mansfield and T. S. Eliot

They did all the work by themselves; it was the beginning of the famous English publishing
house Hogarth Press
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Virginia published her works as well as the works of the future famous writers; had fairly
active and happy life with psychological crises from time to time
Virginia Woolf died in 1941. (the river Ouse)
Together with James Joyce, the greatest modernist writer in the 20th century
One of the first feminists: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to
write fiction. (A Room of Ones Own, 1929)
Common with James Joyce:
Stream of consciousness, the same birth and death year, the pioneers of modernism, rejected
the importance of material world, fought against the terror of facts, emphasized the
subjective essence of human being
Different from James Joyce:
Grew up in different social environments, she is more discrete, not vulgar; more exposed to
the British and European literary tradition; male-female thinking (Joyce focused on a male
world); different approach to novel
The Voyage Out (1915): her first novel; too cautious, afraid of discovering smth. new
(traditional technique); the main character young woman with inner conflicts; travels a lot,
but she dies at the end

Night and Day (1919): still looking for her literary expression
Monday and Tuesday (1921): the collection of short stories; looking for the lyrical prose
expression
Jacobs Room (1921): dedicated to her late brother Toby
She finally finds her literary expression, preoccupied with technical problems in order to
give one successfull novel
This novel successful experiment; she managed to use stream of consciousness; we do not
see Jacob directly through the whole novel (he exists and does not exist at the same time);
the translation of the word room may be place to live or inner and outer space; Jacob is not
materialized in this novel
Jacob is wanted, looked for and awaited, but could not be found; a kind of her Godot; a non-
existent living person (paradox): the status of a modern man (his condition in the world)
In the period from 1925 to 1932 Virginia Woolf published her best works: the peak of her art
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
Her first masterpiece; she described one day in the life of 52 years old woman and touched
the essentials of human existence
She explored the richness of the inner world, the world hidden behind the unimportant,
external life of a woman; the significance of the everyday, trivial events
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Subjective and objective time present; stream of consciousness all the character are
connected and focused upon Mrs. Dalloway; at the surface, nothing important happens in the
novel
The plot: Clarissa Dalloway prepares the evening reception in her home; she goes to town,
buys flowers and does all the necessary things in connection to the event; through Clarissas
thoughts (internal monologues) Virginia Woolf introduces Clarissa Dalloway at one
moment we see her as a young woman in white dress, then like woman in love
Woolf uses multiple perspectives (uses streams of consciousness of various people in the
street in order to describe London from various angles); the scene when the car with
distinguished personality passes
We are in London, in one day, but in the minds of characters we constantly move through the
time and space; subjective time dominant over the objective one
Clarissa Dalloway the wife of the respected Labourist politician; PM on her evening
reception; snobbish guests and life
Woolf introduces social and psychological contrast to Mrs. Dalloway the character of
Septimus Warren Smith (he becomes the dark side of her personality)
Septimus is a young man mentally ill because of his participation in war; he does not have
the problem with the choice of flowers, but he could not stop thinking and hearing the voice
of his war friend who died from the grenade explosion (existential messages through his
insanity)
Mrs. Dalloways great reception vs. Septimus way to insanity and final suicide (strong
contrast); Septimus is not physically present, exist as much as Jacob
These two worlds connected with the wealthy London neuropsychiatrist William Bradshaw
who will tell Mrs. Dalloway about Septimus death
Bradshaw the most grotesque figure in the novel) the meeting point of the two worlds
Mrs. Dalloways epiphany: the crucial moment in the novel; unknown Septimus coped with
the real life and finally jumped through the window in order to avoid asylum; she suddenly
see her whole life, pointless and spiritually poor comparing to Septimus life; she admires
him
The window and one old woman she realizes the importance of her life and of all small
things; the strong triumph and affirmation of life; she wins over her dark side (Septimus)
She realizes that even such life may be worth living
Ironical and minor life won over the cold and giant life tragedy; two sides of one
personality; finally, she returns to her guests
To the Lighthouse (1927)
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Her best novel; a simple story in the centre Ramsay family; three parts: The Window, Time
Passes and The Lighthouse
The Window (1):
One ordinary day (late September) of the Ramsay family in the summer house in the
Hebrides (west Scotland); several years before W W I; they have a lot of guests in their
house; their son James wants desperately to go to the Lighthouse nearby; Mr Ramsay did not
want to go because of the bad weather conditions
Time Passes (2):
Ten-year period; Mrs Ramsay dies, one of her sons killed in the war; one of her daughters
died during childbirth; the shortest part even though it covers ten years (the treatment of
subjective and objective time one day is more important than ten years); important life
events pass (between the acts)
The Lighthouse (3):
The rest of the family again in the summer house; a trip to the lighthouse; the boys dream
has been finally fulfilled
Lighthouse is the structural metaphor shorter sequence of light; The Window long ray of
light; Time Passes dark period (many deaths)
In this novel, V. Woolf explores two great topics:
1. Life as a harmony between life and art (two things closely connected)
2. Life as perpetual clash between two principles - male and female, light and dark the
possibility of reconciliation of these opposites
Male principle (Mr Ramsay): too realistic, devoted to the facts, rational; the courage to face
the facts, acceptance of solitude; Mr and Mrs Ramsay do not exist without each other,
although there is sometimes difficult to understand each other; the ballance should be
achieved
Female principle (Mrs Ramsay): imagination, intuition, emotions, love, devotion to the
family
Sincere love as the vital power which gives life; women are ready to let men keep illusion
that they rule the world, they are ready to accept that subordinate position aware of the
real truth
Cruel and rational male intellect mixed with intuitive and emotional female; Mrs Ramsay is
a bond between her children (pure emotions) and her husband (pure facts); art gives life
sense and establishes the balance in life there is no life without art and vice versa (the
novels message)
Lily Briscoe: the woman in her thirties, a painter, unmarried; she stayed at their house, the
embodiment of art in this novel; she is trying to paint a portrait of Mrs Ramsay, in the end
she succeeds and through that portrait Mrs Ramsay remains alive
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Art can make life out of nothing; in the last sentences, Lily finishes the portrait of a perfect
woman; a moment of vision becomes the permanent experience (the power of art)
V. Woolf treated art as a substitution for religion (love=art=life)
New use of symbols and leitmotifs:
The Lighthouse as the non-living equivalent to Mrs Ramsay (stable, reliable, safe); she is the
source of light for her family
The Lighthouse also the symbol of spiritual light coming from the past experience and may
beat the time (our past is always present in ourselves that is why Lily Briskoe can paint the
portrait of Mrs Ramsay)
The change of dark and light the rhythm of our life
The window as a symbol of the stream of consciousness; individual view, each character has
his own window through which he is looking at the world; it is an individual vision of the
world
The Island no man is an island / every man is an island; the island of life; its shore is
washed by the waves of time
The Trip the symbol of the things we dream of and trying to find, they are more important
while we are dreaming than when we reach them; eternal irony of life (the excursion to the
lighthouse)
The message of this novel: the life is indestructable, its permanence and continuity (Lily
Briscoes portrait); in the basic concept of life there is no change, life will survive no matter
what happens
For Septimus, life has no meaning (and the world, too), but Mrs Ramsay gives another
conclusion there is stability, things that do not change are important in life
Lily provides the meaning of life in the end; all moments of vision focus into one moment
when she finishes the portrait of Mrs Ramsay
Glorification of life; in the end the meaning is reached (more optimistic than Mrs Dalloway)
Mrs. Ramsay is the lighthouse of the book
Orlando (1928): crisis of sexes in modern world; the main character lives from the
Elizabethan time to the modern times changing the sexes (a fantastic character); human
eternal search for the sense of his or her existence
The Waves (1932): a series of internal monologues of the six characters (3 female and 3
male); one additional, abstract, male character who connects other characters (Percival); V.
Woolf gives the contents of their lives from various ages through streams of consciousness
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Her conception of life given in the rhythm of waves different parallels in life (one day-
whole life; ages of life; periods in one day); in each character we see one dominant feature;
pictures of life and its passing; faboulous impressionistic descriptions; not compact
The Years (1937): V. Woolf explores the influence of time on people; combination of the
stream of consciousness and realistic narrative method
She presented the change of generation in one upper-class family; many weaknesses in this
novel; V. Woolf could not overcome her closeness and disbelief in people
Between the Acts (1941): her last novel; takes place in countryside (unusual setting for her);
a holiday celebration in a village; amateur actors prepare theatre performance
Microcosm for general truths; in performance: the mixture of Elizabethan,Victorian and
modern life people play various roles with different costumes, but essentially they remain
unchanged
The real history is hidden between the acts (both individual and general); there are so many
histories so as human beings
Life is happening while we are busy with something else; the performance about the
glorious English history in front of modern generation, in the beginning of WW II
Modern Fiction (1919): a manifest of the modern English novel; theoretical work; the
principles of modern writing:
Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being like this. Examine for a moment an
ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions trivial,
fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an
incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the
life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of
importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he
could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling
and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or
catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street
tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a
luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of
consciousness to the end.
Virginia Woolf: key elements of her art
Stream of consciousness
Chaos and harmony
Quest for meaning
Male/female principle
Symbols and leitmotifs
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Aestheticism (art/life)
Poetry
Impressionism

James Joyce: key elements of his art
Stream of consciousness
Harmony and chaos
Symbols and leitmotifs
Male/female
Naturalism
Myth (past and present)
Search for form
Intertextuality