Student: Zegrean (Rus) Maria-Ionela, RE, ID

Write an essay on the characteristics of the modern novel in English literature,

with focus on one novel, at your choice.
You should:
- refer to the general features of the modern novel as implemented by the literary
revolution brought about by the most representative theoreticians of the epoch;
- refer to the particular characteristics depicted both by you and by the literary critics
in the novel you chose;
- abide by the rules of ethics when writing an academic paper (quote your sources and
mention them in the reference list);
- make your own voice visible throughout the analysis;
- write no more than min. 3 - max. 4 pages, using Times New Roman, letter size: 12,
line spacing: 1.5.

Characteristics of the modern novel To the Light House, by Virginia Woolf

The modernism can be defined by a huge formal innovation and experimentation,

which reflect a new way of thinking about art and literature. It is produced by a world marked
by a socio-economic, political, philosophical and technological upheaval. The novel was
influenced that way too.
Readers are those who establish if a novel is good or bad, but regarding the modern
novel, opinions vary in reference to certain novels. For this reason, we have to take into
consideration the features of the new style of approach and to try to explain the features
before reading a modern novel.
Modernism and modern novel go hand in hand with a new conception of the reality
and function of art. It is based on a refusal of mimesis. Unlike the universe of realistic authors
of the nineteenth century, the modernist worldview is tinged with doubt, ambiguity,
paradoxes.
One important aspect of the modern novel is that it leaves the reader to figure out the
moral theme for himself. This thing is sustained by R.W. Stevenson who is saying that `the
moral sort of text is one which leaves readers free to determine morality for themselves.
Modernism is doing so, often ready to draw general conclusions on behalf of its readers and
to point out regularly what they might be thinking about individual characters and action.`(R.
Stevenson, Modernist fiction. An introduction, Routledge Publisher, London, 2014, p 200.) It
means that every reader can appreciate differently the characters or the type of action
presented in the novel.
It has to be mentioned that modern novels rely heavily on realism. The novel of the
Modern Age is realistic in nature. The realistic writer is one who thinks that truth to observed
facts about the outer world or his own feelings. The modern novelist is realistic in this sense.
He tries to include within the limits of the novel almost everything and not a merely one-
sided view of it. That is what Raymond Williams was saying about realism: `In the highest
realism, society is seen in fundamentally personal terms and persons, through relationships`.
(R.Williams, The Long Revolution, Broadview Press Publisher, Toronto, 2001, p.314)
Modernism is, for the novel, a real turning point. Many critics talk about "turn of the
novel. (Bradbury, 1973, p.81). Modernist novelists, foremost among whom James Joyce,
Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence revolutionize the genre and push its limits. In her diary,
Virginia Woolf says, after finishing writing To the Lighthouse, be sure to never write a novel
again. The modernist authors themselves have largely theorized, essentially in essays, their
conception of the modern novel. The essays of Virginia Woolf "Modern Fiction" (1919,
1925) often considered a forerunner of modernism, are, in this respect, fundamental.
The modernist novel dismantles the omniscient narrator of realistic novels to
introduce an unreliable narrator, on which the reader can not rely. The story of this one is
neither assured nor coherent, but made of hesitations, doubts, inconsistencies, contradictions
and put in suspense. Note, in this respect, the importance of suspension points, parentheses
and hyphens, in modernist novels
The exploration of the consciousness of the characters takes the form of the technique
of the flow of consciousness. Indeed, by their experimental character, modernist texts
presuppose a different, more active, more stimulating form of reading, in which the reader
plays a greater role in the production of meaning. Unlike realistic novels, modernist novels
are "scriptable" texts.
One of the most important modern novel writers was Virginia Woolf, considered one
of the biggest innovative English writers. In her works, she has experienced both the flow of
consciousness and the psychological and emotional motifs of the characters. To the
Lighthouse is a novel composed of three parts: Window, Time passes and Lighthouse and
describes two days, ten years apart, from the dramatic life of the Ramsey family. In this way,
the novel destroys the temporal scheme of the traditional novel because there is not a
chronological rotation of the facts but an exposure of what brings in the foreground, the
memory.
The novel continues and upgrades the modernist tradition encountered in her
contemporaries with a narrative structure in which, often, the intrigue of itself stays on the
second place, completely marginalized by the philosophical introspections of characters.
The subject is based on the Ramsay family's anticipation of a trip to the lighthouse
and the subsequent reflection on it, as well as the accompanying family tensions. One of the
main themes of the novel is the bustle of the creative process that painter Lily Briscoe takes
when she tries to paint in the midst of family drama. The novel is also a meditation about the
fate of the people who make up a nation in the midst of the war, and about those who have
lost someone dear in the war. Also, the novel studies the passing of time, and the way women
are forced by society to allow men to consume their emotional balance. We should also pay
attention on the transience of life and work because Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay take completely
different approaches to life: he relies on his intellect, while she depends on her emotions. But
they share the knowledge that the world around them is transient, that nothing lasts forever.
Mrs. Ramsay is a special character, loved for her beauty and intelligence and for the
way in which she shapes the bonds between people, having an unconditional pleasure to
impulse them to marriage. Mr. Ramsay, on the other hand, is a perfect intellectual and self-
centered, incapable to communicate with the people around him and to confess to his wife
how much he loves her. He represents the absolute masculinity and shows a need for
permanent love, being hated mostly by his children, in particular by James, the youngest
member of the family.
For the author, the lighthouse was an objective hard to reach, which at one point, even
though it was touched, it was no longer relevant and no longer produced any positive feeling,
especially because of the mother's disappearance. Through the child who worships his mother
and hates his father is revealing Virginia Woolf's face. And with that the novel focuses
around the trip to the lighthouse which means the human destiny, the lighthouse symbolizing
the life purpose which, once reached, it loses its genius.
Another essential feature in this modern novel is the importance of taking decisions
on your own. From the behavior of the characters we learn that we always should do what we
intend to do without accepting to be influenced by others authority. For example, James the
young man takes the decision that no matter he will become when he will grow up, he will
fight against tyranny and despotism, against forcing people not doing what they want.
 What impresses at Virginia Woolf is the almost totally absence of dialog, the novel
focusing on the most hidden thoughts and feelings of the characters. It is highlighted the
children’s emotion power and the changing of relationships between grown-ups and amongst
others predominantly themes there is the subjectivity and perception problem too. It is also
important to notice that time needed to read is longer than time in which events take place
because the author describes the discontinuity of inner processes of characters.
In conclusion, To the Lighthouse, is a modern novel in which is distinguished the
struggle between femininity and masculinity, being a study of time and memory. This novel
like many other modern novels, is defined by certain modern and typical features like:
implication of the reader directly in the action, the feminine and masculine characters
becoming metaphors of the feminine and masculine world diversity, different behaviours of
the main characters, time passing and many others.