Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): The Rise of the

Poetic Novel

- continued the brilliant traditions of the 19th

century feminist line in the novel, but also
transformed the novel from an essentially
narrative form into a poetic form of fiction,
based on the exploration of feeling and
thought
- the ‘Women’s Movement’ in the 1960s took
her up as a figurehead writer
- she also was a remarkable essayist and
book reviewer
- “…intellectually powerful and very much
her own woman.” (Sutherland)
- there are two major elements in Woolf’s life
that influenced her making as a writer:
o her family background
o her connection with the Bloomsbury
Group
- the highly intellectual atmosphere in her
home contributed greatly to the formation of
the future novelist, stimulated the
potentialities of an intelligent young girl
- the founding principle of the Bloomsbury
Group: they were not Victorians; WWI
marked the end of Victorianism
- their basic principle: “…you were free to
do anything so long as it did not damage,
or infringe upon, the equivalent freedoms
of some other person…”(Sutherland)
Life:
- Adeline Virginia, seventh child in the
Stephen family who had eight children
(among which Vanessa Bell, a famous
modernist painter)
- her father, Leslie Stephen, was distinguished
intellectual and editor of the Cornhill
Magazine, also a literary critic and
biographer; her mother an equally well-
educated and well-read woman
- possessed a large library, was acquainted
with many important literary figures of the
time (Tennyson, Eliot, James)
- Virginia and Vanessa were homeschooled in
classics and Victorian culture and literature
- 1897-1901 attended on and off lectures
King’s College in London, studied and
history
 - 1912 married Leonard Woolf, 1917 they
founded Hogarth Press
- the Bloomsbury Group was set up in their
house:
…a typically native equivalent for
Montparnasse, as an aesthetic clearing house, a
publishing center, a forum for taste. (Malcolm
Bradbury)
- the group brought together young
intellectuals, most of them Cambridge
students
- it concentrated on aesthetic problems,
artistic experience, human relationships
- influenced by the philosopher G.E. Moore,
but also Walter Pater, and late Victorian
aestheticism
- preoccupied by a general pursuit of
aesthetically genuine values
- interested in the perception of the real
beauty of the world
- 1940 the couple moved to Sussex
- She was troubled (suffered from chronic
mental disorder) all through her life
- 1941, committed suicide by drowning in the
river Ouse, Sussex

Work:
- The Voyage Out (1915)
- Night and Day (1919)
- Jacob’s Room (1922)
- Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
- To the Lighthouse (1927)
- Orlando. A Biography (1928)
- The Waves (1931)
- The Years (1937)
- Between the Acts (1941)
 Short Stories:
- The Mark on the Wall (1917)
- Kew Gardens (1919)
- Monday and Tuesday (1921)

Essays:
- The Common Reader (1925)
- A Room of One’s Own (1929)
- The Common Reader (1932)
- Flush: A Biography (1933)
- Roger Fry: A Biography (1940)

To the Lighthouse
- like Mrs. Dalloway it is a free experiment
with time, an illustration of the complex
interplay between what is the present
 experience and what remains in the
human mind as simple memory
- there is a subtle interplay between the
subjective time (duree) and the objective
(chronological) time
- the chronological time is neutral,
impersonal, equally affecting all physical
existence
- the subjective time is felt differently by each
character
- life in time is a major thematic interest for
V. Woolf
- she is fascinated with the relationship
between past and present, and the
timelessness of death
- the novel concentrates on a poetic
expression of vague, undefinable feelings
and frustrating questions
- the scene is remote from the noisy city
world, the characters are isolated on the Isle
 of Skye, on the Hebrides, in the house - of
the Ramsay family.

- Mrs. Ramsay is a complex character,

made into a symbolical focus towards
which the characters of the novel – the
members of the family and their guests –
aspire

- she is the perfect embodiment of

feminineness, apt to connect people, to help
them discover themselves, relying more on
intuition than intellect
- her aim in life is to bring people together

- her knitting allows her to work out a pattern

with skillful fingers, while her mind roams
free

- the house itself is the structure which binds

the story together

- it is remote, bleak, isolated on the isle and

has its own existence throughout the three
divisions of the novel

- in The Window the house contains two

separate but connected worlds: the
masculine and the feminine: while Mrs.
Ramsay embodies kindness, subtlety,
refinement, tolerance, her husband is self-
centered, absent-minded, preoccupied solely
by his metaphysical work
- the dinner party is the climax of the first
part, it is an occasion for assembling
separate individualities, and for Mrs.
Ramsay to reveal her captivating
personality

- she spreads her light and warmth over her

guests, and makes them form one single,
harmonious whole:

There was always something that had to be

done at that precise moment, something that
Mrs. Ramsay had decided for reasons of her
own to do instantly, it might be with every
one standing about making jokes, as now,
not being able to decide whether they were
going into the smoking-room, into the
drawing-room, up to the attics. Then one
saw Mrs. Ramsay in the midst of the hubbub
 standing there with Minta’s arm in hers,
bethink her ‘Yes, it is time for that now,’ and
so make off at once with an air of secrecy to
do something alone.

- the lines recited by her in the end of the

dinner sum up the mood of the evening:

And all the lives we ever lived

and all the lives to be,
Are full of trees and changing leaves.

-Mrs. Ramsay transfers calm and peace, a

sense of being alive and useful to all her guests
- the major focus of this part is the integration
of a family, of a community of friends, of
human personalities through a woman’s
creative understanding and faith
- Time Passes, the counterpoint marks a
process of disintegration, the decay of the
house over a period of ten years:

Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood,

the profusion of darkness which creeping in
at keyholes, and crevices, stole round
window blinds, came into bedrooms,
swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a
bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the
sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of
drawers.
- it is an interlude, a passage achieved
through metaphoric projection
- the human figures are removed from the
stage, their fate is recorded in brackets
- the atmosphere is depressive, gloomy
- the house is ravaged by hard winds, is
dominated by chaos, just like the lives of the
inhabitants in the aftermath of WWI
- there is no more meaning anywhere,
everything is relative
- all that Mrs. Ramsay had achieved while
alive is quickly destroyed by forces which
lie beyond human control

- The Lighthouse is a counterpoint to the

second chapter
- marks the principle of a spiral-like evolution
of life
- two climactic moments are simultaneous
- Lily Briscoe finishing her painting illustrates
the idea that whatever permanent unity
life can provide is to be found in art: Mrs.
Ramsay was an artist in human
 relationships, and Lily Briscoe has her
artistic vision:

With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it

clear for a second, she drew a line there, in
the center. It was done; it was finished. Yes,
she thought, laying down her brush in
extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.

- the universe is still a chaos, but the

individual can create small islands of
peace and harmony which are everlasting
- art is permanent, immortal, and so is
Mrs. Ramsay’s image in everybody’s
mind
- the novel is a masterpiece as to the
treatment of time: it stands still, limited to
a few hours, then time elapses quickly – it is
the time of the macrocosm – and, finally,
time goes both directions: into the future
 with the Ramsays who are going to reach
the lighthouse, and into the past with Lily
Briscoe whose thoughts wander backwards
until the image of Mrs. Ramsay is recreated
- Woolf demonstrates that human experience
transcends past, present and future – they
merge into an eternal flux
- the symbolical image of the lighthouse –
illustrates the idea of permanence and
continuity:

To reach the lighthouse is, in a sense, to make

contact with a truth outside oneself, to
surrender the uniqueness in one’s ego to
impersonal reality. (David Daiches)

- the steady beam of the lighthouse may be

interpreted as Mrs. Ramsay’s steady
 influence on all the others, but also to the art
of the painter

Conclusion

Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on

an ordinary day [receiving] a myriad
impressions…let us trace the pattern…which
each sight or incident scores upon the
consciousness.

- V. Woolf’s close approach to the ‘stream of

consciousness’
- Maybe the most outstanding representative
of the experimental novel: reality lives only
in our minds, we are prone to an
overwhelming assault of feelings and
thoughts
- Literature is not about creating plots,
mimicking what we believe to be solid and
real, but rather aboutcapturing a ‘myriad of
impressions’, recreating a personal world by
means of feelings and thoughts, linking past,
present and future.