1. Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf.

2. Childhood experiences of death and sexual abuse led to depression
Virginia Woolf
1. Life ( )
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
her stepbrothers
The Prose and the Passion

3. The Prose and the Passion
Virginia Woolf
1. Life ( )
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.
The Prose and the Passion

4. The Prose and the Passion
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 of the great experimental novelists during the modernist period.
The Bloomsbury Group
The Prose and the Passion

5. Evolution of her style in her main novels
Virginia Woolf
2. Literary career
Evolution of her style in her main novels
The Voyage Out (1915)
Night and Day (1917)
Jacob’s room (1922)
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Traditional narratives
Narrative experimentation with the novel
A more completely developed “stream-of-consciousness technique”
The Prose and the Passion

6. The Prose and the Passion
Virginia Woolf
2. Literary career
A feminist writer  the themes of androgyny, women and writing
Describes Clarissa Dalloway and Sally Seton’s relationship as young women
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Orlando (1928)
A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Deals with androgyny
Shows Woolf’s concern with the questions of women’s subjugation and the relationship between women and writing
The Prose and the Passion

7. Virginia Woolf
3. A Modernist novelist
Main aim  to give voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory.
The human personality  a continuous shift of impressions and emotions.
Narrator  disappearance of the omniscient narrator.
Point of view  shifted inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas, momentary impressions presented as a continuous flux.
Vanessa Bell, Mrs St John Hutchinson, 1915, Tate Gallery, London
The Prose and the Passion

8. Woolf’s stream of consciousness Joyce’s stream of consciousness
Virginia Woolf
4. Woolf vs Joyce
Woolf’s stream of consciousness
Joyce’s stream of consciousness
characters show their thoughts directly through interior monologue, sometimes in an incoherent and syntactically unorthodox way
never lets her characters’ thoughts flow without control, maintains logical and grammatical organisation
The Prose and the Passion

9. The Prose and the Passion
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
The Prose and the Passion

10. The Prose and the Passion
Virginia Woolf
5. Mrs Dalloway (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.
Cover for the first edition of Mrs. Dalloway, London, Hogarth Press, 1925.
The Prose and the Passion

11. The Prose and the Passion
Virginia Woolf
5. Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Clarissa Dalloway
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.
Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs. Dalloway in Marleen Gorris’s 1997 film adaptation
The Prose and the Passion

12. The Prose and the Passion
Virginia Woolf
5. Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Clarissa Dalloway
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.
Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs. Dalloway in Marleen Gorris’s 1997 film adaptation
The Prose and the Passion

13. 5. Mrs Dalloway (1925) Septimus Warren Smith
Virginia Woolf
5. Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Septimus Warren Smith
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.
Rupert Graves as Septimus in Marleen Gorris’s 1997 film adaptation
The Prose and the Passion

14. 5. Mrs Dalloway (1925) Septimus Warren Smith
Virginia Woolf
5. Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Septimus Warren Smith
A character specifically connected with the war.
Suffers from headaches and insomnia.
Finally commits suicide.
Rupert Graves as Septimus in Marleen Gorris’s 1997 film adaptation
The Prose and the Passion