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
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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.
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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
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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”
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Virginia Woolf
6. To the Lighthouse (1927)
No traditional plot  a series of experiences, memories, emotions and feelings held together by symbols.
The story develops over a period of ten years.
Divided into three sections: 1.
The Window  It starts just before World War I. It is set during a summer afternoon and evening in a summer home on the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides
The original St. Ives lighthouse, built by John Smeaton in 1830.
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16. Virginia Woolf
6. To the Lighthouse (1927) 2.
Time Passes  covers about ten years. The children grow up, war breaks out, Mrs Ramsay dies suddenly one night. Her eldest son, Andrew, is killed in battle, and her daughter Prue dies too. The summerhouse falls into a state of decay for ten years until the family comes back.
The original St. Ives lighthouse, built by John Smeaton in 1830.
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17. Virginia Woolf
6. To the Lighthouse (1927) 3.
The Lighthouse  lasts less than one day. time experienced, and especially recaptured in memory, replaces outer time. Mr Ramsay, his son James and his daughter Cam sail to the lighthouse. Lily succeeds in finishing her painting.
The original St. Ives lighthouse, built by John Smeaton in 1830.
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Virginia Woolf
7. To the Lighthouse: characters
MRS RAMSAY
A beautiful woman and loving wife, constantly provides support to the other characters in the novel.
As a mother, her main objective is to preserve her son James’s sense of hope and wonder in relation to the lighthouse.
Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf at Asheham, ca. 1910, National Portrait Gallery, London.
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Virginia Woolf
7. To the Lighthouse: characters
MRS RAMSAY
She realizes that the beauty of this world is ephemeral and should be protected.
She has the ability to bring together different things into a whole.
After her death, Lily and the other characters try to reach this unity.
Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf at Asheham, ca. 1910, National Portrait Gallery, London.
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Virginia Woolf
7. To the Lighthouse: characters
LILY BRISCOE
A painter who fears her work will end up in attics or under a couch.
Rejects the conventional image of the woman represented by Mrs Ramsay.
Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell painting, 1915, National Galleries of Scotland.
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Virginia Woolf
7. To the Lighthouse: characters
LILY BRISCOE
Her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay embodies her doubts: at the beginning of the novel she cannot make sense of the shapes and colours that she tries to reproduce.
Undergoes a drastic change evolving into an artist who achieves her final vision.
Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell painting, 1915, National Galleries of Scotland.
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22. 8. To the Lighthouse: themes a.
Virginia Woolf
8. To the Lighthouse: themes a.
Transience  the idea that nothing lasts runs through the novel
Mrs Ramsay does not want her children to become adults.
The house falls into decay.
Death unexpectedly ends life.
St. Ives, Cornwall, the setting for The Lighthouse
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23. 8. To the Lighthouse: themes
Virginia Woolf
8. To the Lighthouse: themes b.
Loss
Minta loses her brooch on the beach.
The family loses some of its members.
St. Ives, Cornwall, the setting for The Lighthouse
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24. 8. To the Lighthouse: themes c.
Virginia Woolf
8. To the Lighthouse: themes c.
Art  the ambition to stop the flux of time is embodied by the artist Lily Briscoe. d.
The force of love  Mrs Ramsay believes that also love can create durable memories making moments permanent.
St. Ives, Cornwall, the setting for The Lighthouse
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25. 9. To the Lighthouse: symbolism
Virginia Woolf
9. To the Lighthouse: symbolism
The sound of the sea  the fullness of life and the imminence of death, uncertainty.
The land and the house  idea of shelter and stability.
The window  the dividing and connecting point between the self and society.
A scene from 2002’s The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry.
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26. 9. To the Lighthouse: symbolism
Virginia Woolf
9. To the Lighthouse: symbolism
The lighthouse
a positive symbol linked to light, comfort, hope and enthusiasm, a reference point in a changing world.
the inaccessible destination leading to frustration and threatening danger.
A scene from 2002’s The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry.
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27. Virginia Woolf
10. A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Woolf had been invited to give a lecture on the topic of Women and Fiction. She advanced the thesis that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”.
Her essay is constructed as a partly-fictionalized narrative of the steps that led her to adopt this thesis.
A contemporary edition of A Room of One’s Own.
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28. Virginia Woolf
10. A Room of One’s Own (1929)
She dramatizes that mental process in the character of an imaginary narrator (“call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please--it is not a matter of any importance”).
The narrator reflects on the different educational experiences available to men and women as well as on more material differences in their lives.
The figure of Judith Shakespeare is generated as an example of the tragic fate a highly intelligent woman would have met.
A contemporary edition of A Room of One’s Own.
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29. Virginia Woolf
10. A Room of One’s Own (1929)
She considers the achievements of the major women novelists of the nineteenth century and reflects on the importance of tradition to an aspiring writer.
Woolf closes the essay with an exhortation to her audience of women to take up the tradition that has been so hardly bequeathed to them, and to increase the endowment for their own daughters.
A contemporary edition of A Room of One’s Own.
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Virginia Woolf
10. A Room of One’s Own (1929)
MAIN THEMES
Women’s position in fiction and in real life.
Critique of patriarchal society.
Struggle for women’s rights.
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