1. Virginia Woolf
( ) *

2. Early Life
Born in London, the third child of Sir Leslie Stephen, a Victorian critic and philosopher.
She was educated at home.
The deaths of her parents caused her two
long periods of deep depression.
In 1913, she attempted suicide by
taking drugs. * *

3. The Bloomsbury Group
After her father’s death, the family moved to Bloomsbury.
Their house became the centre for important literary, artistic and philosophical meetings and discussions by a group of writers:
Clive Bell, an art philosopher;
Leonard Woolf, a novelist and journalist. He marries Virginia in 1912 and founded with her the Hogarth press;
Edward Morgan Forster, a novelist;
John Maynard Keynes, an economist;
Roger Fry, an art critic. * *

4. Last Years
She became increasingly subject to crises of anxiety and insecurity.
World War II precipitated the situation.
She drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex on 28 March 1941. * *

5. A Leading Modernist The Voyage Out (1915) Night and Day (1919)
Jacob’s Room (1922)
 stream of consciousness technique
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Orlando (1928)
The Waves (1931) * *

6. Woolf’s Use of Time
It reflects Woolf’s modernist ideas of plot, character and language.
She prefers short, meaningful units of time: one day, two different
days,…
These units expanded almost beyond limits by what goes on within the characters’ mind
Modern Fiction (1919)
time of the clock time of the mind * *

7. Feminist Writing and Critical Works
She worked as a volunteer in the women’s suffrage movement.
Some of her works deal with female emancipation.
A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Three Guineas (1938)
The Common Reader (1925 and 1932)
A Writer’s Diary ( ) * *

8. Mrs Dalloway Woolf rejects the traditional eventful plot.
Her attention is turned to describing the working of her characters’ minds  interior monologues.
The novel is set in London, in the Bond Street area.
Time unit  one day.
What goes on the characters’ minds overlaps with what goes on outside, in the world of external reality. * *

9. The Story
Clarissa, the wife of Richard Dalloway, a Member of Parliament, spends the day preparing for the party she is giving that evening at her house in Westminster.
She has also invited Peter Walsh, with whom she was in love when she was young, and who has just come back from India
While the party is taking place, Septimius Warren Smith, who has come back from World War I in a state of shock, commits suicide somewhere else in London.
The news is brought to the party by Septimius’ psychiatrist. * *

10. The Story Clarissa si struck by the news
She does not know that Septimius and she had shared a moment in their lives  they had seen an airplane flying overhead in the London sky
Peter Walsh is moved and troubled by Clarissa’s approach
The novel does not tell what happens next * *

11. She loved life, London, … A fine London morning.
Clarissa goes out to buy some flowers:
she plunges into the life of the city
sights, sounds, people  filtered through her mind;
past and present and moral impressions run
through her mind;
stream of consciousness. * *