Scarica Virginia Woolf: A Literary Genius Overcome by Anxiety and Tragedy e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Virginia Woolf She was the daughter of Leslie Stephen (had a very conservative prospective; her father thoughts that women shouldn’t study) She grew up in a literary and intellectual atmosphere She experienced the death of her mother when she was 13 and sexual abuse from her stepbrothers Psychological disease, she suffers from anxiety and fears (were increased by the Second World War) At the end she committed suicide, by crowing herself in the River Ouse 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 (suicide) -Thea Bloomsbury Group is a group of artist (we find, her, her nous and and her sister) that rejected the traditional morality and artist conventions They experiment new techniques (in art there’s the modernism) Theme of androgyny: she was a feminist, and fought for women rights, this was influenced form the fact that the father was very strict; she joined the Bloomsbury group after the death of the father. Androgyny can be analyzed for a biological point of view (having both female and masculine sign in the body), but also form a physiological point of view (sexual and gender identity) She was lesbian We can see this topic in Clarissa, the protagonist of her novel; she’s married to an aristocratic man Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse (1927) are her most important works She used a more completely developed “stream of consciousness” the main themes are: androgyny (also in “Orlando”), women and writing (she was lesbian) Modernist novel: was interested in giving voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory and conceived the human personality as a continuous shift of impressions and emotions (the events are not important, what’s matter are the impression they made on the characters) omniscient narrator, main aim to give voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory, the human personality, a continuous shift of art, point of view shift form the mind of the characters who experienced them) • 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. (3rd person is for exploring the relationships between characters) • Point of view: shifted inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas, momentary impressions presented as a continuous flux. Stream of consciousness we have a flow of thoughts, follows the psychological time The action or plot is revealed through the mental processes of the character (a continuous shift of the point of view; in the excerpt we have Clarissa point of view, then Miss Pim; the owner of the flower shop, they have been friends in the past; then Septimus, there is no relationship between the two; in the movie Clarissa and Richard have a relationship; in the book they both hear the explosion of the tier and reacted in different ways, he remember the explosion in the same way in “Farewell to arm”) Character development is achieved through revelation of extremely personal thoughts The action of the plot moves back and forth through present time to memories of past events and dreams of the future. Dramatic monologue and free association of thoughts from a character to another Use of free associations Woolf vs Joyce She doesn't let the flows of consciousness without control (never lets her characters’ thoughts flow without control; maintains logical and grammatical organisation), while with Joyce the characters show their thoughts directly through the interior monologue, sometimes in an incoherent and syntactically unorthodox way Woolf: rare moments of insight during the characters’ daily Iife when they can see reality behind appearance (moments of being) Joyce: sudden spiritual manifestation caused by trivial gesture, external object, the character is led to a self-realization about himself/herself (epiphany) Mrs Dalloway (1925) Is the most important novel, talkies about Clarissa Dalloway, a wealthy women The story is developed in a day (she spends her day preparing for her evening party) Richard Dalloway, her husband Peter Walsh, her lover Septimus Smith is a shell shocked veteran (is married to Lucrezia, an Italian woman) The climax is Clarissa’s party Dr Bradshaw is the nerve specialist (he talks about Smith’s suicide) Set in a small area of London, on a single day in June 1923 Important changes that happen after the war: changes in the social life of the time A motif: the striking of Big Ben and of clocks in general The original title of the book was “The Hour” We can find the free direct speech; allows virtually unlimited access to the character’s consciousness without requiring the author to use the first-person point of view (third-person narration not only provides an external perspective, but is more naturally suited to objectivity, as we can see the main character(s) from the outside and assess their representations of themselves against the broader context of the narrative) • The main character, Clarissa Dalloway, is a wealthy London hostess. She spends her day preparing for her evening party. She recalls her life before World War I, before her marriage to Richard Dalloway, and her relationship with Peter Walsh. • Septimus Smith is a shell-shocked veteran, one of the first Englishmen to enlist in the war. He is married to Lucrezia, an Italian woman. • The climax is Clarissa’s party: it gathers all the people Clarissa thinks about during the day. It is at the party that Dr Bradshaw, the nerve specialist, speaks about Septimus’s suicide. • Set on a single ordinary day in June 1923. • It follows the protagonist through a very small area of London.
