Scarica Virginia Woolf e il modernismo letterario e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! VIRGINIA WOOLF Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) lived around the same time as James Joyce. She suffered from depression all her life, thankfully she had her husband by herself supporting her. In the end she couldn’t bare life anymore and committed suicide, drowning herself important theme of water → one of the factors that She had to keep up with other disgraces in her life, indeed she experienced her mother’s death when she was just 13 years old and she was sexually abused by both her stepbrothers → these led to depression. During her life she took part in The Bloomsbury Group → rejection of traditional morality and artistic convention. Alongside with Joyce she was one of the great experimenters in the novelist field during the modernist period. She was very committed to promoting women empowerment. MAIN WORKS: - Orlando (1928) → it deals with androgyny Orlando is a character who has a very long lasting life (400 years) and switches between female and male identity - A Room of One’s Own (1929) → it shows the author’s concern with the question of women’s subjugation and the relationship between women and writing Comparison with Joyce: Both of them had the same starting point but with a different arrival, they both studied the human mind using the stream of consciousness. Joyce on the one hand had epiphany to show the characters behaviour but he was more extreme (uses extreme interior monologue without punctuation). Woolf on the other hand never let her characters’ thoughts flow without control and she always kept a logical and grammatical organisation. JOYCE → EPIPHANY = sudden spiritual manifestation and realisation given by an external element which leads the characters to self-realisation. WOOLF → MOMENTS OF BEING = rare moments of insight during the character’s daily life, thanks to these we can see reality behind appearances. WORKS WE STUDIED IN A MORE DETAILED WAY: MRS DALLOWAY Written in 1925 → takes place during a single ordinary day in June 1923 + the setting of the book is London. Clarissa Dalloway is the protagonist and she lives an ordinary life in which she is married to a member of the parliament (Richard Dalloway), however she doesn’t live happily and for this reason she thinks about committing suicide, even though in the end life triumphs. She had a possessive father, who forced her to share everything with him. She is characterised by opposing feelings: her need for freedom and independence and her class consciousness. Mrs Dalloway has a sort of double, his name’s Septimus Warren Smith, who is a former soldier and for this reason he is extremely sensitive and suffers from shell shock, headaches and insomnia. He’ll end up committing suicide and choosing death upon life. Before enlisting in the military for the war he was a young poet and lover of Shakespeare. He has a family, composed of two children and a wife Lucrezia, who is Italian. She wishes she could get some help from doctors in order for Septimus to recover from the ‘scars’ the war has left on him. Talking about Lucrezia, we get to know that she left Italy just for her love for Septimus, even though in this new country she had a hard time fitting in and getting along with the english people. More about Clarissa Dalloway: From the title we understand how the character is introduced → she is first addressed with her husband’s surname, she is first the wife of someone rather than herself as Clarissa, her surname refers to her political status. She is married to a parliament member so she has to fit in in the political environment. Sometimes she has to do what someone else wants her to do → the Mrs implies this point of view References to some novels/films → The wife (by Meg Wolizer) + The hours (movie based on Woolf’s novel, three female characters all of them living a sort of lie and unhappy life; the main themes are suicide and unhappiness) → CLARISSA AND SEPTIMUS (p. 268) A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN It is an essay and is constructed as a partly-fictionalised narrative. Woolf wrote this because she had been invited to give a lecture on the topic ‘Women and Fiction’, her thesis stated that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. The essay concludes with an exhortation to her audience of women to take up the tradition and to increase the endowment (?) for their own daughters. The main themes of the essay are: ❏ Women’s position in fiction and in real life ❏ Critique of patriarchal society ❏ Struggle for women’s rights → SHAKESPEARE’S SISTER (classroom) In the first part of the extract, Woolf recalls the Elizabethan age and asks herself a question: why couldn’t women write during those times? Before the 18th century she doesn’t remember any women writing poetry. She gives many reasons why she believes this happened: women didn’t have opportunities, sometimes they didn’t receive education, they didn’t have money and they had to focus thesis attention on taking care of the family. In the second part of the passage she makes an example: what would’ve happened if Shakespeare had a sister (Judith)? Shakespeare would have had for sure a good education while his sister would have had to learn by herself. She wouldn’t have been able to become an actress, just like her brother, because man would laugh at her because of her dream, and her family wouldn't have supported her → if she had ever told her father about her ambition he would scold her, at first, and maybe also hit her, but then he would have reminded her about her house duties and he would have cried and begged her to not shame him, in the end Judith would have had to get married at a really young age on suggestion of her family even though she would have been unhappy for all her lifetime.
