Scarica Virginia Woolf: A Modern Literature Icon and Her Literary Isotopies e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! VIRGINIA WOOLF She's considered one of the most important author in the modern literature. She was born in London in a wealthy family. She had an happy childhood passed with her family with the presence of her favourite theme: the sea. In her works we can find also the presence of the isotopy that is the repetition of a motif that acts as a supporting structure for the work. The sea is the major isotopy, that is the symbol of life that sometimes is protective, reassuring, and it represents the protection of the maternal womb. Buti t is also seen menacing, stormy, symbol of death. Infact Virginia killed herself by drowning. When her parents died Virginia and her sister bought a house in Bloomsbury that become the center of the Bloomsbury group (that were part also forster and eliot). The most important bloomsbury group ideals were the expression of new tendences of the 20th century (like the Emerson in a room with a view by Forster) dominated by the pleasure principle with the culture, elegance and all the old taboo (ugliness, prejudices, superstition) should have died forever. Her parents death and the second world war caused her a depressive status in which she listened voices and she was no longer able to put together the fragments of her psyche and of the world and for this reason that she drowned herself. She wrote important novels: THE VOYAGE OUT: one of her most important works that is still linked to the victorian ideals, but at the end of the novel there's the representation of the main modern themes. It deals with an aristocratic girl, Rachel, the left for a cruise that fell in love with Terence. But when she finally reached her happiness she will die because of fever. The last part of the novel where the author decribes the illness status of Rachel, it detaches from the victorian narrative because there is the description of the altered state of consciousness. There are 2 important isotopies the voyage and the sea. NIGHT AND DAY: there is a criticto the victorian society. It deals with 2 women: the romantic one Cathrine and the emacipated one Mary that represents the woman that begin to find her own indipendence leaving aside men. The theme of women indipendence is retaken in “a room of one’s own” in which she says that the economic indipendence is the base for the female indipendence. In JACOB'S ROOM she abandones the chronological sequences and the traditional plot. It is the story of a young man until his death. We know his story through the narration of the other characters. ORLANDO is a biography where the protagonist, Orlando, was immortal and he had the power to live trough the different centuries, from the elizabethan age until the 20th century, and at the end of the story he turns into a woman, this novel was a Gift to her friend, an aristocratic woman, that had no taboos in her sexual life. MRS DALLOWAY: Mrs Clarissa Dalloway was an aristocratic woman that one day wakes up and she went to buy flowers for a party. Walking for Bond street she remind her past life, that she was in love with peter, but she didn’t marry him because of her passional love, he wanted everything of her, he wanted the fusion of the souls buti t would have destroyed her. To the other side we find Septimus Smith treated by a doctor present at Clarissa’s party of the evening that bring her the notice of the Septimus’ suicide because he had been shocked by the war, she says that she’s happy that he made it because she could probably do the same thing (moment of being, there is an important truth: it is hard living but she chooses life, self-restraint like Marlow). There is also an epiphany because on one hand there is Semptimus that represents the male and patriarchal life that leads to death, on the other hand we find Clarissa that is the symbol of femininity. Clarissa is the double of Septimus infct she says that she's happy that he killed himself, not because she's happy about his death but because she recognise in herself the same will, but she will choose life. She must assemble (only connect like in forster), she must put together the fragments and to face up life.
