Wirginia Woolf: life and works, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Wirginia Woolf: life and works e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! VIRGINIA WOOLF Virginia Woolf was born in 1882. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was an eminent Victorian man of letters → she grew up in a literary and intellectual atmosphere and her education consisted of: ▪ Private Greek lessons ▪ Access to her father's library → she read whatever she liked She spent her summers at St. Ives, Cornwall, and the sea remained central to her art as a symbol. For Virginia, WATER represented two things: ▪ what is harmonious and feminine ▪ possibility of the resolution of intolerable conflicts in death The death of her mother in 1895, when Virginia was only thirteen, affected her deeply and brought about her first nervous breakdown. She began to revolt against her father's tyrannical character and his idealization of the domesticated woman. It was only with her father's death in 1904 that Virginia began her own literary life and career. She decided to move to Bloomsbury and, together with her sister, the artist Vanessa Bell, she became a member of the Bloomsbury Group → included the avant-garde of early 20th-century London In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, and in 1915 she published The Voyage Out → still followed a traditional pattern At this time, she entered a nursing home and attempted suicide by taking drugs. In 1925 the novel Mrs Dalloway appeared → Virginia successfully experimented with new narrative techniques, followed by: ▪ To the Lighthouse (1927) ▪ Orlando (1928) She was also a very talented literary critic and a brilliant essayist, as her volume of literary essays, The Common Reader (1925), shows. In October 1929 she delivered two lectures at Cambridge which later became A Room of One's Own (1929), a work of great impact on the feminist movement of the 196os and 1970s, in which she explored many issues connected with women and writing but above all insisted on the inseparable link between economic independence and artistic independence. In 1929 she began to work on her novel The Waves (1931), in which she seemed to recognise that there was a link between her creative process and her illness. The Second World War increased her anxiety and fears. She became haunted by the terror of losing her mind. Finally, she could no longer stand it and drowned herself in the River Ouse. She was fifty-nine. MRS DALLOWAY THE STORY At 10 a.m. on a Wednesday early in June of 1923, CLARISSA DALLOWAY, the protagonist of the novel, goes to Bond Street to buy some flowers for a party she is giving that evening at her house. While she is in the flower shop, a car drives noisily past and shifts the attention to the street, where are walking: Septimus → estate agent's clerk and shell-shocked veteran of the First World War Lucrezia Warren Smith → Italian girl Septimus's mental disorder has necessitated the calling in of doctors, first Dr Holmes, and now Sir William Bradshaw, a famous nerve specialist. Clarissa walks back home and there she receives an unexpected visit from Peter Walsh, the man she used to love in her youth. He then leaves Clarissa's house and goes to Regent's Park, where he catches a glimpse of the Warren Smiths, who are going to Sir William Bradshaw's for an interview. The interview lasts three-quarters of an hour and results in Sir William's arranging for Septimus to go into one of his clinics. At 6 p.m. Septimus jumps out of the window of his room, and the ambulance carrying his body passes by Peter Walsh, who is going back to his hotel. All the characters who have been in some way important during the day are present at Clarissa's party. The Bradshaws arrive and Clarissa hears from them of Septimus's death, with which she feels a strong connection. THE SETTING Mrs Dalloway takes place on a single ordinary day in June of 1923 → it follows the protagonist through a very small area of London, from the morning to the evening of the day on which she gives a large formal party. Unlike Joyce, Woolf does not elevate her characters to the level of myth but shows their deep humanity behind their social mask. They all enjoy the sights and sounds in London, its parks, its changing life, its flavour. Moreover, through what she defined as the 'tunnelling technique', she allows the reader to experience the characters' recollection of their past, thus providing a sense of their background and personal history. Clarissa Dalloway's party is the climax of the novel → unifies the narrative by gathering all the people Clarissa thinks about during the day. A CHANGING SOCIETY The novel also deals with the way people react to new situations → changes in the social life of the time, for instance: ▪ Spread of newspapers ▪ Increasing use of cars and planes ▪ New standards in marital relationships Woolf also adopts a motif, the striking of Big Ben and of clocks in general, which acts at the same time as a structural connection and symbol. The insistent chiming of clocks reminds the reader of the temporal grid which organises the narrative, of the passing of the time of life and of its flowing into death. So, life expresses itself in moments of vision which are at the same time: ▪ OBJECTIVE → the clocks, the streets, the cars, the flowers ▪ SUBJECTIVELY CREATIVE → they are recreated every moment by active consciousness THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CLARISSA AND SEPTIMUS CLARISSA is a London society lady of fifty-one, the wife of a Conservative MP who has extremely conventional views on politics and women's rights. What has weakened her emotional self and split her in two: ▪ Influence of a possessive father ▪ Frustration of a genuine love ▪ Need to refuse Peter Walsh → a man who would force her to share everything