Virginia Woolfand To The Lighthouse

What do you think of when you hear the words “Victorian” and “modern”?

“In or about December, 1910, human character changed.”

~ Virginia Woolf

New Thinking in last half of 19th century: ◦Darwin: theory of evolutionCan we rely on religion for all the answers like we always have?

◦Freud: theory of the unconscious Immensely influential in changing human thought

Questions the ideas that religion is to be relied upon for all answers and that humans are in control of themselves

1882-1941

Life spans two World Wars and the collapse of the English empire

Movie “The Hours” explores her life

FamilyFather, Leslie Stephen:

◦an eminent Victorian literary critic ◦agnostic (Woolf herself was anti-religious)

◦educated Virginia at home.Mother, Julia Stephen: a noted Victorian beauty. Echoes of her in Mrs. Ramsay

Sister Vanessa: painter and leader of the English avant-garde

Inter-War Period (~1917-1933)

Like most women of her generation, greatly impacted by WW I◦Many of her friends were killed or

woundedShe did her major creative and

critical work During this time major fascist and

socialist dictatorships arise on the Continent

There are far away echoes of this and the war in TTL (weather/nature take on a symbolic function)

The Bloomsbury GroupBohemian lifestyleDefying conventionVirginia married a member, Leonard Woolf, in 1912

Partnership with Leonard:◦She and Leonard founded Hogarth Press, which became a successful business

◦Became a female writer, literary critic, and publisher

Important Places to WoolfSt. Ives in

CornwallLondon

The Bloomsbury GroupBohemian lifestyle

Defying convention

Virginia married a member, Leonard Woolf, in 1912

Woolf’s Later LifeSuffered a series of nervous

breakdowns beginning in 1904, the year her father died

May have suffered from bipolar disorder

Died of suicide by drowning

Woolf’s StyleYou will HATE this book….if you

expect it to be like any novel you’ve ever read

Woolf didn’t care about writing something like what had been written over the last 100 years

Wanted to include what those novels had left out

Aiming at something NEW…and she achieved it

What if a novel were a painting?Experiment Question:

◦Can linear sentences in a linear work, such as a novel, do what a photo, movie, or painting does more easily: convey the sense of a multitude of thoughts, feelings, and actions taking place all at the same time?

Renoir’s Dancing at the Moulin de Galette

Woolf uses stream-of-consciousnessShe is emulating a painter trying to

reproduce an exact moment in time fully, but doing it in novel form

Woolf said that s-o-c enabled her to:◦ show what our interior life is really like◦ give the reader a deeper intimacy with her characters

To The Lighthouse: collective stream-of-consciousness.◦One voice flows into another! (Because while

I am thinking thoughts you are thinking thoughts, right? So how do you represent that?)

Woolf’s Theory of the Novel

She is a woman applying herself to a genre dominated by men

Believed the conventional commercial novel had become a cliché.

Believed a woman novelist had to create her own form◦Felt Jane Austen was one woman who had done that, however…

She “hated” P&P

Woolf’s Concerns in TTL (1927)

Time: moving away from being bound to a strict sequence of events (so…no more plot line).

Structure of the Novel◦Section 1 (“The Window”; 122 pgs.): takes place

on one evening, between 6:00 PM and dinner. In that time, we meet an entire family and their guests, but spend most of our time in their minds.

◦Section 2 (“Time Passes”; 20 pgs.): 10 years pass. Primary characters: the house itself and time.

◦Section 3 (“The Lighthouse”; 65 pgs.): Influence of memory on our lives; how the present can be displaced by the past. One day.

A novel of ideasHow much tolerance do humans have

for truth? Who faces reality and who avoids it?

How are men and women alike and different?

What is the role of the artist in society?Is marriage essential for a full life?How do we balance our need for

solitude with our need for society?How does nature influence us?What is love?

Kew Gardens

“Kew Gardens” Questions1. If this is an experiment, what

is Woolf experimenting with? What is she trying to represent?

2. What stands out to you in the story?

3. What is the point of view?4. What happens in this story?5. What themes or ideas can

you find in it?

Woolf’s goal…Convey consciousness, particularly feminine consciousness, which she felt had been left out of earlier novels:◦Emotion◦Thought◦Insight

Modernism is interested in

◦The poetic nature of the sub-conscious life: Importance of symbols, images

◦The psychological◦How our sub-conscious challenges our rational, real-world expectations

Modernist novelModernists argued that the novel needed to be more than popular entertainment

Examples of modernists you have read: ◦F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

◦Robert Frost◦T.S. Eliot (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”)

KünstlerromanSimilar to a Bildungsroman (novel of education or coming of age)

Translated as “artist’s novel”Novel about an artist’s growth to maturity

Next slide

To the Lighthouse Pre-ReadingBring post-its tomorrow if you have a library

copyRead “The Window,” sections (chapters)1-3. Resist the temptation to use Spark Notes.

◦ It’s OK if you’re confused. ◦As an experiment, read it as she meant it to be read

just to see what you notice/understand. ◦You will understand more than you think you are!

When finished, write 2 paragraphs in your comp book. ◦Paragraph 1: Describe the Ramsay family.◦Paragraph 2: Describe your experience of reading

this text.

Woolf uses stream-of-consciousness

Interior monologue: “Stream of consciousness”◦ Term comes from William James, philosopher and psychologist

James argued that consciousness is not a chain of ideas, but a river or stream, where components are seamlessly merged

Best known example: Final 50 pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses…unpunctuated, because we don’t think in sentences

Clive Bell (April 1941, shortly after Woolf's final disappearance.): "I'm not sure whether the Times will by now have announced that Virginia is missing. I'm afraid there is not the slightest doubt that she drowned herself about noon last Friday. She had left letters... Her stick and footprints were found by the edge of the river. For some days, of course, we hoped against hope that she had wandered crazily away and might be discovered in a barn or a village shop. But by now all hope is abandoned; only, as the body has not been found, she cannot be considered dead legally.”

Bell wrote that it had become evident some weeks earlier that Woolf "was in for another of those long and agonising breakdowns of which she had had several already". "The prospect of two years' insanity, then to wake up to the sort of world which another two years of war will have made, was such that I can't feel sure that she was unwise," he added.

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