C816b9456244d1a703f2a9f145306f9f0d7a6 33860 1 [617275]

FACULTATEA DE MEDICINĂ, ȘTIINȚE ȘI TEHNOLOGIE GEORGE
EMIL PALADE TÂRGU MUREȘ
Specializarea: LIMBA ȘI LITERAURA ROMÂNĂ -LIMBA ȘI
LITERATURĂ ENGLEZĂ

LUCRARE DE LICEN ȚĂ
,, Virginia Woolf's feminism in novels and in the
Essay A Room of One's Own’’

Coordonator,

Student,

2020

INTRODUCTION
The 20th century denotes a combination of modern and classical elements, meaning
the beginning of the new century, a century in which the modernism knows his biggest
development being composed both from prose, poetry and theatre. The themes that the
writers chose to speak about in their works was: alienation, the effects that The Two World
Wars had upon the society, spiritual and mythical loneliness, breakdowns, refusal of the past,
introspection.

In their book named Modernism 1890 -1930 , Bradbury and McFarlane say about
modernism that it is “an art of a rapidly modernizing world, a world of rapid industrial
development, advanced technology, urbanization, secularization and mass forms of social
life” but also ”the art of a world which many traditional certaintie s had departed and a certain
sort of Victorian confidence not only in the onward progress of mankind but in the very
solidity and visibility of reality itself has evaporated”.1

Beside David Herbert Lawrence and James Joyce, Virginia Woolf can be describe d as
the greatest modernist writer, they approach modernist techniques and write novels that have
a strong impact on the society of then and now, coming out of the patterns of classicism and
having its own ideas.
Virginia Woolf represents a historical moment when art was introduced into society,
as T.S. Eliot characterized Virginia, at her funeral in the obituary wrote by him: “With out
Virginia Woolf at the center of it, it would have remained formless or marginal…With the
death of Virginia Woolf, a whole pattern of culture is broken.”2
In major works of Virginia Woolf we found stylistic characteristics such as: irony,
the figure of speech, the satire, the symbolic description, various narrative points of view,
free indirect speech. She put the accent on the mind, rather than the body, as we found in her
book “How Should One Read a Book?”
The irony that she uses in her books and especially in this quotation can be observed
in: „It is true that we get nothing whatsoever except pleasure from reading; it is true that the
wisest of us is unable to say what that pleasure may be. But that pleasure —mysterious,

1 Bradbury and McFarlane ,Modernism 1890 -1930, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1976, p57
2 Spender, Stephen. “Virginia Woolf’s Obituary Notice.” Listener. 10 April 1941.

unknown, useless as it is —is enough. That pleasure is so curious, so complex, so immensely
fertilising to the mind of anyone who enjoys it, and so wide in its effects, that it would not be
in the least surprising to discover, on the day of judgement when secrets are revealed and the
obscure is made plain, that the reason why we have grown from pigs to men and women, and
come out from our caves, and dropped our bows and arrows, and sat round the fire and talked
and drunk and made merry and given to the poor and helped the sick and mad e pavements
and houses and erected some sort of shelter and society on the waste of the world, is nothing
but this: we have loved reading.”3
She satirized the meaning of reading in a world where reading becomes unimportantly
and uninteresting. People from nowadays have another preoccupation, not to read and they do
not understand what pleasure we find in it. In my opinion, the major preoccupation of people
from nowadays must be to read, because reading makes you another man, with perspective.
The independence of readers should be prominent, they can take their own decisions, they
can conclude to a purpose in life.
She emphasizes with the idea that people should read because it helps them to
develop the mind, to grow at an intelle ctual level and this is what we should to do, not just for
pleasure, but for our growth. Reading develops imagination and puts the reader on a high
pedestal where he can manage concepts and ideas for what he prefers in different situations.

The novel To the lighthouse is considered her best work in which she develops the
idea of a continuous flow of consciousness. “Virginia Woolf’s best novel is perhaps is To the
lighthouse which appeared in 1927. It shows how, in modernist fiction the novel not only
approaches the poetry, but in a certain sense becomes it.”4 It focuses on the development of
human personality, the consciousness of each character is well defined. Characters have the
freedom to develop in their environments.

3 Virginia Woolf. “How Should One Read a Book?” Selected Essays (Oxford World's Classics) (p. 73). OUP
Oxford.
4 Rogge rs, Pat. The Oxford Illustrated history of English Literature, New York, Oxford Univerisity Press, 1990

CHAPTER I

“Without Virginia Woolf at the center of it, it would have remained formless or
marginal…With the death of Virginia Woolf, a whole pattern of culture is broken.”
(T. S. Eliot)
1.1 Modernism

“Literary modernism ” or “modernist literature” , originated in the late 19th and
early 20th century, mainly in Europe and North America, and was characterized by a self –
conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction.5
“Modernists experimented with literary form and expression, adhering to Ezra Pound 's
maxim to "Make it new". This literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to
overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their
time. The horrors of the First World War saw the prevailing assumptions about society
reassessed, and modernist writers were influenced by such thinkers as Sigmund Freud and Karl
Marx , amongst others, who raised questi ons about the rationality of the human mind.”6
Modernism, included the activities and creations of those who felt the traditional forms
of the following:
• art
• architecture
• literature
• religious faith

5 Websites and documents
Brown, Kimmy Sophia (8 April 2015). "Virginia Woolf — On the Track of the Lost Novelist". Significato.
Retrieved 17 February 2018.

6 • Goldman, Jane, Modernism 1910 -1945, Image of Apocalypse, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004

• philosophy
• social organization
• activities of dail y life
• even the sciences
Which were becoming ill -fitted to their tasks and outdated in the new economic, social, and
political environment of an emerging fully industrialized world.7
Modernism was often derided for abandoning the social world in favor of its narcissistic
interest in language and its processes. Recognizing the failure of language the modernists
generally downplayed content in favor of an investigation of form. The fragmented, non –
chronological, poetic forms utilized by Eliot and Pound revolutionized poetic language.
In Modernist literature, the poets were the ones who fully took advantage of the new spirit
of the times, and stretched the possibilities of thei r craft to unimaginable lengths. In general,
there was a” disdain” for most of the literary production of the last century.8
“The novel was by no means immune from the self -conscious, reflective impulses of the new
century. Modernism introduced a new kind of narration to the novel, one that would
fundamentally change the entire essence of novel writing. The “unreliable” narrator
supplanted the omniscient, trustworthy narrator of preceding centuries, and readers were
forced to question even the most bas ic assumptions about how the novel should operate.”9
A whole new perspective came into being known as “stream of consciousness”, because
of James Joyce, who was the first to introduce it in his novel, “Ulysses”, in which he
presented events purely out of the characters’ minds.

1.2.Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf, the great modernist author, introduced a series of new tactics into
literature:

7 Carter, Jason (14 September 2010). "Virginia Woolf Seminar". Women's Studies, University of Alabama,
Huntsville.

8 Deegan, Marilyn; Shillingsburg, Pet er, eds. (2018). "Woolf Online: A digital archive of Virginia Woolf's To the
Lighthouse (1927)". Society of Authors. Retrieved 7 January 2018.

9 Josh Rahn, article, 2011

• “the radical disruption of linear flow of narrative;
• the frustration of conventional expectations concernin g unity and coherence of plot
• and character and the cause and effect development thereof;
• the deployment of ironic and ambiguous juxtapositions to call into question the moral
and philosophical meaning of literary action;
• the adoption of a tone of epistem ological self -mockery aimed at naive pretensions of
bourgeois rationality;10
• the opposition of inward consciousness to rational, public, objective discourse;
• an inclination to subjective distortion to point up the evanescence of the social world
of the nin eteenth -century bourgeoisie.”11

1.3 Virginia Woolf’s Life, Family and Mental Illness

Virginia Woolf was a writer concerned, above all, with capturing in words the
excitement, pain, beauty, and horror of what she termed, the Modern Age.12
Born in 1882, she was conscious of herself as a distinctively modernist writer at odds
with a raft of the respectable and complacent assumptions of nineteenth -century English
literature.

10 • Goldman, Jane The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf, Cambridge University Press, 2006

11 Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, Robin Parmar http://elab.eserver.org/hfl0255.html
12 Jones, Josh (26 August 2013). "Virginia Woolf's Handwritten Suicide Note: A Painful and Poignant Farewell
(1941)". Open Culture. Retrieved 18 February 2018 .
Lee, Christina (15 October 2015). "A Beautiful Mind – Laura Makepeace Stephen and the Earlswood Asylum
medical archives". Retrieved 21 January 2018.

She realized that a new era, marked by extraordinary develop ments in urbanism, technology,
warfare, consumerism, and family life would need to be captured by a different sort of writer.
Along with Joyce she was a relentlessly creative writer in search of new literary forms
that could do justice to the comple xities of modern consciousness. Her books and essays
retain a power to convey the thrill and drama of living in the 20th century.13
Woolf was born in London. Her father , Leslie Stephen, was a famous author and
mountaineer, and her mother, Julia Duckworth, a well known model. " The Stephen family
lived at Hyde Park Gate in Kensington, a respectable English middle class neighborhood. "14
Her family hosted many of the most influential and important members of Victorian Literary
Society. Woolf was lar gely cynical about these grand types, accusing them of pomposity and
narrow -mindedness.
Woolf and her sister weren't even allowed to go to Cambridge like their brothers, but had to
steal an education from their father's study. “Woolf’s Victorian upbringing would later
influence her decision to participate in the Bloomsbury circle, noted for their original ideas
and unorthodox relationships.”15
After her mother died, when she was only thirteen, Woolf had the first of a series of
mental breakdowns tha t would plague her for the rest of her life; partly caused by the sexual
abuse she suffered at the hands of her half -brother, George Duckworth. Her mental
breakdowns got worse after her father and close brother, Toby Stephen, died.16
She even had to be ins titutionalized, because she tried to commit suicide. Woolf’s
illness was periodic and recurrent, and it was the cause of “life altering events”17, such as
family deaths, marriage, and her novel publications.
Her life companion, Leonard, did a lot of resear ch on her illness and he categorized it into
two stages.

13 • The Cambridge history of Twentieth -century English Literature, edited by Laura Marcus and Peter
Nich olls, Cambridge University Press, 2004

14 http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/Virginia_Woolf
15 Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. New York: Vintage, 1990
16 Saryazdi, Melissa (27 September 2017). "Writers in Cornwall: Virginia Woolf". FalWriting: English & Creative
Writing at Falmouth. Retrieved 28 February 2018.

17 http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/Virginia_Woolf

The first stage, called The Manic Stage, she “was extremely excited; the mind race; she
talked volubly and, at the height of the attack, incoherently; she had delusions and heard
voices…she wa s violent with her nurses. In her third attack, which began in 1914, this stage
lasted for several months and ended by her falling into a coma for two days.”18
In the second stage, called The Depressive Stage,” all her thoughts and emotions were the
exact opposite of what they had been in the previous one. She was in the depths of
melancholia and despair; she scarcely spoke; refused to eat; refused to believe that she was ill
and insisted that her condition was due to her own guilt; at the height of this st age she tried to
commit suicide.”19
Throughout her life she consulted many doctors, in search of a cure for her illness. She
included the medical jargon into her novel, “Mrs. Dalloway”, where she envisioned the novel
as a “study of insanity and suicide; the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side.”
Virginia Woolf was so affected by the deaths of her friends from The Bloomsbury Group,
that she felt like her life was beginning to crumble too. While writing her novel “Between the
Acts” she became severely depressed among others , she even distrusted her publisher and his
praise for her novel; she thought he was lying and that her novel was far from perfect.
Woolf didn’t even want to publish anymore, she felt like she had lost her art, her way of
writing and she thought th at she couldn’t fully exist without those.20
It was “a conviction that her whole purpose in life had gone. What was the point in living if
she was never again to understand the shape of the world around or, or be able to describe
it?”21
She express ed her motive for committing suicide in the letter that she wrote to her
husband, Leonard : “ I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we can’t go through
another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and
can’t concentrate. ”22

18 http://modernism.research.y ale.edu/modern_british_novel/authors/woolf/
19 http://modernism.research.yale.edu/modern_british_novel/authors/woolf/
20 • The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, edited by Michael Levenson, Cambridge University Press,
1999

21 http://modernism.research.yale.ed u/wiki/index.php/Virginia_Woolf
22 https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/virginia -woolf -suicide -letter/

She had an attempted suicide on March the 18th , but a week later, on March the 28th she
filled her pockets with rocks and walked into the river Ouse.23
Almost a month later her body was found by children; the next day the verdict of her
death was "Suicide with the balance of her mind disturbed." Her body was cremated on April
the 21st with only her husband present and her ashes were buried und er the great elm tree
outside the garden at Monk’s House with the quotation from her novel ‘The Waves”:
"Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"24
The last words Virginia Woolf wrote were “Will you destroy all my papers.” Wr itten
in the margin of her second suicide letter to Leonard, it is unclear what “papers” he was
supposed to destroy.25
If Woolf wished for all of these papers to be destroyed, Leonard disregarded her
instructions. “He published her novel, compiled si gnificant diary entries into the volume “The
Writer’s Diary” , and carefully kept all of her manuscripts, diaries, letters, thereby preserving
Woolf’s unique voice and personality captured in each line. “26

1.1 The Bloomsbury Group and Feminism

But despite her illness, she became a journalist, and then a novelist, and the central figure
in the Bloomsbury Group, which included John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, and Lytton
Strachey.

23 Olsen, Victoria (1 February 2012). "Looking for Laura". Open Letters Monthly. Retrieved 20 January 2018.
White, Sian (2015). "Virginia Woolf in Time and Space". James Madison University. Retrieved 17 February
2018.

24 http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/33066 1-against -you-i-will-fling -myself -unvanquished -and-unyielding -o
25 • The Cambridge Companion to the twentieth -century, English novel edited by Robert L. Caserio,
Cambridge University Press, 2009
26http://modernism.research.yale.edu/data_wiki/data_wiki.php?ac tion=object&value=2652&title=Virginia_Woo
lf

She married one of the members: the writer and jour nalist, Leonard Woolf. She and
Leonard bought a small hand printing press, named it "The Hogarth Press," and published
books from their dining room.27
They printed Woolf's radical novels and political essays when no one else would and
they produced the first full English edition of Freud's works.
In just four short years between World Wars I and II, Woolf wrote her famous works:
• The Voyage Out (1915)
• Night and Day (1919)
• Jacob's Room (1922)
• Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
• To the Lighthouse (1927)
• Orlando (1928)
• The Waves (1931)
• The Years (1937)
• Between the Acts (1941)

Her work has many vital things to teach us. Woolf was one of the great observers of
English literature.
Perhaps the finest short piece of prose she ever wrote was the essay, "The Death of the
Moth," published in 1942.
It contains her observations as she sits in her study, watching a humble moth trapped by a
pane of glass.
Rarely have so many profound thoughts been eked out from such an apparently
mindless situation thoug h for Woolf, there were no such things as mindless situations.
"One could not help watching him. One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of
pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed, that morning, so enormous and so various,
that to have only a moth's part in life – and a day moth's at that – appeared a hard fate…and

27 Adams, Terry (29 September 2016). "The death of George Savage". Virginia Woolf in Time and Space.
Retrieved 17 February 2018.
"Virginia Woolf". Notable alumni. King's College, London. Retrieved 2 February 2018.

his zest in enjoying his meager opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one
corner of his compartment, and after waiting there a second, flew acro ss to the other. What
remained for him, but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth.
That was all he could do in spite of the width of the sky, the far off smooth of houses, and the
romantic voice, now and then, of a steam out at sea.”28
Woolf noticed everything that “normal” humans tend to walk past: the sky, the pain in
others' eyes, the gaze of children, the stoicism of wives, the pleasures of department stores,
the interests of harbors and docks.
Emerson, one of her favorite writers, m ay have been speaking generally, but he
captured everything that makes Woolf special when he remarked, "In the work of a writer of
genius, we rediscover our own neglected thoughts.”29
In another great essay, " On Being Ill ", Woolf lamented how seldom writer s stoop to
describe illness an oversight that seemed characteristic of snobbery against the everyday, in
literature.
English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no
words for the shiver and the headache.
The mere schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her
mind for her, but let us suffer her trying to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and
language at once runs dry.
This would be her mission; Woolf tried throughou t her life to make sure language
would do a better job at defining who we really are, with all our vulnerabilities, confusions,
and bodily sensations.30
Woolf raised her sensitivity to the highest art form. She had the confidence and
seriousness to use what happened to her the sensory details of her own life as the basis for the
largest ideas.
Woolf was always profound, but never afraid of what others called "trivial."

28 https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91d/chapter1.html
29 http://thephilosophersmail.com/virtues/the -great -writers -virginia -woolf/
30 "Woolf". Collins English Dictionary. Harper Collins Publishers. Retrieved 2 February 2018.
"Woolf, Creativit y and Madness: From Freud to FMRI". Smith College Libraries: Online exhibits. Northampton
MA: Smith College Libraries. Retrieved 15 December 2017.

She was confident that the ambitions of her mind to love beauty and engage with
big ideas were completely compatible with an interest in shopping, cakes, and hats subjects
on which she wrote with almost unique eloquence and depth.
In another particularly good essay of hers called the "Oxford Street Tide," she
celebrates the gaudy vulga rity of this huge London shopping street.
"The moral -less point the finger of scorn at Oxford Street; it reflects, they say, the levity, the
ostentation, the haste, and the irresponsibility of our age.31
Yet perhaps, they are as much out in their scorn as we should be if we asked of the
lily that it should be cast in bronze, or of the daisy that it should have petals of imperishable
enamel.
The charm of modern London is that it isn't built to last – it is built to pass."
In an accompanying essay, equally op en to the un -prestigious side of modern life, Woolf goes
to visit the giant docks of London.
"A thousand ships with thousand cargoes are being unladed every week… and not
only is each package of this vast and varied merchandise picked up and set down acc urately,
but each is weighed and opened, sampled and recorded, and again stitched up and laid in its
place, without haste or waste or hurry, or confusion, by a very few men in shirt sleeves who,
working with the utmost organization in the common interest, are yet able to pause in their
work and say to the casual visitor, 'Would you like to see what sort of thing we sometimes
find in sacks of cinnamon? Look at this snake!'"32
Woolf was deeply aware that men and women fit themselves into rigid roles, and as t hey do
so, overlook their fuller personalities.
In her eyes, in order to grow, we need to do something gender bending we need to seek
experiences that blur what it means to be a "real man" or a "real woman."
Woolf had a few affairs with the same sex in her life, and she wrote a magnificently bold
queer text, "Orlando," a portrait of her lover, Vita, described as a nobleman who becomes a
woman.

31 "Virginia and Leonard Woolf marry". This day in history. A & E Television. 2018. Retrieved 14 February 201 8.
"Androom Archives". 2017. Retrieved 19 December 2017.

32 http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol_1_No_13_Special_Issue_September_2011/27.pdf

She wrote, "It is fatal to be a man or woman, pure and simple. One must be woman -manly, or
man-womanly."33
In her anti -war track, "Three Guineas," Woolf argued that we will only ever end war by
rethinking the habit of pitting of sex against sex; all this claiming of superiority and impudent
inferiority belonged to the private school stage of human existence where there are sides, and
it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance, to walk up to a
platform and receive from the hands of the headmaster, a highly ornamental pot.
Woolf wished desperately to raise the status of women in h er society. She recognized that the
problem was largely down to money. Women didn't have freedom, especially freedom of the
spirit, because they didn't control their own income.
"Women have always been poor," she cried. "Not for two hundred years merely, b ut from the
beginning of time, women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian
slaves. Women have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry."34
Her great feminist rallying cry, "A Room of One's Own," culminated in a specific political
demand: in order to stand on the same intellectual footing as men, women not only needed
dignity, but also equal rights to education, an income of five hundred pounds a year, and a
room of one's own.
Woolf was probably the best writer in the English language for describing our minds without
the jargon of clinical psychology. The generation before hers, the Victorians, wrote novels
focused on external details: city scenes, marriages, wills.35
Woolf envisioned a new form of expression that would focus instead, on how it feels inside
to know ourselves and other people. Books like Woolf's, which aren't overly sarcastic, aren't
caught up in adventure plots, or cradled in convention, are our contract.

33 "Virginia Woolf Building (22 Kingsway)". King's College London. 2018. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
"Virginia Woolf honoured by new Strand Campus building". News. King's College London. 2 May 2013.
Archived from the original on 13 July 2015. Retrieved 15 February 2018.

34 "Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain". Archived from the original on 18 December 2017. Retriev ed 26
December 2017.

35 Chicago, Judy (1974 –1979). "The Dinner Party: Place Settings". Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art,
Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved 23 February 2018.

She's expecting us to turn down the outside volume, to t ry on her perspective, and to spend
energy with subtle sentences; and in turn, she offers us the opportunity to notice the tremors
we normally miss, and to better appreciate moths, our own headaches, and our fascinating,
fluid sexualities.

Chapter I I
1. Stream of Consciousness Technique

“consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up in bits … it is nothing
joined; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally
described. In talking of it hereafter, let's call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or
subjective life.”36
William James

“Stream of consciousness is a narrative device that attempts to give the written
equivalent of the character's thought p rocesses , either in a loose interior monologue, or in
connection to his or her actions. Stream -of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a
special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in thought and

36 quoted in Randall Stevenson, Modernist Fiction: An Introduction . (Lexington, Kentucky:
University of Kentucky, 1992), p. 39

lack of some or all punctuation. Stream of consciousness and interior monologue are
distinguished from dramatic monologue and soliloquy , where the speaker is addressing an
audience or a third person, which are chiefly used in poetry or drama . In stream of
consciousness the speaker's thought processes are more often depicted as overheard in the
mind (or addressed to oneself); it is primarily a fictional device .”37
“The Stream of Consciousness style of writing is marked by the sudden rise of thoughts and
lack of punctuations. The use of this narration mode is generally associated with the modern
novelist and short story writers of the 20th Century. Let us analyze a few examples of
the narrative technique in literature:
James Joyce successfully employs the narrative mode in his novel “Ulysses” which
describ es the day in life of a middle -aged Jew, Mr. Leopold Broom, living in Dublin,
Ireland. “38
For example, here we have a passage from Joyce’s “Ulysses”:
“He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey,
presto!), he beho ldeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precious manly, walking on
a nipping morning from the old house in Clambrassil to the high school, his book satchel on
him bandolier wise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother’s thought.”
“Anot her 20th Century writer that followed James Joyce’s narrative method was
Virginia Woolf. Here is a part of her novel “ Mrs. Dalloway” in which it clearly shows the
technique”:39
“What a lark! What a plunge! For so it always seemed to me when, with a little squeak of the
hinges, which I can hear now, I burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into
the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early
morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; ch ill and sharp and yet (for a girl of
eighteen as I then was) solemn, feeling as I did, standing there at the open window, that
something awful was about to happen …”
“By voicing their internal feelings, the writer gives freedom to the characters to travel back
and forth in time. Mrs. Dalloway went out to buy flower for herself and on the way her

37 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_of_consciousness_(narrative_mode)
38 https://literarydevi ces.net/stream -of-consciousness/
39 https://literarydevices.net/stream -of-consciousness/

thoughts moves in past and present giving us an insight into the complex nature of her
character.”40
“ It is a style of writing developed by a group of writers at the beginning of the 20th century.
It aimed at expressing in words the flow of a character’s thoughts and feelings in their minds.
The technique aspires to give readers the impression of being inside the mind of the
character. Therefore, the int ernal view of the minds of the characters sheds light on plot
and motivation in the novel. ”41

“Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-
transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”42

Virginia Wool f
A feature of modernism in this novel is that the intrigue is placed in the second
place, marginalized by the philosophical introspections of the characters. Without a narrator
who manages these personal thoughts of conscious thinking, a large part of th e book does not
have a "help" on the characters, so the lecturer has at the same time a complicated, but also
an interesting task to discover the inner and moral affections of characters. 43

It highlights the power of children's emotions and the moments of changing adult
relationships, and among the most important topics is the subjectivity and the question of
how the stages of life are perceived.44

The novel begins ex -abruptly, the author pointing out from the beginning of the
novel that he do es not belong to the category of classical writers, omniscience, who act as a

40 https://literarydevices.net/stream -of-consciousness/
41 https://literarydevices.net/stream -of-consciousness/
42 “Modern Fiction” by Virginia Woolf from McNeille, Andrew, Ed. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Volume 4: 1925
to 1928. London: The Hogarth Press, 1984.
43 "Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision" (Museum exhibition). National Portrait Gallery. 10 July – 20 Octo ber
2014.
"Find a will. Index to wills and administrations (1858 –1995)". Calendars of the Grants of Probate and Letters of
Administration. The National Archives. Retrieved 2 March 2018.

44 "Currency converter". National Archives. Retrieved 2 March 2018.
NPG. "Maurice Beck and Helen Macgregor (1886 –1960)". National Portrait Gallery, London. Retrieved 10
March 2018.

descriptive guide for the reader showing them the way they have to go to understand the
characters or places mentioned in the novel. But even more, let the reader discover some
mysteries of the text, put their minds to the contribution, and get a lot longer in reading. From
here we see the almost total lack of dialogue, the way of exposure that makes it easy to
understand and read a text. In her novel, the dialogue is almost non -existent, she based on
description and narration.

The lecturer participates directly in the action, we have not introductory or
descriptive parts, the situation being presented with the help of the words, reactions and
moods of the characters. Mrs. Ramse y can be characterized as a whim of mildness and
understanding, so her words express hope and encouragement for her son, while Mr. Ramsey
is a farther away from the family, unable to testify what he really feels for her loved ones, he
is realistic surely, saying that (as the meteorological conditions show) it will not be possible
to make a trip to the lighthouse.
A good moment for the author to represent the outline of the boy's thoughts, the
Freudian idea of tension between father and son. And James's reaction to his father's words
outlines this idea: "If he had at his disposal an ax, a weapon or any other weapon that could
have split his father's chest and killed, at once and at that moment, James would have grabbed
it."45
Being considered the most autobiographical novel of Virginia Woolf, the writer
presents her family, especially her parents, under the names of the two main characters Mrs.
and Mr. Ramsey. The action takes place within two days at a distance of ten years. The novel,
based on th e author's diary, was considered by her father and mother to be elected, her
parents had a recognized role in society, and her father was even the literary critic of this
novel.

The theme of death is relevant because throughout the novel is a subject that can not
be avoided because Woolf emphasizes that death is a time that can not be changed or
modified. It focuses on the main stages of life such as death and marriage, reversing
priorities. The lighthouse is a profound analysis of time and memory, of the Victorian
understanding of masculinity and femininity, as well as of the relationship between art and
what it is trying to represent.

45 Virginia Woolf , To the lighthouse, 2005

A very well -known techique used by Virgini a Woolf is ‘stream -of-consciousness’
which were a keyword for the modernist period, allowing the reader to experience by himself
the flow of characters that abound in the mind of the reader. It can be put in the character of
the characters, it can live so me experiences with the characters, making them have a close
relationship with each other, the author being the intermediary between the two worlds, even
if the details are not the strong point.46
Virginia Woolf is considered an author of sensibility, having a pleasant style of
approach, leaving the reader to observe undiscovered things. It has a nice way to harmonize
language using style figures such as metaphor and personification, a sure poet's traits, which
makes it even more authentic in his writings.
A room of one’s own,
By Virginia Woolf
"Forgery across the arts"

Central to Goodman's aesthetic theory is the assertion that there are two types of symbol
systems in art, and this distinction is related to the fact that a certain typ e of art can be
falsified.
By definition and, a forgery is an object that falsely claims that the history of production is
necessary for the original work. By object, Goodman refers to physical objects, but also to
concrete events, such as shows, both cons idered feasible. Artificial art, such as painting and
sculpture, are called by Goodman autographs; in these arts, the identity of a work depends on
the history of producing a unique object that can be forged.47

46 "Virginia Woolf Around The World". Exhibitions. E. J. Pratt Library, Victoria University, Toronto. 2018.
January 2017. Retrieved 14 March 2018.

47 "Virginia Woolf – First Editions". Adrian Harrington Rare Books. Retrieved 14 March 2018.
"Cox, Katherine La ird 'Ka'". Introduction to archives: Rupert Brooke (Biographies). King's College, Cambridge.
19 March 2015. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
Blogs

On the other hand, for music and literature, Goodman uses the term "allograft"; In
allogeneic art, the identity of a work of art is determined by a certain sequence of symbols,
such as musical notes or words. He argues that in music, simply conforming to a score is
enough to make a musica l composition. This claim has often been challenged. Jerrold
Levinson argues that the history of the production of a musical composition is essential to the
identity of the work.
By Goodman's definition, Meegeren's "Supper at Emmaus" is considered a forger y, because
it is falsely presented as being painted by Verneer even if what was copied was not a
particular work, but his style. If you can make a fake by copying a painter's style, then you
can do the same thing in music or literary works by copying the l iterary or musical style.48
How a work of art is created, either in allographic (notation) or autographic (physical) terms,
determines how it can be falsified. If, for example, we take Le Witt, he created allographic
works so that someone could produce aut hentic "Le Witts."
In this case, his work cannot be falsified by copying: the pursuit of his score matters
more. One could, however, create Le Witt's work by inventing new painting scores and
assigning them to him. Such cases show that Goodman's formulation, that a fake is an object
that assumes that the history of production is necessary for the original work, refers only to
the role of the artist's activities.
A few years after "Languages of Art", in response to a criticism, Goodma n
acknowledges that the distinction between children and fakes depends on the intention to
deceive. Its previous definition of counterfeiting does not mention misleading intentions, it
fails to distinguish innocent copies from counterfeits. In a way, even an innocent copy can be
seen as a fake and is supposed to be old when painted in an archaic style today.49
Even a restoration, no matter how well -intentioned, will suppress the history of an
object when it hides all the signs of its own role in creating the current aspect of the work. By
removing cracks and yellowing, it falsely suggests that the history of the object has stopped

48
Brooks, Rebecca Beatrice (2018). "The Virginia Woolf Blog". Retrieved 19 January 2018.

49 Brooks, Rebecca Beatrice (8 April 2015). "Virginia Woolf's Family". Retrieved 19 January 2018.
Eve, Kimberly (19 November 2017). "Victorian Musings". Retrieved 26 December 2017.

after its original production. Neither the copies nor the restorations, although they suggest
false stories, are not false, because they do not intend to deceive. In the case of restoration,
the deletion of more recent histories of the object is meant to allow us to appreciate the
aesthetic character close to its original form. The goal of the restoration is to allow the work
to be seen and appreciated for what it is. Instead, the falsification of art requires that someone
intentionally present an error in the object of history, usually to inflate interest or aesthetic
value. VIRGINIA WOOLF: MODERN FICTION
(in The Common Reader, 1925)
In making any survey, even the freest and loosest, of modern fiction, it is difficult not to take
it for granted that the modern practice of the art is somehow an improvement upon the old.
With their simple tools and primitive materials, it might be said, Fielding did well and Jane
Austen even better, but compare their opportunities with ours! Their masterpieces certainly
have a strange air of simplicity. And yet the analogy between literature and the process, to
choose an example, of making motor cars scar cely holds good beyond the first glance. It is
doubtful whether in the course of the centuries, though we have learnt much about making
machines, we have learnt anything about making literature. We do not come to write better;
all that we can be said to do is to keep moving, now a little in this direction, now in that, but
with a circular tendency should the whole course of the track be viewed from a sufficiently
lofty pinnacle. It need scarcely be said that we make no claim to stand, even momentarily,
upon that vantage ground. On the flat, in the crowd, half blind with dust, we look back with
envy to those happier warriors, whose battle is won and whose achievements wear so serene
an air of accomplishment that we can scarcely refrain from whispering that th e fight was not
so fierce for them as for us. It is for the historian of literature to decide; for him to say if we
are now beginning or ending or standing in the middle of a great period of prose fiction, for
down in the plain little is visible. We only k now that certain gratitudes and hostilities inspire
us; that certain paths seem to lead to fertile land, others to the dust and the desert; and of this
perhaps it may be worth while to attempt some account.50
Our quarrel, then, is not with the classics, and if we speak of quarrelling with Mr. Wells, Mr.
Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy, it is partly that by the mere fact of their existence in the flesh

50 Roe, Dinah (2011). "Virginia Woolf and Holman Hunt go to the Lighthouse". Pre -Raphaelites in the ci ty.
Retrieved 25 December 2017.

their work has a living, breathing, everyday imperfection which bids us take what liberties
with it we choose. But it is also true that, while we thank them for a thousand gifts, we
reserve our unconditional gratitude for Mr. Hardy, for Mr. Conrad, and in a much lesser
degree for the Mr. Hudson of The Purple Land, Gree n Mansions, and Far Away and Long
Ago. Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy have excited so many hopes and
disappointed them so persistently that our gratitude largely takes the form of thanking them
for having shown us what they might have done but have not done; what we certainly could
not do, but as certainly, perhaps, do not wish to do. No single phrase will sum up the charge
or grievance which we have to bring against a mass of work so large in its volume and
embodying so many qualities, both adm irable and the reverse. If we tried to formulate our
meaning in one word we should say that these three writers are materialists. It is because they
are concerned not with the spirit but with the body that they have disappointed us, and left us
with the fe eling that the sooner English fiction turns its back upon them, as politely as may
be, and marches, if only into the desert, the better for its soul. Naturally, no single word
reaches the centre of three separate targets. In the case of Mr. Wells it falls notably wide of
the mark. 51And yet even with him it indicates to our thinking the fatal alloy in his genius, the
great clod of clay that has got itself mixed up with the purity of his inspiration. But Mr.
Bennett is perhaps the worst culprit of the three, inasmuch as he is by far the best workman.
He can make a book so well constructed and solid in its craftsmanship that it is difficult for
the most exacting of critics to see through what chink or crevice decay can creep in. There is
not so much as a draug ht between the frames of the windows, or a crack in the boards. And
yet–if life should refuse to live there? That is a risk which the creator of The Old Wives' Tale,
George Cannon, Edwin Clayhanger, and hosts of other figures, may well claim to have
surmo unted. His characters live abundantly, even unexpectedly, but it remains to ask how do
they live, and what do they live for? More and more they seem to us, deserting even the well –
built villa in the Five Towns, to spend their time in some softly padded fir st-class railway
carriage, pressing bells and buttons innumerable; and the destiny to which they travel so
luxuriously becomes more and more unquestionably an eternity of bliss spent in the very best
hotel in Brighton. It can scarcely be said of Mr. Wells that he is a materialist in the sense that
he takes too much delight in the solidity of his fabric. His mind is too generous in its
sympathies to allow him to spend much time in making things shipshape and substantial. He

51 Maggio, Paula (2018). "Blogging Woolf". Retrieved 11 February 2018.
Maggio, Paula (27 February 2009). "What does Virginia say about working class women?". Retrieved 14 March
2018., in Blogging Woolf (2018)

is a materialist from sheer goodne ss of heart, taking upon his shoulders the work that ought to
have been discharged by Government officials, and in the plethora of his ideas and facts
scarcely having leisure to realise, or forgetting to think important, the crudity and coarseness
of his h uman beings. Yet what more damaging criticism can there be both of his earth and of
his Heaven than that they are to be inhabited here and hereafter by his Joans and his Peters?
Does not the inferiority of their natures tarnish whatever institutions and id eals may be
provided for them by the generosity of their creator? Nor, profoundly though we respect the
integrity and humanity of Mr. Galsworthy, shall we find what we seek in his pages.52
If we fasten, then, one label on all these books, on which is one w ord materialists, we mean
by it that they write of unimportant things; that they spend immense skill and immense
industry making the trivial and the transitory appear the true and the enduring.
We have to admit that we are exacting, and, further, that we f ind it difficult to justify our
discontent by explaining what it is that we exact. We frame our question differently at
different times. But it reappears most persistently as we drop the finished novel on the crest
of a sigh –Is it worth while? What is the point of it all? Can it be that, owing to one of those
little deviations which the human spirit seems to make from time to time, Mr. Bennett has
come down with his magnificent apparatus for catching life just an inch or two on the wrong
side? Life escapes ; and perhaps without life nothing else is worth while. It is a confession of
vagueness to have to make use of such a figure as this, but we scarcely better the matter by
speaking, as critics are prone to do, of reality. Admitting the vagueness which affli cts all
criticism of novels, let us hazard the opinion that for us at this moment the form of fiction
most in vogue more often misses than secures the thing we seek. Whether we call it life or
spirit, truth or reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to be
contained any longer in such ill -fitting vestments as we provide. Nevertheless, we go on
perseveringly, conscientiously, constructing our two and thirty chapters after a design which
more and more ceases to resemble the vision in our minds. So much of the enormous labour
of proving the solidity, the likeness to life, of the story is not merely labour thrown away but
labour misplaced to the extent of obscuring and blotting out the light of the conception. The
writer seems constr ained, not by his own free will but by some powerful and unscrupulous
tyrant who has him in thrall, to provide a plot, to provide comedy, tragedy, love interest, and

52 Maggio, Paul a (9 April 2010). "New discovery says Woolf had college courses of her own". Retrieved 11
February 2018., in Blogging Woolf (2018)

an air of probability embalming the whole so impeccable that if all his figures were to co me
to life they would find themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion
of the hour. The tyrant is obeyed; the novel is done to a turn. But sometimes, more and more
often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as the pages fill
themselves in the customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this?53
Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being "like this". Examine for a moment an
ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions –trivial, fantastic,
evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant
shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of
Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came
not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what
he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon
convention, the re would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in
the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would
have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminou s halo, a
semi -transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is
it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed
spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and
external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting
that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it.54
It is, at any rate, in some such fashi on as this that we seek to define the quality which
distinguishes the work of several young writers, among whom Mr. James Joyce is the most
notable, from that of their predecessors. They attempt to come closer to life, and to preserve
more sincerely and ex actly what interests and moves them, even if to do so they must discard
most of the conventions which are commonly observed by the novelist. Let us record the
atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern,
howev er disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores
upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is

53 Nagy, Kim (29 October 2015). "Meeting Virginia Woolf at the Strand". Wild River Review. Retrieved 28
March 2018.

54 Rahn, Josh (2018). "Modernism". The Literature Network. Jalic. Retrieved 21 February 2018.
Rosenbaum, S. P. (2013). "Virginia Woolf among t he Apostles". La tour critique (2). Retrieved 13 April 2018.

commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small. Any one who has rea d The
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or, what promises to be a far more interesting work,
Ulysses ,1 now appearing in the Little Review, will have hazarded some theory of this nature
as to Mr. Joyce's intention. On our part, with such a fragment befo re us, it is hazarded rather
than affirmed; but whatever the intention of the whole, there can be no question but that it is
of the utmost sincerity and that the result, difficult or unpleasant as we may judge it, is
undeniably important. In contrast with those whom we have called materialists, Mr. Joyce is
spiritual; he is concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which
flashes its messages through the brain, and in order to preserve it he disregards with complete
courage wha tever seems to him adventitious, whether it be probability, or coherence, or any
other of these signposts which for generations have served to support the imagination of a
reader when called upon to imagine what he can neither touch nor see55. The scene in the
cemetery, for instance, with its brilliancy, its sordidity, its incoherence, its sudden lightning
flashes of significance, does undoubtedly come so close to the quick of the mind that, on a
first reading at any rate, it is difficult not to acclaim a m asterpiece. If we want life itself, here
surely we have it. Indeed, we find ourselves fumbling rather awkwardly if we try to say what
else we wish, and for what reason a work of such originality yet fails to compare, for we must
take high examples, with Youth or The Mayor of Casterbridge. It fails because of the
comparative poverty of the writer's mind, we might say simply and have done with it. But it
is possible to press a little further and wonder whether we may not refer our sense of being in
a bright y et narrow room, confined and shut in, rather than enlarged and set free, to some
limitation imposed by the method as well as by the mind. Is it the method that inhibits the
creative power? Is it due to the method that we feel neither jovial nor magnanimous , but
centred in a self which, in spite of its tremor of susceptibility, never embraces or creates what
is outside itself and beyond? Does the emphasis laid, perhaps didactically, upon indecency,
contribute to the effect of something angular and isolated? Or is it merely that in any effort of
such originality it is much easier, for contemporaries especially, to feel what it lacks than to
name what it gives? In any case it is a mistake to stand outside examining "methods". Any
method is right, every method i s right, that expresses what we wish to express, if we are
writers; that brings us closer to the novelist's intention if we are readers. This method has the
merit of bringing us closer to what we were prepared to call life itself; did not the reading of

55 Snodgrass, Chris. "Chris Snodgrass". Department of English, University of Florida. Retrieved 15 March 2018.
Snodgrass, Chris (2015). "Introduction: Virginia Woolf (1882‒1941)" (PDF) (Course ma terials). Department of
English, University of Florida. Retrieved 15 March 2018.

Ulysses suggest how much of life is excluded or ignored, and did it not come with a shock to
open Tristram Shandy or even Pendennis and be by them convinced that there are not only
other aspects of life, but more important ones into the bargain.56
However this may be, the problem before the novelist at present, as we suppose it to have
been in the past, is to contrive means of being free to set down what he chooses. He has to
have the courage to say that what interests him is no longer "this" but "t hat": out of "that"
alone must he construct his work. For the moderns "that", the point of interest, lies very likely
in the dark places of psychology. At once, therefore, the accent falls a little differently; the
emphasis is upon something hitherto ignor ed; at once a different outline of form becomes
necessary, difficult for us to grasp, incomprehensible to our predecessors. No one but a
modern, no one perhaps but a Russian, would have felt the interest of the situation which
Tchekov has made into the sho rt story which he calls "Gusev". Some Russian soldiers lie ill
on board a ship which is taking them back to Russia. We are given a few scraps of their talk
and some of their thoughts; then one of them dies and is carried away; the talk goes on among
the ot hers for a time, until Gusev himself dies, and looking "like a carrot or a radish" is
thrown overboard. The emphasis is laid upon such unexpected places that at first it seems as
if there were no emphasis at all; and then, as the eyes accustom themselves t o twilight and
discern the shapes of things in a room we see how complete the story is, how profound, and
how truly in obedience to his vision Tchekov has chosen this, that, and the other, and placed
them together to compose something new. But it is imposs ible to say "this is comic", or "that
is tragic", nor are we certain, since short stories, we have been taught, should be brief and
conclusive, whether this, which is vague and inconclusive, should be called a short story at
all.
The most elementary remark s upon modern English fiction can hardly avoid some mention of
the Russian influence, and if the Russians are mentioned one runs the risk of feeling that to
write of any fiction save theirs is waste of time. If we want understanding of the soul and
heart w here else shall we find it of comparable profundity? If we are sick of our own
materialism the least considerable of their novelists has by right of birth a natural reverence
for the human spirit. "Learn to make yourself akin to people. . . . But let this sympathy be not
with the mind –for it is easy with the mind –but with the heart, with love towards them." In

56 Wilson, J.J.; Barrett, Eileen, eds. (Summer 2003). "Lucio Ruotolo 1927 –2003" (PDF). Virginia Woolf
Miscellany. Southern Connecticut State University. Retrieved 24 March 201 8. (includes invitation to first
performance in 1935 and Lucio Ruotolo's introduction to the 1976 Hogarth Press edition[

every great Russian writer we seem to discern the features of a saint, if sympathy for the
sufferings of others, love towards them, endeavour to re ach some goal worthy of the most
exacting demands of the spirit constitute saintliness. It is the saint in them which confounds
us with a feeling of our own irreligious triviality, and turns so many of our famous novels to
tinsel and trickery. The conclusi ons of the Russian mind, thus comprehensive and
compassionate, are inevitably, perhaps, of the utmost sadness. More accurately indeed we
might speak of the inconclusiveness of the Russian mind. It is the sense that there is no
answer, that if honestly exam ined life presents question after question which must be left to
sound on and on after the story is over in hopeless interrogation that fills us with a deep, and
finally it may be with a resentful, despair. They are right perhaps; unquestionably they see
further than we do and without our gross impediments of vision. But perhaps we see
something that escapes them, or why should this voice of protest mix itself with our gloom?
The voice of protest is the voice of another and an ancient civilisation which see ms to have
bred in us the instinct to enjoy and fight rather than to suffer and understand. English fiction
from Sterne to Meredith bears witness to our natural delight in humour and comedy, in the
beauty of earth, in the activities of the intellect, and i n the splendour of the body. But any
deductions that we may draw from the comparison of two fictions so immeasurably far apart
are futile save indeed as they flood us with a view of the infinite possibilities of the art and
remind us that there is no limit to the horizon, and that nothing –no "method", no experiment,
even of the wildest –is forbidden, but only falsity and pretence. "The proper stuff of fiction"
does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every
quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine
the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break
her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is ren ewed and her
sovereignty assured.
A room of one’s own
Virginia Woolf, born Adeline Virginia Alexandra Stephen on January 25, 1882 in London
and died on March 28, 1941 in Rodmell (United Kingdom), is an English woman of
letters. She is one of the mai n modernist writers of the 20th century.
In the interwar period, she was a prominent figure in London literary society and a central
member of the Bloomsbury Group, which brought together English writers, artists and
philosophers. The novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), La Promenade au Phare (1927), Orlando

(1928) and Les Vagues (1937), as well as the feminist essay Une chambre à soi (1929),
remain among his most famous writings.
In 1941, at the age of 59, she committed suicide by drowning in the Ouse1,
near Monk's House, in the village of Rodmell , where she lived with her husband Leonard
Woolf.

Virginia Woolf was born in London to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Stephen Duckworth (also
known as Julia Prinsep , née Julia Jackson: 1846 -1895), she was educated by her parents at
their home at 22 Hyde Park Gate , Kensington in a literary atmosphere of high society.
Virginia's parents are both widowed when they get married. Their home shelters children
from three different marriages. Those of Julia and her first husband H erbert Duckworth :
George Duckworth (1868 –1934); Stella Duckworth (1869 –1897); Gerald Duckworth (1870 –
1937). The daughter of Leslie and his first wife Minny Thackeray,
Laura Makepeace Stephen, diagnosed with mental disabilities lives with them before being
placed in an asylum in 1891 until the end of his life. Finally, the children of Leslie and Julia:
Vanessa (1879 –1961), Thoby (1880 –1906), Virginia and Adrian (1883 –1948).
Sir Leslie Stephen, writer, editor and mountaineer, was widowed by the eldest daught er of
novelist William Makepeace Thackeray. Julia Stephen was, for her part, descended from a
family (the Pattle sisters ) already known for her involvement in the intellectual life of
Victorian society, such as the salon2 held in the mid -19th century by h er aunt
Sarah Prinsep (mother of the painter Pre -Raphaelite Val Princep ). Virginia's mother poses as
a model at a young age, for artists of the time (such as several female members
of the family). Thus Henry James, George Henry Lewes, Julia Margaret Camer on (another
famous aunt of Julia3 who died in 1879) and James Russell Lowell (the godfather of
Virginia) are relatives of her parents.
In addition to this cultural entourage, Virginia has free access to the vast library of her home
at 22 Hyde Park Gate , where she discovers classics and English literature (unlike her
brothers and her sister who receive a traditional education).
In his memories, his most vivid childhood memories are however not in London, but in St
Ives in Cornwall where his family spends every summer until 1895. The memories of family

holidays, the impressions left by the landscape and the
lighthouse Godrevy ( Godrevy lighthouse ), are significant sources of inspiration for his
novels, especially travel to lighthouse (to the lightho use ).
The death of her mother, who died of the flu in 1895, when she was 13 years old, and that of
her half -sister Stella two years later, plunged Virginia into her first nervous breakdown. The
death of his father in 1904 caused a most disturbing collapse. She was briefly interned.
After the death of their father, Virginia, Vanessa and Adrian sell 22 Hyde Park Gate and buy
a house at 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury. There they meet Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell,
Saxon Sydney -Turner, Duncan Grant and Leonard Woolf (a former Cambridge student, a
member of the Cambridge Apostles as well as Strachey). They together form the nucleus of
the circle of intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group.
In 1910, she participated in the "Dreadnought hoax", intended to draw attention to the
Bloomsbury Group. Horace de Vere Cole and his friends pose as a delegation from the royal
family of Abyssinia; they succeed in deceiving the Royal Navy , which makes them visit the
flagship, the HMS Dreadnought4.
She start ed writing as a professional activity in 1905 for the Times9 literary supplement. His
first novel, The Voyage Out (La Traversée des apparences, also translated Croisière, or
Traversées), was published in 1915. His novels and essays met with success with bo th critics
and the general public. Most of his works are published on his own account at the
Hogarth Press . She is considered one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century and one of
the greatest innovators in the English language. In her works which abandon intrigue and
dramatic progression, she keenly experiences the underlying motives of her characters, both
psychological and emotional (reveries, moods, contradictory thoughts or thoughts that are not
logically linked), as well as multiple possibilit ies of narration in a diffracted or fragmented
chronology: this writing of the "flow of consciousness" that one finds in Woolf will deeply
mark the modern novel at the beginning of the XXth century. According to EM Forster, she
pushed the English language "a little more against the darkness"; the influence of his literary
achievements and his creativity is still visible today.
Studies on Virginia Woolf have focused on feminist and lesbian themes in her work, as in the
anthology of critical essays in 1997 Vi rginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings (Virginia Woolf:
Lectures lesbiennes), published by Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer. Louise

A. DeSalvo suggests an incestuous sexual abuse suffered by Virginia when she was young in
Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on her Life and World (Virginia
Woolf: The impact of childhood sexual abuse on her life and world). Other themes studied
include concussion syndrome, war, classes and modern British society. Virginia's essays such
as Une chambre à soi and Troi s Guinées discuss the future of female education and the role
of female authors in Western literary canons.
In 1982, commissioned to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Virginia Woolf,
Viviane Forrester performed her play Freshwater in Paris (she chose director
Simone Benmussa ) (performances also in New York, London and Spoleto), performed by
writers , like herself, Eugène Ionesco, Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe -Grillet.
In 2002, the film The Hours , based on the life of Virginia Woolf and on her novel
Mrs Dalloway , was nominated for the Academy Award for best film. This is adapted from
the novel by Michael Cunningham, published in 1998 and Pulitzer Prize. The Hours was
Virginia Woolf's working title for Mrs. Dalloway . Some Virginia Woolf specialists have
expressed criticism; according to them, neither the novel, nor the film can be considered as a
correct account or a literary criticism of Mrs Dalloway .
Songs were dedicated to Virginia Woolf. In particular the song Dans les rues de Londres
(2005) by Mylène Farmer , What the Water Gave Me and Never Let Me Go by the English
group Florence and the Machine, as well as the song Virginia (2008) by the Finnish
singer Vuokko Hovatta (fi) .
In 2011, the collective work Virginia Woolf appeared: The writing refu ge against madness
directed by Stella Harrison, foreword by Jacques Aubert with Nicolas Pierre Boileau, Luc
Garcia, Monique Harlin , Stella Harrison, Sophie Marret , Ginette Michaux,
Pierre Naveau and Michèle Rivoire, Éditions Michèles , Je est un autre co llection, Paris 2011.
In 2012, the Pléiade retranslates the romantic works of Virginia Woolf, as well as a collection
of short stories, Monday or Tuesday, and some isolated short stories. Virginia Woolf is the
ninth woman of letters to enter the Pleiade10.
In 2018, a film, Vita & Virginia, by Chanya Button , is only interested in the relationship of
the two title roles .

The Voyage Out (1915)
Published in French under the title La Traversée des apparences, trad. L. Savitzky , Paris, Le
Cahier gris, 1948; re-editions: Flammarion, 1977; The Paperback, 1982; Garnier –
Flammarion, 1985.
Published in French in a new translation by Armel Guerne under the title Croisière, Robert
Marin, 1952.
Published in French in a new translation by Jacques Aubert under the title Traversées, in
Œuvres romanesques, tome I, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012.
Night and Day (1919)
Published in French under the title Nuit et Jour, trad. by Maurice Bec, Catalonia, 1933.
Published in French in a new translation by Catherine Orsot-Naveau under the title Nuit et
Jour, Flammarion, 1984; reissue, Threshold / Points. Signatures no P2604, 2011
Published in French in a new translation by Françoise Pellan under the title Nuit et Jour, in
Œuvres romanesques, tome I, Gallimard, Bibliothèq ue de la Pléiade, 2012.
Jacob's Room (1922)
Published in French under the title La Chambre de Jacob, trad. Jean Talva , Stock, 1942; re-
editions: Plon, 1958; The Paperback, 1984.
Published in French in a new translation by Magalie Merle under the title La Chambre de
Jacob, LGF, Le Livre de Poche / La Pochothèque, 1993; re-edition, Le Livre de poche /
Biblio no 3049, 2005.
Published in French in a new translation by Agnès Desarthe under the title La Chambre de
Jacob, Stock, 2008.
Published in French in a new translation by Adolphe Haberer under the title La Chambre de
Jacob, in Œuvres romanesques, tome I, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012; reissue,
Folio No. 5501, 2012.
Mrs Dalloway (1925)

Published in French under the title Mrs Dalloway , trad. Simone David, Stock, 1929; re-
editions: Stock, 1958 and 1973; Editions Rencontre, 1969; The Paperback, 1984.
Published in French in a new translation by Pascale Michon under the title Mrs Dalloway ,
LGF, Le Livre de Poche / La Pochothèque, 1993; reissue, The Paperback / Biblio no 3012,
2000.
Published in French in a new translation by Marie -Claire Pasquier under the title
Mrs Dalloway , Gallimard, Folio no 2643, 1994; re-edition of this corrected translation in
Œuvres romanesques, tome I, Ga llimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012.
To the Lighthouse11 (1927)
Published in French under the title La Promenade au phare, trad. Maurice Lanoire , Stock,
1929, 1958, 1973, 1979; re-editions: Le Livre de Poche, 1974 and 1983.
Published in French in a new translation by Magalie Merle under the title Voyage au phare,
LGF, Le Livre de Poche / La Pochothèque, 1993; re-edition, Le Livre de poche / Biblio,
2013.
Published in French in a new translation by Anne Wicke under the title Au phare, Stock,
2009.
Published in French in a new translation by Françoise Pellan under the title Vers le phare,
Gallimard, Folio no 2816, 1996; re-edition of this corrected translation in Romance Works,
Volume II, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012.
Orlando, a biography (1928)
Published in French under the title Orlando, trad. Charles Mauron, Delamain and Boutelleau ,
1948 and 1957; re-editions: Stock, 1974; The Pocket Book, 1982.
Published in French in a new translation by Catherine Pappo -Musard under the title Orlando ,
LGF, Le Livre de Poche / La Pochothèque, 1993; reissue, The Paperback / Biblio no 3002,
2002.
Published in French in a new translation by Jacques Aubert under the title Orlando, in
Œuvres romanesques, tome II, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012.
The Waves (1931)

Published in French under the title Les Vagues, trad. Marguerite
Yourcenar, Delamain and Boutelleau / Stock, 1937; re-editions: Plon, 1957; Stock,
1974; LGF, Le Livre de Poche / La Pochothèque, 1993; The Pocket Book / Biblio no 3011,
1982 and 2000.
Published in French in a new translation by Cécile Wajsbrot under the title Les
Vagues, Callmann -Lévy , 1993; reissue, C. Bourgois, 2008.
Published in French in a new translation by Michel Cusin , in collaboration with Adolphe
Haberer under the title Les Vagues, in Œuvres romanesques, tome II, Gallimard,
Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012; reissue, Folio No. 5385, 2012.
Flush, a biography (1933)
Published in French under the title Flush: a biography, trad. Charles
Mauron, Delamain and Boutellea u , 1935; Stock re -editions, 1979; LGF, Le Livre de Poche /
Biblio no 3069, 1987; Le Bruit du temps, 2010.
Published in French in a new translation by Josiane Paccaud -Huguet under the title Flush, in
Œuvres romanesques, tome II, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012.
The Years (1937)
Published in French under the title Years,
trad. Germaine Delamain , Delamain and Boutelleau , 1938; reissue, Stock, 1979; The Pocket
Book / Biblio no 3057, 1985; re-editions of this translation revised by Colette -Marie Huet
under the title Les Années: Mercure de France, 2004; Folio no 4651, 2008.
Published in French in a new translation by André Topia under the title Les Années, in
Œuvres romanesques, tome II, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012.
Between The Acts (1941)
Published in French under the title Entre les Actes, trad. Yvonne Genova, Éditions Charlot,
1944
Published in French in a new translation by Charles Cestre under the title Entre les
Actes, Delamain et Boutelleau , 1947; The Pocket Book / Biblio no 3068, 1986; LGF, Le
Livre de Poche / La Pochothèque, 1993.

Published in French in a new translation by Michèle Rivoire under the title Entre les Actes, in
Œuvres romanesques, tome II, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012.
News collections [ edit | change code]
Kew Gardens (1919)
Published in French under the title Kew Gardens , trad. Pierre Nordon , LGF, Le Livre de
Poche / La Pochothèque, 1993; reissue : LGF, The bilingual pocket book. English series
no.8767, 1993.
Published in French in a new translation by Michèle Rivoire under the title Kew Gardens , in
Œuvres romanesques, tome I, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012.
Monday or Tuesday (1921)
Published in French under the title Lundi ou Mardi, trad. Pierre Nordon , LGF, Le Livre de
Poche / La Pochothèque, 1993.
Published in French in a new translation by Michèle Rivoire under the title Lundi ou Mardi,
in Œuvres romanesques, tome I, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012.
A Haunted House and Other Stories (1943)
Published in French under the title La Maison hantée, trad. Hélène Bokanowski , Charlot,
1946.
Mrs. Dalloway's Party (1973)
Published in French under the title Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street, trad. Pierre Nordon , LGF,
Le Livre de Poche / La Pochothèque, 1993.
Published in Fren ch in a new translation by Michèle Rivoire under the title Autour de
Mrs. Dalloway , in Œuvres romanesques, tome I, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,
2012.
The Complete Shorter Fiction (1985)
Published in French under the title La Fascination de l'Eta ng, trad. Josée Kamoun , Seuil,
1990; reissue: Seuil, Points no 484, 1991; Threshold, Point / News no 1145, 2003.

Carlyle's House and Other Skeches (2003)
Published in French under the title La Maison de Carlyle and other sketches,
trad. Agnès Desarthe , Mercure de France, 2004.
Other texts [ edit | change code]
Modern Fiction (1919)
Published in French in a choice of texts under the title L'Art du roman, trad , Rose Celli ,
Seuil, 1963 and 1991; reissue: Seuil, Point / Signatures no P2084, 2009.
Freshwater (1923), a play written for the author's relatives.
Published in French under the title Freshwater , trad. Élisabeth Janvier, Women, 1981.
Nurse Lugton's Golden Thimble (1924), children's story that was written for his niece.
The Common Reader (1925)
Publi shed in French in a choice of texts under the title Essais, trad , Claudine Jardin, Seghers,
1976.
Published in French in a choice of texts under the title Beau Brummel , trad , by Guillaume
Villeneuve, Obsidiane , 1985.
Published in French in a choice of texts under the title Entre les livres, trad , by Jean Pavans ,
La Différence, 1990.
Published in French in a complete version including The Second Common Reader under the
title The Commun of readers, trad. Céline Candiard , L'Arche, 2004.
Victorian Photog raphs of Famous Men and Fair Women (1926) – introduction of the first
monograph on photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, of whom she was the grand -niece.
Time Passes (1926)
Published in French under the title Le temps passe, bilingual edition, trad. Charles Mauron,
afterword James M. Haule , Le Bruit du temps, 2010.
A Room of One's Own (1929)

Published in French under the title Une chambre à soi, trad. Clara Malraux, Gonthier,
1965; re-editions: Denoël, 1977; 10/18 no 2801, 1996.
Published in French in a new translation by Élise Argaud under the title Une coin bien à soi,
Payot & Rivages, Rivages poche. Little Library No. 733, 2011.
Published in French in a new annotated translation by Jean -Yves Cotté under the title Une
chambre à soi, Gwen Catalá Éditeur, 2016 (bilingual edition – digital and paper publication) –
previously published by publie.net editions in 2013 under the title "Une coin à soi "(digital
and paper publication), sold out.
Published in French in a new translation by Marie Darrieussecq under the title Un lieu à soi,
éditions Denoël, 2016.
On Being Ill (1930)
Published in French under the title De la maladie, trad. Élise Argaud , Payot & Rivages,
Rivages pocket. Little Library No. 562, 2007.
The London Scene (1931)
Published in French under the title La Scène londonienne, trad. Pierre Alien , C Bourgois,
1984 and 2006.
A Letter to a Young Poet (1932)
Published in French under the title Letter to a young poet, trad , by Jacqueline Délia, Arléa ,
1996.
Published in French in a new translation by Guillaume Villeneuve under the title À John
Lehmann, letter to a young poet, Mille et Une Nuits, Petite collection no 203, 1998.
Published in French in a new translation by Maxime Rovere under the title Letter to a young
poet, Payo t & Rivages, Rivages poche. Small library no 785, 2013.
The Second Common Reader (1933)
Published in French in a complete version including The Common Reader under the title The
Commun of readers, L'Arche, 2004
Three Guinees (1938)

Published in French unde r the title Trois guinées, trad. Viviane Forrester , Des Femmes,
1977; re-edition: 10/18 no 3451, 2002.
Published in French in a new translation by Léa Gauthier under the title Trois guinées,
Blackjack éditeur, 2012.
Published in French in a new annotated translation by Jean -Yves Cotté under the title Trois
guinées, Gwen Catalá Éditeur, 2016 (bilingual edition – digital and paper publication) –
previously published by publie.net editions in 2014 (digital and paper publication),
exhausted.
Roger Fry: a Biogr aphy (1940)
Published in French under the title La Vie de Roger Fry, trad. Jean Pavans , Payot,
1999; reissue: Payot & Rivages, Rivages poche no 397, 2002.
Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid (1940)
Published in French under the title Thoughts on peace in an air raid [archive], essay translated
from English by David Leblanc, Liberté, n ° 278 (November 2007), p. 106-110.
The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)
Published in French under the title La Mort de la phalène, trad. Hélène Bokanowski , Seuil,
1968 ; re-editions: Seuil, Points / Roman no 59, 1982; Threshold, Points / News no 1193,
2004.
Published in French under the title La Mort de la phalène, trad. Marie Picard, Sillage, 2012.
Published in French under the title La Mort de la phalène, in Œuvres rom anesques, tome I et
II, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2012.
The Moment and Other Essays (1948)
The Captain's Death Bed And Other Essays (1950)
A Writer's Diary (1953), extracts from the Journal of the author.
Published in French under the title Journal of a writer, trad. Germaine Beaumont, Éditions du
Rocher, 1958; re-editions: 10/18, (2 vol.) no 1138 -1139, 1977 and 2000; C. Bourgois, 1984.

Granite and Rainbow (1958)
Moments of Being (1976)
Published in French under the title Instants de vi e, trad. Colette -Marie Huet, Stock,
1977; reissue: The paperback / Biblio no 3090, 1988; new edition: Stock, 2006.
Books and Portraits (1978)
Published in French in a choice of texts under the title Elles, trad. Maxime Rovere, Payot &
Rivages, Rivages pock et. Little Library No. 759, 2012.
Women and Writing (1979)
Published in French under the title The strange and brilliant Fruits of art,
trad. Sylvie Durastanti , Des Femmes, 1983.
The Diary of Virginia Woolf (1979)
Published in French under the title Journal, trad. Colette -Marie Huet, (8 vol.), Stock, 1981.
Full Journal, 1915 -1941, La Cosmopolite collection, Stock, 2008; translated by Marie –
Ange Dutartre and Colette -Marie Huet; preface by Agnès Desarthe (ISBN 978 -2-234-06030 –
2)
The Letters of Virginia Woolf (1975 -1980)
Published in French in a choice of texts under the title Letters, trad. Claude Demanuelli ,
Seuil, 1993; reissue under the title What I am in reality remains unknown: letters, 1901 -1941,
Seuil, Points no P2314, 2010.
Published in French i n another choice of texts under the title Correspondance Virginia Woolf
– Lytton Strachey, trad. Lionel Leforestier , Le Promeneur, 2009.
The Letters of Vita Sackville -West to Virginia Woolf (1984)
Published in French under the title Correspondance 1923 -1941, with Vita Sackville -West,
trad. Raymond Las Vergnas , Stock, 1986 and new edition 2010; re-edition: Le Livre de
poche / Biblio no 32989, 2013.
Collected Essays (2009)

Published in French in a choice of texts under the title L'Écrivain ou la Vie,
trad. Élise Argaud , Payot & Rivages, Rivages pocket. Small library no 600, 2008.
Published in French in another choice of texts under the title Intimate readings, trad. Florence
Herbulot and Claudine Jardin, Robert Laffont, 2013.
On illness, translation and pre face Élise Argaud , Payot & Rivages, Rivages poche,
coll. Little Library, 69p, 2007, (ISBN 2743616377)
Notes and references [ edit | change code]
↑ Woolf, Virginia (1882 -1941) ., Merle, Magali., Michon, Pascale. and Pappo – Musard,
Catherine., Novels and sh ort stories 1917 -1941, Librairie générale française, dl 2002,
cop. 1993 (ISBN 9782253132707 , OCLC 489662447, read online [archive]), p. 30
↑ Network of intellectuals also known as the Little Holland House circle in Kensington
(London). See also the play Freshwater : A Comedy by Virginia Woolf ( written before 1923,
then reviewed in 1935) imagining cultural life at the residence of her aunt Julia Margaret
Cameron and prelude to the Bloomsbury Group.
^ Julia Stephen (JPS) wrote the biography of her aunt Juli a Margaret Cameron, in the first
edition of (en) Dictionary of National Biography [archive ] ( vol. 8, 1886, p. 300).
↑ Back higher in : a and b Great crossing: Virginia Woolf, the crossing of appearances. On
France Culture.
^ Lorna Sage (Germaine Greer , Elaine Showalter , The Cambridge guide
to women's writing in English, Cambridge University Press , 1999, p. 550
↑ Shiri Eisner, Bi: Notes for a bisexual revolution , Seal Press , 2013, 1st ed. (ISBN 978 -1-
58005 -474-4 , OCLC 813394065), p. 67
^ (In) Virginia Woolf Famous GLTB People ( archive, celebrities, lesbians, gays, bisexuals
and transgenders)
↑ (in) VW suicide letter to her husband [archive]
↑ Woolf, Virginia (1882 -1941) ., Merle, Magali., Michon, Pascale. and Pappo – Musard,
Catherine., Novels and short stories 1917 -1941, Librairie générale française, dl 2002,
cop. 1993 (ISBN 9782253132707 , OCLC 489662447, read online [archive]), p. 7

↑ Virginia Despentes , "Virginia Woolf, the strong wind", Le Monde , 12 April 2012 (read
online [archive], acce ssed 19 January 2020)
↑ Pierre Bourdieu analyzed this work in his work La Domination masculine.
( in ) Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf, A biography , 2 vol., London, Hogarth Press , 1972
(James Tait Black Prize)
Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf, a biography, 2 v ol., Stock, 1973
Geneviève Brisac , Agnès Desarthe , VW The mixture of genres, Éditions de l'Olivier / Le
Seuil, 2004
Jane Dunn, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell: a very intimate conspiracy, ed. Otherwise,
coll. "Literature", 2005. 397 p., 23 cm. (ISBN 2 -7467-0750 -0)
Viviane Forrester , Virginia Woolf, Paris, Albin Michel, 2009
( en ) Hermione Lee, The Novels of Virginia Woolf, Methuen; Holms & Meier, 1977.
Ed. revised, Routledge Revivals, 2010, (ISBN 9780415568005)
Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf or the inner adventure, ed. Otherwise, 1999
( in ) John Lehmann, Virginia Woolf and Her World (1975)
( in ) John Lehmann, Thrown To The Woolfs (1978)
Alexandra Lemasson , Virginia Woolf, Gallimard, "Folio biographies", 2005, 261 p.
Frédéric Monneyron , Bisexuality and literature. Around DH Lawrence and Virginia
Woolf, L'Harmattan , 1998
Monique Nathan, Virginia Woolf by herself, Éditions du Seuil, coll. "Always Writers", 1958
Frédéric Regard, The Force of the Feminine. On three essay s by Virginia Woolf, Paris, La
Fabrique, 2002.
Ratha Tep, In search of Virginia Woolf's lost Eden, The New York Times
(international edition ), March 2, 2018, p. 14 and online [archive].