Virginia Woolf
LIFE:
•Her father Leslie Stephen was an eminent Victorian man of letters. !
•She grew up in a literary and intellectual atmosphere with free access to her father’s library. !
•Childhood experiences of death led to depression. —> The death of her mother when she was
13. !
•In 1904 she moved to Bloomsbury and together with her sister Vanessa Bell, she became a
member of the Bloomsbury Group, the avant-garde of early 20th-century London. !
◦They rejected the traditional morality, Victorian respectability, the artistic convention and the
bourgeois sexual codes.!
✦Developed the stream of consciousness style.!
✦Vanessa Bell became a post-impressionist painter!
•In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf.!
•In 1915 she started her literary career as a talented novelist, essayist (saggista) and critic.!
•The Second World War increased her anxiety and fears. !
•After rewriting drafts of her suicide note, she put rocks into her pockets and drowned herself in
the River Ouse in 1941.!
WORKS:
-The voyage out: traditional narratives !
-Night and day: traditional narratives !
-Jacob’s Room: narrative experimentation with the novel !
-Mrs Dalloway: a more completely developed stream-of- consciousness technique !
-To the lighthouse: a more completely developed stream-of- consciousness technique
•She is a feminist writer: the themes of androgyny, women and writing !
◦Mrs Dalloway: Describes Clarissa Dalloway and Sally Seton’s relationship as young women.!
◦Orlando: Deals with androgyny.!
◦A room of one’s own: Shows Woolf’s concern with the questions of women’s subjugation and
the relationship between women and writing.!
MODERNISM:
(She is part of the context of modernism)!
•Main aim: to give voice to the complex inner (interiore) world of feeling and memory;!
•the human personality: a continuous shift (cambiamento) of impressions and emotions; !
•disappearance of the omniscient narrator;!
•point of view shifted inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas, !
•momentary impressions presented as a continuous flux. (Tutto è perenne e continuo, non c’è
interruzione)!
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS vs TRADITIONAL TECHNIQUE
✧This technique tries to imitate the real flow of thought, which is not always linear or
rational: in our head, in fact, ideas often follow one another in a confused way, with time
jumps, sudden emotions and random memories.!
STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS TECHNIQUE
TRADITIONAL TECHNIQUE
The action or plot is revealed through the
mental processes of the character.
…through the commentary of an omniscient
narrator.
Character development is achieved through
revelation of extremely personal thoughts.
…through dialogue or the narrator’s
description.
The action of the plot moves back through
present time to memories of past events and
dreams of the future.
…corresponds to real, chronological time.
Dramatic monologue and free association.
Narration, description, dialogue and
commentary by the narrator.
