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Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf. What do you think of when you hear the words “Victorian” and “modern”?. Second half of 19 th century: Darwin; Freud change thinking.

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Virginia Woolf

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  1. Virginia Woolf

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

  3. Second half of 19th century: Darwin; Freud change thinking

  4. Father, (Leslie Stephen): an eminent Victorian literary critic and an agnostic (Woolf herself was anti-religious). Educated Virginia at home. • Mother (Julia Stephen): a noted Victorian beauty • Sister (Vanessa): painter and leader of the English avant-garde

  5. 1882-1941 • Life spans two World Wars and the collapse of the English empire

  6. “In or about December, 1910, human character changed.” • Virginia Woolf

  7. She and Leonard founded Hogarth Press, which became a successful business. • Many of her friends were killed or wounded in WW I

  8. Between the Wars • Her major creative and critical work was done • Meanwhile, rise of fascist and socialist dictatorships on the Continent

  9. Suffered a series of nervous breakdowns beginning in 1904, the year her father died • Died of suicide by drowning • 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.

  10. The Bloomsbury Group • Bohemian lifestyle • Defying convention • Virginia married a member, Leonard Woolf, in 1912

  11. The Bloomsbury Group • Bohemian lifestyle • Defying convention • Virginia married a member, Leonard Woolf, in 1912

  12. Important Places to Woolf • London • St. Ives in Cornwall

  13. Woolf’s Style • You WILL hate this book… • 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

  14. Trying to make linear sentences, and a linear work like the novel, do what a photo or movie or painting might do much more easily…convey the sense of a multitude of thoughts, feelings and actions taking place all at once

  15. Stream-of-consciousness • Emulates a painter trying to reproduce an exact moment in time fully • To The Lighthouse: collective stream-of-consciousness. • One voice flows into another

  16. Dancing at the Moulin de Galette

  17. Her Theory of the Novel • She is a woman applying herself to a genre dominated by men • Believed a woman novelist had to create her own form • Felt Jane Austen was one woman who had done that • Believed the conventional commercial novel had become a cliché • Wanted to convey consciousness: emotion, thought, insight; particularly feminine consciousness

  18. Kew Gardens

  19. Kew Gardens Questions • If this is an experiment, what is Woolf experimenting with? What is she trying to represent? • What stands out to you in the story? • What is the point of view? • What happens in this story? • What themes or ideas can you find in it?

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