Virginia Woolf was a pioneering modernist novelist known for her deep exploration of the inner workings of the human mind. Her literary style often eschewed traditional narrative techniques, favoring a stream-of-consciousness approach that delved into characters'
Main aim:to give voice to the
complex inner world of feeling
and memory.
The human personality: a continuous
shift of impressions and emotions.
Narrator: 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.
LITERARY CAREER
A Room of One's Own (1929)
Orlando (1928)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Jacob's room (1922)
Night and Day (1927)
The voyage out (1915)
LIFE
In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf.
In 1915 she started her literary career as a talented novelist, essayist 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 1904 she moved to Bloomsbury and with her sister Vanessa Bell, she became a member of the Bloomsbury Group, the avant-garde of early 20th-century London
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 and sexual abuse led to depression.
stream of cosciousness vs. traditional technique
... corrisponds to real, chronological time. Narration, description, dialogue and commentary by the narrator.
The action of the plot moves back and forth through present time to memories of past events and dreams of the future. Dramatic monologue and free association.
