Virginia Woolf

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Second World War increased her anxiety and fears. She became haunted by the terror of loosing her mind. Virginia drowns herself in a river in 1941. HER IDEAS She was an unconventional woman of that time. In fact she was a female writer and she was a feminist. In those days women had to take care of the house and family. Women had to marry and find a good husband to elevate their social status. Therefore it was very rare for a woman to be an intellectual and to be part of literary circles. In fact Virginia showed that there is a different way of being a wife and a woman. She challenged Victorian values, which were founded on an ideal of morality and respectability. In fact Virginia strongly criticizes Victorian age, based on appearance, good manners, superficiality, hypocrisy. She was a modernist, she was one of the pioneers of using stream of consciousness as a narrative device, alongside contemporaries such as Marcel Proust and James Joyce. In her works she develops a sensitive style of narration giving voice to the complex inner world of feelings and memories. She developed the conviction that the traditional method of telling stories in a chronological order gives only a superficial and imperfect presentation of life. So she experimented with a new kind of novel in which time was no longer chronological but was reduced to the time of the character's mind. Elements of the past, the present and the future are all contemporary and overlap. She describes the inner world of the characters (thoughts, feeling), while the actions are not important because they represent external reality and superficiality. Everything happens inside, in the subconscious. She uses the technique known as interior monologue, stream of consciousness and free association of ideas. THEMES Modernist themes: sense of crisis, difficulty in communication. But also solitude, mental illness, time, the double, distinction between dreams and reality, prejudices against women. MRS DALLOWAY It's a novel which covers one June day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fashionable high society woman. The novel is set in London in 1923. Clarissa lives in London and she is married to a Member of Parliament. The novel doesn't tell a story. The narration follows the characters, who think and walk through London. Clarissa that day is organizing her party and spends all the day preparing it. Clarissa goes out to buy some flowers for the party. As she enters the flower shop, Clarissa sees Septimus Smith, a WWI veteran, and his wife Lucrezia. Clarissa represents the typical bourgeois woman of the 1900s: snobbish, superficial, her only interest is to prepare the party and get noticed. Septimus suffers from mental disorders due to the war and is forced by his wife to sessions with psychiatrist William Bradshaw. Septimus is locked up in a clinic, but that same evening he throws himself out of the window in front of his wife's eyes. Clarissa learns about this tragic event during the party. Clarissa retreats to the privacy of a small room to consider Septimus's death. She reflects on the meaning of life, death and time. The narrator describes Clarissa's thoughts and in this way we can know her and her past. The narrator changes focus, describing the thoughts of different characters. Septimus has been seen as Clarissa's double who represents her hidden fears and inability to face life. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE This novel is divided into three parts. The first part presents Mr and Mrs Ramsay and their eight children on holiday in their summer house with the poet and painter Lily Briscoe. James, the youngest child, wants to make a boat trip to the lighthouse. His mother supports the idea but his father objects to the plan because of the weather. The second part of the novel shows the effects of the passing of time. After ten years the house is now abandoned because the family has stopped going there. Mrs Ramsay Has died, one of her daughters died in childbirth and one of the sons died in the First World War. In part three surviving characters return to the house and finally Mr Ramsey takes James to the Lighthouse by boat. Lily Briscoe, inspired by her memory of Mrs Ramsey, completes a painting she had begun on the first visit. Mrs Ramsay is like the lighthouse that continues to illuminate her family and take care of them even after death. Mrs Ramsey embodies Virginia Woolf's mother. She is a beautiful, caring woman who loves her children and her family. She is the one who holds the family together. Time passes and causes tragedies and deaths. But in subjectivity Mrs Ramsey never dies, she is always present in the family and watches over them. The sea represents the journey. It is also an internal journey in which characters look back to the past and they grow. The waves represent the cyclic nature of life. ORLANDO Orlando is a poet who was born in the age of Elizabeth I in 1588. He lives on through the centuries and ends up in Woolf's own time. He doesn't grow old. He covers different important roles, has a lot of great experiences. He is characterized by a sensitivity typical of a woman. One morning he wakes up as a woman. He has the strength of a man and woman's grace. The greatness of this novel is the meeting point that Woolf found between man and woman, often considered as two extremely different and irreconcilable natures. THREE GUINEAS It is important for women to be financially independent, as in this way they will also be mentally and psychologically free. Material wealth makes women free. A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN: Feminist essay published in 1929. It describes the obstacles and form of discrimination women have always met. She examines the reasons why there have been so few women writers. It tells the story of Judith Shakespeare, imaginary Shakespeare's sister who, despite having the same talent as him, never had the same fame due to discrimination against women. Judith grew up in a cultured and educated family. She loved to read and write, but she was prevented from doing so because a woman's job is to do the housework. Judith did not have the opportunity to educate herself as women were not allowed. She is unhappy with her life. Her parents are sorry for her unhappiness, but force her to behave as she was fit for a woman because they know that she will have no future otherwise. When Judith knows that she will have to marry a man she does not love, she decides to escape to London and looks for a job as a playwright in a theater. Initially she is rejected but then she is hired by the theater manager. He doesn't hire her for her talent but because he wants to take advantage of her. She becomes pregnant and, disappointed in her life, commits suicide. His death goes unnoticed. Virginia explains that women have no intellectual freedom and are treated like slaves in this society. A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN is a material space where women can write and read without having to take care of the house and children. It is also a mental and interior space, to express their ideas and their feelings.