GROUP LOVGISM VIRGINIA WOOLF 18821941 Virginia

GROUP LOVGISM

VIRGINIA WOOLF (18821941)

Virginia Woolf • Born in 1882, London • Her father Leslie Stephen (Victorian man of letters - first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography) • Her mother Julia Duckworth (of the Duckworth publishing family).

Virginia Woolf • 1895. Death of her mother. V. W. has the first of many nervous breakdowns. • 1904. Death of father. Beginning of second serious breakdown. • 1904. VW's first publication is an unsigned review in The Guardian.

Virginia Woolf • 1909. Lytton Strachey [homosexual] proposes marriage. • 1910. Works for women's suffrage • 1912. Marries Leonard Woolf. Travels for honeymoon to Provence, Spain, and Italy. Moves to Clifford's Inn.

Vita Sackville-West

Virginia Woolf • 1913. Mental illness and her first attempted suicide. Put in care of husband nurses • 1922. Jacop’s room published. Meets Vita Sackville -West with whom she has a brief love affair. • 1928. Orlando published - a fantasy dedicated to and based upon the life of Vita Sackville-West and her love of her ancestral home at Knole in Kent. • 1930. First meets Ethel Smyth - pipe-smoking feminist composer, who falls in love with VW.

Virginia Woolf • 1941. VW completes Between The Acts, her last novel, then fearing the madness which she felt engulfing her again, fills her pockets with stones and drowns herself in the River Ouse, near Monk's House.

VICTORIAN AGE • Materialistic view • Class discrimination • Strict rules, taboos on religious, artistic social, sexual issues. • Significance of wealth, prestige, power

AESTHETICISM • Art for art’s sake • Rejection of victorian notion(materialism) • Feelings, sensation, not political, social problems. • Death is nice according to aestheticism

MODERNISM • Developing innovative literary tecniques to reveal women’s experience and find an alternative to male-dominated views.

Stream of Consciousness • A style of writing to express to flow of a characters’ thoughts and feelings. • The technique aims to give readers the impression of being inside the mind of character.

Bloomsbury group • Its members were committed to a rejection of what they felt were the strictures and taboos of Victorianism on religious, artistic, social, and sexual matters. • They remained a fairly tight-knit group for many years; recent biographers have detailed their tangled personal relations.

• By the 1920 s Bloomsbury's reputation as a cultural circle was fully established to the extent that its mannerisms were parodied and Bloomsbury became a widely used term connoting an insular, snobbish aestheticism.

• Unique in the brilliance, variety, and output of its members, the group has remained the focus of widespread scholarly and popular interest.

Movements that influenced Virgina Woolf Feminism • Her father’s attitude towards her • Inequality between man and woman in terms of social life, rights, education etc. • Indifference of women towards their rights.

Sexuality: • Due to the sexual rape of her halfbrother in her childhood, she becomes sapphist. • Then she experiences crisis of madness which results in her suicide.

THE LEGACY

THEMES • • • Lack of communication. Man-dominated society. Socialism. Materialism, emperialism. Disloyalty of woman.

• Corruption of family institution • Conflict of expectations between man and woman • Class discrimination • Aestheticism • Getting awareness of woman about personal identity

CHARACTERS • • Gilbert Clandon Selfish Self-centered Conceited Victorian age upper class man Supporter of emperialism Indifferent to his wife Dominated male figure

• • • Angela Victorian age upper class woman Has an affair with a lower socialist man Coward Alone Lack of communication with her husband

• Passive female figure looked down on by her husband • Dependent on her husband • Dies for her love. • Seeks for real love • Modest

• • • B. M Supporter of socialism&communizm. Lower class man True lover of Angela Determined. Self-sacrifying. Modest

Sissy Miller • Cunning • Key woman as she reveals the truth about the love affair between her brother and Angela. • Lower class woman.

FIGURES OF SPEECH • The legacy: verbal irony • Pearl brooch: symbol refers to materialism • The relation between Angela and Gilbert: situational irony • Chinese boxes: symbol Angela’s relation with B. M. • The diary: symbol • The blank pages: symbol Angela begins to feel happiness with B. M but while she is waiting an answer from him, she doesn’t write anything down to her diary. Because, she doesn’t feel anything during that time. • The kerb: symbol