##ism Of Modernism In Virginia Woolf's 'Modern Fiction'

    I chose to compare and contrast two women authors from different literary time periods.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) as a representative of the Victorian age (1832-1901) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) as the spokeswoman for the Modernist (1914-1939) mindset.  Being women in historical time periods that did not embrace the talents and gifts of women; they share many of the same issues and themes throughout their works - however, it is the age in which they wrote that shaped their expressions of these themes.  Although they lived only decades apart their worlds were remarkably different - their voices were muted or amplified according to the beat of society's drum.

Virginia Woolf was one of the most influential modernist writers during the early twentieth century. Like many female authors, Woolf was considered to be a “feminist;” however, Woolf was not ashamed of the feminist label and wrote two volumes of feministic essays. She wrote in a way to convey a woman’s thoughts, feelings, perspective and attitudes of that time. Although Virginia Woolf faced many hardships and losses, she allowed them to shape her into an inspirational and influential writer that stood apart from the other authors of her time.

In the novel To The Lighthouse Virginia Woolf uses literary techniques in order to express the character’s thoughts and emotions. Woolf incorporated her own experiences into her work in order to cope with lifes struggles. She had based the major characters in the novel off of her family and herself. For example Mrs. Ramsay was based off of her mother and Lily Briscoe represented herself. Virginia Woolf wrote in a new style of writing that was popular during the world wars called modernism. Modernism lasted roughly from the 1910’s into the 1960’s. This period of writing focused more on the inner self than nature, like the Romantics before them had. Modernist writers were influenced by those who raised questions about the rationality of the human mind, such as Sigmund Freud. By analyzing the stream of consciousness technique and indirect interior monologue along with narrated time Woolf expresses the character’s inner mind and perception.

Virginia Woolf is often categorized as being an aesthetic writer. Most of her works played largely on the concept of suggestion. They addressed many social issues especially those regarding feminine problems. Woolf was acutely aware of her identity as a woman and she used many of writings as outlets for her frustrations. According to her doctrine, the subjugation of women is a central fact of history, a key to most of our social and psychological disorders (Marder 3). The two works I will focus on is A Room of One's Own and "A Society" from Monday or Tuesday. They are both works that challenge the roles of men and women.

Modernism is the heartbeat of culture, or as Clement Greenberg (1992:754) states, modernism involves of what “is truly alive in our culture” and it includes more than just art and literature. Western civilization began to interrogate their foundations and progressed into a self-critical society (Greenberg 1992:754). This notion began with the theories of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804); he criticized the means itself of criticism (Greenberg 1992:754). Therefore, Greenberg (1992:754) perceived Kant as the first real Modernist.

Virginia Woolf was born Stephen in 1882, she passed away in 1941. She had four siblings and grew up in London, but St. Ives in Cornwall was the long-term summer residency of her family. Her mother passed away in 1895, which was the starting point of Virginia Woolf’s history of depression, within a ten year period her father and her elder brother also died (Lavizzari 1991 251). These biographical aspects are relevant, in so far that some events of to the Lighthouse are influenced, or mirror them. To the Lighthouse was Woolf’s fifth novel and the publication with which she felt that she finally had successfully established herself as a writer (Bell 1980 137).

Poetry is an art borne of a love for language and a want for individual expression. Especially evident during times of transition, poetry can be used to define exisistence or accentuate fantasy. The Modernist movement provided room for experimentation and provocation, proclaiming, "out with the old, in with the new”. Edward Estlin Cummings illustrated himself as an exemplar example of the Modernist poetry and challenged the expectations of contemporary poetry.

As there was a rapid change in “normal” modernist literature searched for new realities and discerned what was unreal within them. The novel Passing serves as an example that encompasses and illustrates what Childs refers to as the modernist creation of “the tradition of the new”.

Research Topic and Annotated Bibliography Research Topic Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941) was an English writer, one of the foremost Modernists, and influential member of the Bloomsbury intellectual group. My topic will cover the influence of “war” as both historical events and intellectual concept on her life, particularly concentrating on her wartime writings: Three Guineas, Between the Acts and the Voyage Out. Alternatively, I will look at the influences of the Bloomsbury Group’s philosophy on Virginia Woolf as a writer. Particularly, I will look at her views on the topics of pacifism, feminism and sexuality as seen in her political novels: A Room of Ones Own and Orlando.

The comparative study of texts and their appropriations reflect the context and values of their times, demonstrating how context plays a significant role. Virginia Woolf’s novel modernists Mrs Dalloway (1925) and Steven Daldry’s post modernists film The Hours (2002), an extrapolation, explore the rapid change of social and philosophical paradigms of the 20th century, focusing on women whose rich inner lives are juxtaposed with their outer lives. They place the characters in their respective context, to respond to, the horrors of the consequences of war and AIDS and the vagaries and difficulties of relationships, sexuality and mental illness. Through their differing intertextual perspectives the film and novel represent similar values, within different contextual concerns.

People were searching for restoration in the aftershock of World War II. The modernists in this period were trying to find a way to resuscitate themselves in a tragic environment. There was a viewpoint that the individual had to discover a new style of connecting to humanity in a different way.

in a world where previous value systems seemed dead and new beliefs powerless to be

The aim of this paper is to examine the elements of modernism in The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Sons and Lovers by D.H Lawrence and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

Post World War I London society was characterized by a flow of new luxuries available to the wealthy and unemployment throughout the lower classes. Fascinated by the rapidly growing hierarchal social class system, Virginia Woolf, a young writer living in London at the time, sought to criticize it and reveal the corruption which lay beneath its surface. Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf’s fourth novel, was born in 1925 out of this desire precisely. A recurring focus in many of Woolf’s major novels is the individual and his or her conscious perceptions of daily life. Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf uses this technique, known as a “stream-of-consciousness,” to trace the thoughts of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith during one day in London five years after the Great War. It is exactly this narrative technique which allows Woolf to compare the lives of these two characters which belong to different social classes to argue that social placement has a negative effect on one’s life and psychological being.

What further contributed to the rise of modernism was the First World War, which shell-shocked many. People lost their sense of certainty and it made them change their points of views. It made modernists question civilisation. This is seen in T.S Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” which questions