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Essay about Virginia Woolf

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Virginia Woolf is not unlike any other truly good artist: her writing is vague, her expression can be inhibited, and much of her work is up to interpretation from the spectator. Jacob’s Room is one of her novels that can be hard to digest, but this is where the beauty of the story can be found. It is not written in the blatant style of the authors before her chose and even writers today mimic, but rather Jacob’s Room appears more like a written painting than a book. It is as if Woolf appeared tired and bored of the black and white style of writing that dominated her culture and chose to use a paintbrush to write her story. This individualistic technique is essential to how Woolf creates a portrait of Jacob, the title …show more content…

Jacob was “the only one of her sons who never obeyed her” (21), she seems unable to understand her own son. The impression one gets from Betty Flanders about Jacob is blurred and distant. Betty see’s the world “looking through her tears” (18) and communicates with Jacob mostly through letters, without personal contact. Even in the letters, Jacob is hardly the tangible proof of validation that Betty is hoping for. The letters offer Betty, in blatant curtness, create the portrait of Jacob that his life is mystifying and uncertain. “She read his letter, posted at Milan, ‘Telling me,’ she complained...’really nothing that I want to know’; but she brooded over it” (157). Betty Flanders impressions of Jacob show the disconnection from her life and Jacob’s, but also her continuous need for his love in her life. Jacob is continually called “distinguished-looking, seeing him for the first time that no doubt is the word for him” (77). This description is used throughout the novel, a description that is both vague and telling at the same time. We know that Jacob is attractive and alluring, two traits that make him a prime romantic interest to many of his peers. Bonamy, Clara, Florinda, and Fanny are all characters that are attracted to Jacob’s presence. Yet, none of them ever seem able to understand him. All of these characters seem to be stuck in the same void of true connection with Jacob, one that continues the detachment and misreading of Jacob by his

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