Virginia Woolf
In recent times there has been a renewed interest in Virginia Woolf and her work, from the Broadway play, “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” to the Academy award nominated film “The Hours” starring Nicole Kidman. This recent exposure, along with the fact that I have ancestors from England , has sparked my interest in this twentieth century British novelist.
During the early part of the twentieth century, artists and writers saw the world in a new way. Famed British novelist Virginia Woolf was very sensitive to this change, for she felt that human relationships such as ones between a husband and wife of master and servant were shifting, due to all of the political, religious, and social changes. These, of course, transformed into modifications in literature (Richter 3,4).
Conventional forms of writing did not portray truth, but rather dealt with certain aspects of life that were distorted and then pieced together via descriptions, coincidences, and transition passages (Blackstone 13). Feminine sensibility was an aspect that could be brought into the novel, and therefore Woolf employed new forms and techniques to her novels (Bernard 12). Through these changes, she consciously made the decision to change the novel from a genre that was developed and dominated by men, to a form that would depict the “movement of things under the surface--the free play of thought, emotion, insight” (Blackstone 12-13). Due to the transforming atmosphere of the time, Woolf was allowed to explore new territories.
At the thrust of Virginia Woolf's writing was the creation of reality. “The center or meeting place for experience was, to Virginia Woolf, the moment—a cross-section of consciousness in which perception and feelings conv...
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Naremore, James. “The World Without a Self: Virginia Woolf and the Novel.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Sharon K. Hall. Detroit: Gale Research, Vol. 5, 1981.
Richter, Harvena. Virginia Woolf, The Inward Voyage. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1925.
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Mary Beth Tinker was only thirteen years old in December of 1964 when she and four other students were suspended from school because they wore black armbands. The black armbands were a sign of protest against the Vietnam War. The school suspended the students and told them that they could not return to school until they agreed to take off the armbands. The students did not return to school until after the school’s Christmas break, and they wore black the rest of the year, as a sign of protest. The Tinker family, along with other supporters, did not think that the suspension was constitutional and sued the Des Moines Independent Community School District. The Supreme Court’s majority decision was a 7-2 vote that the suspension was unconstitutional (Tinker V. Des Moines).
Since both authors can relate to both age groups, they have written this article to describe the reasons behind Gen Y’s characteristics and allow older generations a chance to understand their younger counterparts. The article is written not towards Gen Y but instead is written for their critics. Since the article allows readers inside the lives of Gen Y members, it is directed at people who do not already understand this generation and all it has to offer to the world. The authors’ knowledge of the criticisms that Gen Y faces allows them to portray their purpose to intended audiences. They do all of this while remaining mindful of older generations that work full time and live busy lives by breaking the article up with headings and subheadings that allow readers to read only sections at a
It’s possible that Millennials may not be the brightest on certain facts as discussed by R. Smith Simpson in Are We Getting Our Share of the Best? Yet, neither is the rest of the country, shown when Simpson says, “Americans abroad are asked a great many questions about their country... A good half of our candidates could answer such questions with only the thinnest recital of facts; many could not discuss them at all”. This proves that all of Americans (not just Millennials) couldn’t answer certain questions, making it wrong to undermine Millennials by titling them as the dumbest generation. Another reason this title would be incorrect is because of the fact that Millennials’ thinking capacity is actually expanding. According to Sharon Begley in The Dumbest Generation? Don’t Be Dumb, “IQ scores in every country... have risen since the 1930s... the tests measure not knowledge but pure thinking capacity... then Gen Y’s [(Millennials)] ignorance of facts (or the facts that older people believe are important) reflects not dumbness but choice.” Therefore, if younger people and older people are the same in recalling facts about their country, but Millennials’ IQ scores are rising how could they be “the dumbest generation”?
___. Army Doctrine Reference Publication The Operations Process May 2012. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 2012.
I have chosen to write about Virginia Woolf, a British novelist who wrote A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, to name a few of her pieces of work. Virginia Woolf was my first introduction to feminist type books. I chose Woolf because she is a fantastic writer and one of my favorites as well. Her unique style of writing, which came to be known as stream-of-consciousness, was influenced by the symptoms she experienced through her bipolar disorder. Many people have heard the word "bipolar," but do not realize its full implications. People who know someone with this disorder might understand their irregular behavior as a character flaw, not realizing that people with bipolar mental illness do not have control over their moods. Virginia Woolf’s illness was not understood in her lifetime. She committed suicide in 1941.
Rosenmann, Ellen Bayuk. The Invisible Presence: Virginia Woolf and the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Louisiana State University Press. Baton Rouge, 1986.
In December 1965, a group of students from Des Moines, Iowa met at Christopher Eckhardt’s home in order to plan a protest. During the meeting, the students planned to wear black armbands throughout the holiday season to show public support for a truce in the Vietnam War. However, the principal of the school got word of the planned protest and quickly established a policy that stated any student wearing an armband would be asked to remove it. If they refused to do so, it would result in suspension. On December 16, 1965, the protest began and students Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt wore their armbands to school and were sent home. The following day John Tinker experienced the same result by wearing his armband as well. All three students
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
A girl who her whole life was expected to be with her family in the same faction, but
Virginia Woolf recognized that in Post-war England old social hierarchies had broken down, and that literature must rediscover itself in a new and altogether more fluid world; the realist novel must be superseded by one in which objective reality is replaced by the impressions of subjectiv conciousness. A new way of writing appeared, it was the famous "stream of Conciousness": It was developed a method in order to get the character through its conscience's states; the character is understood by the way it moves, talks, eats, looks, and everything it does.
Kane, Julie. Varieties of Mystical Experience in the Writings of Virginia Woolf. Twentieth Century Literature Vol 41 Iss 4 1995.
...rior and exterior nuances. Although it seems contradictory, Woolf's use of fragmented imagery and thought colliding together almost randomly yet linked beneath the surface by fine threads of coherency represents an attempt synthesize the novel with life.
Virginia Woolf begins her memoir Moments of Being with a conscious attempt to write for her readers. While writing her life story, however, she begins to turn inwards and she becomes enmeshed in her writing. By focusing on her thoughts surrounding the incidents in her life instead of the incidents themselves, she unconsciously loses sight of her outward perspective and writes for herself. Her memoir becomes a loose series of declarations of her beliefs connected only by her wandering train of thought. Although Moments of Being deals largely with her conjectures, she is not trying to convince the reader of these beliefs' validity since she is so absorbed in the act of writing. What begins as an outwardly focused memoir evolves into Virginia Woolf's exploration of her thoughts and feelings.
Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness style of narration is essential to her method of providing social criticism. Instead of forcing extreme physical situations or conflicts into her text, Woolf instead offers nuanced observations through her characters’ patterns and trains of thought. Virginia Woolf said of Mrs. Dalloway, “I want to criticise the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense” (Zwerdling), a statement that may surprise some readers. However, allowing the reader to witness each individual thought of the characters as they are linked together helps provide insight into how the social system influences their thoughts, memories, and ultimately their identities. The strength of Woolf’s social criticism comes from her ability to infer judgment in this fashion and presents interesting perspectives on class conflict, socialization self-restraint, regret, and coming to terms (or rejecting) with the conditions ...
Throughout her life Virginia Woolf became increasingly interested in the topic of women and fiction, which is highly reflected in her writing. To understand her piece, A Room of One’s Own Room, her reader must understand her. Born in early 1882, Woolf was brought into an extremely literature driven, middle-class family in London. Her father was an editor to a major newspaper company and eventually began his own newspaper business in his later life. While her mother was a typical Victorian house-wife. As a child, Woolf was surrounded by literature. One of her favorite pastimes was listening to her mother read to her. As Woolf grew older, she was educated by her mother, and eventually a tutor. Due to her father’s position, there was always famous writers over the house interacting with the young Virginia and the Woolf’s large house library.