The Literary and Modernist Legacy of Virginia Woolf

The Life of Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882. She came from an upper class, in fact both her parents were intellectuals. There were many tragic event in her life, such as the death of her mother and two sisters marked a nervous breakdown that will led to migraine attacks and phantom voices in her head. After the death of her father, she moved to Bloomsbury where she founded a circle of intellectuals known as Bloomsbury group, and here she met her future husband, Leonard Woolf. In 1915 she published her first novel “The voyage out”, and then she attempted.

Woolf's Narrative Techniques

Later, Virginia and her husband founded the Virginia Woolf uses the technique of indirect interior monologue, in fact we can enter in characters’ inner world without the help of the narrator. The concepts of time and space are the same of the Joyce: they are compressed or dilated, in fact a single moment can cast for a long time. She is interested in everything happens inside, in particular in the impressions of the characters. She is interest in women’s sensibility which has made her a heroine to many feminist. In Virginia Woolf’s indirect monologue there is still occasional presence of the narrator, who however invisible, gives some order to character’s thoughts, and gives us some guideline.

The Moment of Being

Moment of being is very similar to Joyce’s epiphany. It is a moment of intensity, perception or vision that illuminate our lives so we be become aware of something that has peach our consciousness. Virginia explains this concept examining an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. We receive many impressions that come to us in every moment of our life. Life is not divided into bit but it is something completed, like a halo that surrounds us. When we receive them so we became aware of something, and this is a moment of being.

The Story of Clarissa Dalloway

The story is set in London in one day. The protagonist is Clarissa Dalloway, she is 51 and she is the wife of a politician. She goes to buy some flowers for a party. When she was the florist for the event saw Septimus Smith, a war veteran who suffers from mental disorders, and this should be locked up in a clinic. At the end of the story Septimus throws himself out of the window under the eyes of his wife. In the meantime had started the party Clarissa. At the party, Dr. William Bradshaw, Septimus’ psychologist, arrives late and gives the bad news to Clarrissa, and although she did not know the suicide feels a strong sense of unease. The novel ends when Clarissa meets Peter, a man that she loved and she appears to him in all her vitality.

Modernist Techniques in the Novel

In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia uses all the modernist technique. The beginning of the novel is a brilliant example of interior time, that is in contrast with chronological time (time of clock). Clarissa walks around London and everything capture her attention, in fact the physical impressions are interwoven with the mental ones, because she stats to remember her past. An important aspect is that Septimus and Clarissa became dependent even if they never really met. Like Clarissa, Septimus too moves around Dublin and the physical act of walking is interwoven whit the chaos in his mind. But unlike Clarissa, Septimus is unable to put together all the impressions and sensations he receives, but he chooses to die while Clarissa decides to live and embraces life.