Modernism - James Joyce and Virgnia Woolf

Modernism

In 1901 Queen Victoria died and it was the end of an era of stability. She was succeeded by Edward VII, who marked a period of social changes and reforms. In 1914, First World War breaks out. This war left the county in a disillusioned and cynical mood and the literature produced during this period reflects the themes of destruction and chaos.
The term Modernism refers to a variety of artistic and philosophical movements including symbolism, futurism, surrealism, dada and others. The beginning of the 20th century is generally considered as its starting point as it saw the end of Queen Victoria’s reign and coincided with the publication of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Freud’s Theory of the Unconscious. Modernism movement breaks with 19th century tradition: it rejects traditional and well-structured plot, the presence of many characters, the realism, the general optimism and the trust in human progress. The main themes are: anxiety, uncertainty, instability, isolation of modern man and doubts. The main features of modernist writers are: experimentation with traditional literary form, use of new technique such as the stream of consciousness and find a way to represent the self and the inner world of the characters. The main focus is the subject and its complexity.

Vita, stile, temi di James Joyce

James Joyce is considered one of the greatest representatives of Modernism. He was born in Dublin in 1882 and he studied at University College. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle, who would become his wife. He moved to Trieste to work as a language teacher and become friends with Italo Svevo. In 1914, when the war broke out, he moved to Zurich and he met the poet Ezra Pound. In 1920 he moved to Paris and died in Zurich in 1941.
The first part of his production is marked by a realistic approach (his plots are linear; language is controlled and syntax is logical). The second part of his production is more experimental: he uses the stream of consciousness technique.
The main themes of Joyce are: paralysis of the modern world; lack of heroism in the modern world (use of ancient mythos to draw parallels between contemporary world and the ancient past); Ireland, with whom he has a double relationship (he abandons it, but he sets all of his main work there; it is represented as a country dominated by stagnation and statis).
Joyce uses stream of consciousness to represent the uncontrolled flow of thoughts of human mind without punctuation. He employed the technique of epiphany: it is the sudden spiritual manifestation caused by an external situation that gives a revelation about the character or the surrounding.

Dubliners

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories about the people of Dublin published in 1914. The last and longest story, “The dead”, can be considered Joyce’s first masterpiece. It is both the summary and climax of the whole collection. The stories are divided in 4 groups: childhood, adolescence, maturity, public life. The city of Dublin is seen as a static and provincial town that gives its inhabitants no chance to grow and develop their own potential. In fact, Joyce presents us the paralysis of Dublin. The paralysis is both physical than moral, linked to religion, politics and culture. The main theme is the failure to find a way out of paralysis.
There isn’t the omniscient narrator: each story is told from by a character. He uses direct and indirect speech. The language used in all the stories suits the age, the social class and the role of the characters. There is the mix of realism and symbolism.

“The Dead” (from Dubliners)

After attending a dinner party, Gabriel and his wife Gretta arrive at the hotel, where Gretta bursts into tears and tells Gabriel about Michael Furey, a boy she had dated when she was a young girl. At the end of the story, Gretta is asleep and Gabriel is watching the snow fall. He realizes that he is growing older, and he imagines the falling snow as a force that buries people in the forgotten depths of time.

Ulysses

Ulysses was published in Paris in 1922. The novel is set in Dublin in one day (16th June 1904). The main character is Leopold Bloom, a common man. Leopold wanders around the streets and meets a writer, Stephen Dedalus (considered Joyce’s alter ego). Stephen becomes momentarily Bloom’s adopted son and he takes him home. At home there is Molly (Boom’s wife), a singer who is waiting for her lover, a music director.
The novel is divided in 18 chapters. It follows the structure of Jomer’s Odyssey, the journey home from the Trojan war to his wife Penelope. The main conflicts are: moderation and extremism; happiness and despair.

Vita, stile, temi di Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882 into a family of intellectuals. She didn’t go to university but she was surrounded by intellectuals and artists. There were many tragic events in her life, such as the death of the mother and of the two sisters and the rape by his half-brother. All this marked a nervous breakdown in her. In 1904 she moved to Bloomsbury where she founded the Bloomsbury Group, a group of artists. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf and founded the Hogarth Press. The second World War increased her fears also because many of his friends participate in the first World War and died. She wrote many novels. One of them, “A room of one’s own”, is considered her most feminist work. In fact, she was a member of suffragette’s movement. She committed suicide in the river Ouse in 1941.
Virginia Woolf uses interior monologue to render the workings of the mind of the characters. In her novel the omniscient narrator disappears and the point of view shifts inside the different characters’ mind. She was interested in giving voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory. She uses stream of consciousness and makes a difference between moment of being and moment of non-being: moments of being are acts experienced intensely; moments of non-being are moments that the individual is not conscious of experiencing. Her moment of being is similar to Joyce’s epiphany. Joyce shows his characters’ thoughts directly through interior monologue, while Woolf always maintains a logical and grammatical organization.
The main themes of Virginia Woolf are: womanhood and the difference between subjective time (the time of the mind) and objective time (chronological time).

Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway was published in 1925. The story takes place in one day in June in London, five years after World War I. London is full of noise and the Big Ben strikes. Clarissa Dalloway is a middle-aged woman and she is organizing a dinner party. She goes to buy flowers for the party and, walking through London, she remembers her old life in Bourton. There is another character, Mr. Septimes, a war survivor, but they never meet. Septimus suffers from mental disorders because he saw his friend Evans die during the war; for this reason, he goes to the psychiatrist. Clarissa returns home after buying flowers, and is unexpectedly visited by Peter Walsh who she had turned down to marry her husband. At the end, Mr. Septimus commits suicide. At the party, Clarissa discovers from the psychiatrist that Septimus had committed suicide. She feels connected with Septimus story. This allows her to accept death and to embrace life.
The main themes are: the contrast between life and death, the fragmentation of the self and of outer reality and the complexity of every ordinary character on the most ordinary day.
Woolf uses stream of consciousness technique; she never abandons the stability of syntax and uses a third-person omniscient narrator. She employs the tunnelling technique: she uses memory and shared experience to unite the characters. Clarissa’s and Septimus’s lives run parallel; they never meet but they are strictly linked.

“This moment of June” (from Mrs. Dalloway)

It's a nice morning in June and Clarissa Dalloway is going around London, getting ready to the party of the evening. London is full of noise. Big Ben strikes. The fine weather reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton. She sees herself at eighteen. She makes observations to herself about the various people and things she sees. The war is over, life seems to spring out all around her and Mrs. Dalloway loves it all. The narrator delves into the character's mind and tells her story through a combination of dialogue, interior monologue, and free indirect discourse.