1、Unit 10 Virginia Woolf,To the LIghthouse,Contents,1. Life Experience and Virginia Woolfs Writing 2. Bloomsbury and Woolf 3. Quotations of Woolf 4. The Common Theme of Woolfs works 5. Woolfs Androgynous and A Room of Ones Own 6. The plot summary of To the LIghthouse 7. Questions and A Close Reading o
2、f the Text 8. Comments on the specific novel by Some critics 9. Discussion,Virginia Woolf (1882-1941),“Imaginative work. is like a spiders web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.“,English novelist and essayist,Virginia Woolf (1882-1941),General introduc
3、tion,Woolf is a great British writer who made an original contribution to the form of the novel, a distinguished essayist and critic, and a central figure of Bloomsbury group.,1. Life Experience and Virginia Woolfs Writing,Virginia Woolf was born in London, as the daughter of Julia Jackson Duckworth
4、, a member of the Duckworth publishing family, and Leslie Stephen, a literary critic, a friend of Meredith, Henry James, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and George Eliot, and the founder of the Dictionary of National Biography. Woolf was educated at home by her father, and grew up at the family home at Hy
5、de Park Gate. The sudden death of her mother in 1895, when Virginia was 13, and that of her half sister Stella two years later, led to the first of Virginias several nervous breakdowns. The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she was briefly institutionalized.,Her bre
6、akdowns and subsequent recurring depressive periods were also induced by the sexual abuse she and her sister Vanessa were subject to by their half-brothers.Throughout her life, Woolf was plagued by drastic mood swings. Though these recurring mental breakdowns greatly affected her social functioning,
7、 her literary abilities remained intact.,Following the death of her father in 1904, Woolf moved with her sister Vanessa and brother to the house in Bloomsbury, which would become central to activities of the Bloomsbury group.,Life,&,Works,Her works:,The Voyage Out (1915) Night and Day (1919) Jacobs
8、Room (1920) Monday or Tuesday (1921) Mrs Dalloway (1925) The Common Reader, First Series (1925) To the Lighthouse (1927) Orlando (1928) A Room of Ones Own (1929) The Waves (1931) Flush: A Biography (1933) The Common Reader, Second Series (1925) The Years (1937) Three Guineas (1938) Between the Acts
9、(1941),Posthumous Collection :,The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942) A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (1944),Questions about life and writing:,Please compare her life experience with the publication of her works, What is relationship between Woolf life suffering with her writing caree
10、r? What makes her a writer of stream of consciousness? What is the connection between personal experience and writings? Why are there so many blogs in modern world?,2. Woolf and The Bloomsbury Group,It is said that “The Bloomsbury Group was in essence an informal association based on interests and f
11、riendship. The members held more liberal views on art and social issues than their contemporaries and they often rejected the artistic, social and sexual restriction of the Victorian Age. The group had great influence on the forthcoming British avant-garde on art and literature. Virginia Woolf was o
12、ne of the key members of the group. However, by the early 1930s, the group ceased to exist in its original form.”,About Bloomsbury by Cambridge Companion,“Bloomsbury was neither an organisation nor self-consciously a movement (or part of a movement), still less a political party, which is not to say
13、 it had no politics. It did not organise itself, though for periods some of its members edited and or owned influential organs (e.g. Nation & Athenaeum, eventually absorbed into the New Statesman).* It had no manifesto, notwithstanding at least one attempt to claim Art as a platform for the group ca
14、use.,Whatever else it was, it was a group of friends, held together by ties of marriage and affection. It placed great emphasis on personal relations: personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger, wrote Forster, and, more famously, if I
15、 had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”,“They believed in laughter. (Laughter, in all its registers, from cruel to merry, resounds in Woolfs work, not least in her diary and letters.) Laughter, it should be said, satir
16、ical and otherwise, plays a key and provocative role in Bloomsbury aesthetics, as satire does more generally in modernism. “,Questions about the Bloomsbury and Woolf,1. what is in common between Woolfs works and the Bloomsbury spirit? 2. what is the best way to evaluate the current society people ar
17、e living?,3. Quotations of Woolf:,“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.“ (from A Room of Ones Own, 1929) “Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine.“ (Ibid.),“I feel certain that I am going mad again. I fe
18、el we cant go through another of those terrible times. And I shant recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I cant concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I dont think tw
19、o people could have been happier til this terrible disease came. I cant fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work.,And you will I know. You see I cant even write this properly. I cant read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. Y
20、ou have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I cant go on spoiling your life any longer. I dont think two people could have been
21、 happier than we have been.” (Her last note to her husband),Theme of Woolfs works,Woolf is considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. In her works she experimented with stream-of-consciousness, the underlying psychological as well as emotional motives of characters, and the v
22、arious possibilities of fractured narrative and chronology. In the words of E. M. Forster, she pushed the English language “a little further against the dark,“ and her literary achievements and creativity are influential even today.,Night and Day, a realistic novel set in London, contrasting the liv
23、es of two friends, Katherine and Mary. Jacobs Room was based upon the life and death of her brother Thoby. Mrs. Dalloway formed a giant web of thoughts of several groups of people during the course of a single day. There is little action, but much movement in time from present to past and back again
24、 through the characters memories. It centres on the efforts of Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged society woman, to organize a party.,About Mrs Dalloway,structure: Life experience of Mrs Dalloway within one normal day in London,in the form of stream of consciousness.The themes: the nature of personal
25、subjectivity,self, memory and consciousness, the passage of time, and the tensions between the forces of Life and Death. the fundamental question: What is it like to be alive?The novel offers a subtle critique of modern society and individuals recovering in the aftermath of the firstworld war.,About
26、 Mrs. Dalloway,Many critics describe Septimus as Clarissas alternate persona, the darker and internal personality compared to Clarissas social outlook, who has destroyed by fear and broken down. The dual aspects expose the complex nature of the self and the contradictary positive-negative elements i
27、n humanity. It also illustrates the opposite phases of the state of mind in ones life.,About Mrs. Dalloway,Deconstructing binary opposition: Woolf uses a new structure in Mrs. Dalloway in which she blurs the distinction between dream and reality, past and present. An authentic human being is created
28、 in this way, who simultaneously flows from the conscious to the unconscious, from the fantastic to the real, and from memory to the moment.,To the Lighthouse is set in two days ten years apart. The plot centers around the Ramsay familys anticipation of and reflection upon a visit to a lighthouse an
29、d the familial tensions. Orlando, a fantasy novel, traced the career of the androgynous protagonist from a masculine identity within the Elisabethan court to a feminine identity in 1928.,A Room of Ones Own,Virginia Woolfs concern with the relationship between women and writing is the dominant topic
30、of A Room of Ones Own(1929). In it she made her famous statement: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.“ The book originated from two expanded and revised lectures the author presented at Cambridge Universitys Newnham and Girton Colleges in October 1928. Woolf ex
31、amined the obstacles and prejudices that have hindered women writers. She separated women as objects of representation and women as authors of representation, and argued that a change in the forms of literature was necessary because most literature had been “made by men out of their own needs for th
32、eir own uses.”,In the last chapter Woolf touched the possibility of an androgynous(雌雄同体的)mind. Woolf refers to Coleridge who said that a great mind is androgynous and states that when this fusion takes place the mind is fully fertilized and ia able to use all its faculties. “Perhaps a mind that is p
33、urely masculine(男性的) cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine.“,The Waves is perhaps Woolfs most difficult novel. It follows in soliloquies the lives of six persons from childhood to old age. Three Guineas examined the necessity for women to make a claim for their own history and
34、literature.,Between the Acts,her last work, sums up and magnifies Woolfs chief preoccupations: the transformation of life through art, sexual ambivalence, and meditation on the themes of flux of time and life, presented simultaneously as corrosion and rejuvenation - all set in a highly imaginative a
35、nd symbolic narrative encompassing almost all of English history.,Some Comments on VW,法 国 作 家 莫 洛 亚 对 伍 尔 夫 的 创 作 有 着 措 辞 深 入 的 分 析：她 既 不 像 萨 特 那 样 判 断，也 不 像 劳 伦 斯 那 样 说 教。她 所 关 心的 只 是 为 读 者 提 供一 种 更 清 晰，更 新 颖 的 生 活 视 域，以 开 阔他 的 眼 界，使 他 能 够 从 表 面 事 件 之 下 发 现 那 些 难 以 察 觉 到的 思 想 感 情 活 动。但当代英国小说家安格斯威尔逊
36、指出，伍尔夫夫人的过敏的神 经和她对个人价值的过度关心是因为她有充裕的收入， 也因为她承袭了安定的上层社会悠久的传统。她忽视了 人是社会动物这一事实，只在社会的真空里描写人与人 之 间 的 关 系 和 主 观 感 受。英 国 文 学 评 论 家 马尔科姆 布拉德伯里 评 价 道：她 全 部 创 作 之 丰 富 和 成 就 之 巨 大 使 她 一 度 曾 被 指 责 为 狭 隘 的 作 品 变 得 越 来 越 成 为 她 的 时 代，她 的 精 神 世 界 和 现 代 艺 术 思 想 的 精 髓。,5. In A Room of Ones Own, Woolf analyzes the issu
37、e of writing by use of “androgyny”.,“in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the mans brain the man predominates over the woman, and in the womans brain the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together
38、, spiritually cooperating. If one is a man, still the woman part of his brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her.” “a great mind is androgynous when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is
39、purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine.”,6. To the Lighthouse,Part I: The Window Part II: Time Passes Part III: The Lighthouse,To the Lighthouse (plot summary),Part I: The Window The novel is set in the Ramsays summer home in the Hebrides, on the Isle of Skye. T
40、he section begins with Mrs Ramsay assuring James that they should be able to visit the lighthouse on the next day. This prediction is denied by Mr Ramsay, who voices his certainty that the weather will not be clear, an opinion that forces a certain tension between Mr and Mrs Ramsay, and also between
41、 Mr Ramsay and James. This particular incident is referred to on various occasions throughout the chapter, especially in the context of Mr and Mrs Ramsays relationship.,The Ramsays have been joined at the house by a number of friends and colleagues, one of them being Lily Briscoe who begins the nove
42、l as a young, uncertain painter attempting a portrayal of Mrs. Ramsay and her son James. Briscoe finds herself plagued by doubts throughout the novel, doubts largely fed by the statements of Charles Tansley, another guest, claiming that women can neither paint nor write. Tansley himself is an admire
43、r of Mr Ramsay and his philosophical treatises.,The section closes with a large dinner party. Mr Ramsay nearly snaps at Augustus Carmichael, a visiting poet, when the latter asks for a second serving of soup. Mrs Ramsay, who is striving for the perfect dinner party is herself out of sorts when Paul
44、Rayley and Minta Doyle, two acquaintances whom she has brought together in engagement, arrive late to dinner, as Minta lost her grandmothers brooch on the beach.,Part II: Time Passes The second section is employed by the author to give a sense of time passing. Woolf explained the purpose of this sec
45、tion, writing that it was an interesting experiment that gave the sense of ten years passing. This sections role in linking the two dominant parts of the story was also expressed in Woolfs notes for the novel, where above a drawing of an “H“ shape she wrote two blocks joined by a corridor.,During th
46、is period Britain begins and finishes fighting World War I. In addition, the reader is informed as to the fates of a number of characters introduced in the first part of the novel: Mrs Ramsay passes away, Prue dies in childbirth, and Andrew is killed in the war. Mr Ramsay is left alone without his w
47、ife to praise and comfort him during his bouts of mortal fear and his anguish over doubts regarding his self worth.,Part III: The Lighthouse In the final section, “The Lighthouse,” some of the remaining Ramsays return to their summer home ten years after the events of Part I, as Mr Ramsay finally pl
48、ans on taking the long-delayed trip to the lighthouse with his son James and daughter Cam(illa). The trip almost doesnt happen, as the children hadnt been ready, but they eventually take off.,En route, the children give their father the silent treatment for forcing them to come along. James keeps th
49、e sailing boat steady, and rather than receiving the harsh words he has come to expect from his father, he hears praise, providing a rare moment of empathy between father and son; Cams attitude towards her father has changed as well.,They are being accompanied by the sailor Macalister and his son, w
50、ho catches fish during the trip. The son cuts a piece of flesh from a fish he has caught to use for bait, throwing the injured fish back into the sea.,While they set sail for the lighthouse, Lily attempts to complete her long-unfinished painting. She reconsiders Mrs Ramsays memory, grateful for her
51、help in pushing Lily to continue with her art, yet at the same time struggling to free herself from the tacit control Mrs Ramsay had over other aspects of her life. Upon finishing the painting and seeing that it satisfies her, she realizes that the execution of her vision is more important to her than the idea of leaving some sort of legacy in her work a lesson Mr Ramsay has yet to learn.,
