Virginia Woolf’s early novels: Finding a voice (original) (raw)

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf

2006

For students of modern literature, the works of Virginia Woolf are essential reading. In her novels, short stories, essays, polemical pamphlets and in her private letters she explored, questioned and refashioned everything about modern life: cinema, sexuality, shopping, education, feminism, politics and war. Her elegant and startlingly original sentences became a model of modernist prose. This is a clear and informative introduction to Woolf's life, works, and cultural and critical contexts, explaining the importance of the Bloomsbury group in the development of her work. It covers the major works in detail, including To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, The Waves and the key short stories. As well as providing students with the essential information needed to study Woolf, Jane Goldman suggests further reading to allow students to find their way through the most important critical works. All students of Woolf will find this a useful and illuminating overview of the field.

Review of Virginia Woolf and the Essay by Beth Carole Rosenberg & Jeanne Dubino

Woolf Studies Annual, 1999

Reading; Woolf and Genre; and The Essay and Feminism. The purpose of this collection is simple: it attempts to situate Woolf the essayist on the same critical plane as Woolf the novelist and Woolf the feminist. Rosenberg and Dubino's excellent "Introduction" surveys four stages of critics' receptions of Woolf's essays. The first stage, 1923-1941, denotes the contemporary reception during which time critics did not engage Woolf's ideas but rather used her texts "as a springboard from which to launch their own opinions" (3). The second stage, 1941-1970, signals "three decades of backlash" when critics either "treated [Woolf's] essays only in the context of her fiction" or engaged her essays on their own terms mostly "to diminish them" (2). The third stage, 1970 to the present, marks the feminist recep

A FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE OF VIRGINIA WOOLF’S

Abstract--Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway (1925) primarily focuses on Clarissa Dalloway’s multifaceted identity. In this study I intend to shed more light on the problematic of subjectivity from feminist perspective. The present study draws on Woolf’s own understanding regarding the formation of identity as well as Simone de Beauvoir’s, Judith Butler’s and Susan Bordo’s to locate Clarissa’s feminine qualities and resistance in the novel. All the above mentioned figures believe in the constructivity of identity formation: that Clarissa's identity, far from being given in advance for her to step into, emerge over time through discursive and other social practices; her identity is inflected and constructed by ideologies of gender and other social constructs. The interactions between language and gender on the one hand, and feminist theory on the other, are of tremendous significance in this study. The present study challenges the essentialist notion that identities in general, and gender identities in particular, are inevitable, natural and fixed. Clarissa’s identity needs to be constructed socially through language, but this very language is patriarchal and therefore, marginalizes feminine identity. I conclude that Clarissa Dalloway as a social being is not able to achieve a stable and unified position as a subject and her struggles are frustrated and ultimately lead to defeat of constructing a unified subjectivity.

Virginia Woolf as A Feminist Writer

is considered as the feminist and modernist figure of 20 th century literature. Her works touch on many important aspects of her time. Woolf's ideas on gender equality has been expressed in her works. Her writing style and use of 'woman's language' provides an insight to the woman's life in her time. Her representation of women relies heavily on feminist perspectives, homosexuality and gender inequality. Nevertheless, a feminist critic of her works can't be easily done. A room of One's Own and Three Guineas are considered Virginia Woolf' most powerful writings. This paper will scrutinize thoroughly her writing from a feminist perspective taking some of her books.

Review of \u3cem\u3eVirginia Woolf and the Essay\u3c/em\u3e by Beth Carole Rosenberg & Jeanne Dubino

1999

Reading; Woolf and Genre; and The Essay and Feminism. The purpose of this collection is simple: it attempts to situate Woolf the essayist on the same critical plane as Woolf the novelist and Woolf the feminist. Rosenberg and Dubino's excellent "Introduction" surveys four stages of critics' receptions of Woolf's essays. The first stage, 1923-1941, denotes the contemporary reception during which time critics did not engage Woolf's ideas but rather used her texts "as a springboard from which to launch their own opinions" (3). The second stage, 1941-1970, signals "three decades of backlash" when critics either "treated [Woolf's] essays only in the context of her fiction" or engaged her essays on their own terms mostly "to diminish them" (2). The third stage, 1970 to the present, marks the feminist recep