War in Virginia Woolf's Fictional and Non-Fictional Works
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War in Virginia Woolf's Fictional and Non-fictional Works Iqbal Mahdi Salih In fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Wales School of English Literature Bangor University 2015 Abstract This thesis argues that Virginia Woolf can be seen as essentially a ‗war-writer‘; the impact on her imagination, evident in both her fiction and non-fictional writing, of the First World War was profound. However, the sense of insecurity and anxiety which the war instills in Woolf, present directly in her portrayal of the tragedies of Jacob Flanders (Jacob‟s Room), Septimus Warren Smith (Mrs. Dalloway), and Andrew Ramsay (To the Lighthouse), never really goes away. The insecurities of 1930s, in particular the Spanish Civil War, in which her nephew Julian Bell was killed, are also present in Woolf‘s writing and the fear of a new war means that her anxieties, vulnerability of Civilisation, continue until her death by suicide in 1941. One could indeed argue that Woolf was herself a victim of war. The thesis argues that fundamental aspects of Woolf‘s writing are related to the presence throughout her adult life of the threat of War: her continued concern with gender has its roots in her seeing the First War and the likelihood of future conflict as being due to the prevailing dominance of masculinity, of ‗subconscious Hitlerism‘; the post-1918 sense of insecurity of values, of what was ‗real‘, demands from her a new mode of narrative. In other words, her famous urging of novelists to ‗look within‘ has its origins in her sense of the outer world of the Post-War years as insecure and ‗unreal‘ and that sense of unreality continues through the 1930s, as evident in her non-fiction. This study consists of four chapters. It opens with an introduction that concentrates on the Bloomsbury Group, its attitudes towards the state, politics and war; it shows also Woolf‘s pacifist views towards war. In the First and Second chapters Virginia Woolf‘s response to the First World War and its aftermath is discussed, including discussion of the social effects of the war, new social attitudes in the post-war period and how Woolf responds to the war and its impact in her novels, essays, diaries and letters. The war itself is dealt with through analysing four of Woolf‘s novels written in the post war period: Jacob‟s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves. Like Virginia Woolf herself, the characters of these novels suffer the horror of the war and its consequences, a suffering that can be seen in Woolf‘s combatant and non-combatant characters. Having some combatant relatives and friends, Woolf consistently and skilfully portrays the sense of duty and patriotism that caused young men to join the army, the effect of the loss of some of these young men on those left behind and the emotional and psychological effects of the war on those young men who survived. The theme of war is also shown through the sense of vulnerability which Woolf‘s characters experienced, exacerbated by the war; Freud‘s notion of ―The Uncanny‖ in his 1919 essay on that topic is employed to indicate the state of mind of some of the characters in the post-war period. Woolf‘s use of images of the unpredictable sea and of the indifferent flow of water as emblematic of the flow of time and natural process to which her characters are subject is also discussed; war is essentially seen as an aspect of this arbitrary process. Woolf‘s notions of masculinity in these novels, as culpable for the conflicts which lead to war, are also discussed. The Third Chapter focuses on the political tensions of the Thirties that witnessed the rise of Hitler and the violence of Fascism. These political forces played a role in the Spanish Civil War that caused the death of Julian Bell, Virginia Woolf‘s nephew, an event that provided a focus for Woolf‘s anxieties about the contemporary political situation. Julian is seen as another example of the gallery of young men who are the victims of war in her fiction, coloured by her experience of the death of Thoby Stephen. Woolf‘s anxiety and fear in this period are registered through tracing her diaries, letter and essays written in this period. Like her previous novels, The Years manifests the theme of war directly and indirectly through the increasing images of time and process, images of danger and death, the awareness of the masculine world as playing a role in waging war. The characters‘ growing sense of vulnerability and their awareness of the threat that would invade their peace represented by the Nazi and fascist danger, is discussed; these are concerns which led Woolf to discuss how to prevent war in her book Three Guineas, published one year after The Years. The Final chapter concentrates on the Second World War and the bitter impact which it had on Woolf‘s private life, ultimately reflected in her works written in this period: diaries, letters, some of her essays, and her final novel Between the Acts, in which Woolf explicitly and implicitly manifests the theme of war. These works show how Woolf responded to the war that caused her constant fear and anxiety, which she herself ended by committing suicide. Contents Introduction: Woolf, Bloomsbury and Civilisation .................................................................................. 1 Chapter One: Virginia Woolf‘s Response to the First World War ......................................................... 40 I. Virginia Woolf‘s Jacob‟s Room ...................................................................................................... 66 II. Virginia Woolf‘s Mrs Dalloway ..................................................................................................... 96 Chapter Two: Virginia Woolf‘s To the Lighthouse and The Waves ..................................................... 126 I. To the Lighthouse .......................................................................................................................... 126 II. The Waves .................................................................................................................................... 152 Chapter Three: Virginia Woolf‘s Response to the Political Tensions of the 1930s........................... 188 I. General Historical Outlook ............................................................................................................ 188 II. Virginia Woolf‘s Outlook on the Early Thirties ........................................................................... 190 III. Woolf and the Spanish Civil War ............................................................................................... 194 IV. Virginia Woolf‘s The Years ........................................................................................................ 208 Chapter Four: Virginia Woolf's Response to the Second World War .................................................. 241 I. Woolf and the Phoney War ............................................................................................................ 241 II. Virginia Woolf in the War Years ................................................................................................. 245 III. Virginia Woolf‘s Between the Acts ............................................................................................. 260 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 290 Bibliography of Sources Consulted ...................................................................................................... 295 Acknowledgements I would like first to thank the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research for giving me a research grant, which facilitated this project. I would like also to thank the Iraqi Cultural Attaché and his staff for their support and help. I cannot express enough thanks and gratitude to my great supervisor Professor Tony Brown for his constant support, recommendations, expert guidance and his enduring kindness, and patience without which this project would never have taken its final form. Indeed, if any credit is awarded for this thesis, it must surely go to him. Many thanks are due also to the School of English Literature and Bangor University and its librarians, especially those in the Main Library for their kindness and their help in providing services and references. It pleases me to thank my family, especially my sister Shifa on whom I have depended for support and encouragement. Abbreviations JR Jacob‟s Room MD Mrs. Dalloway TL To the Lighthouse TW The Waves TY The Years BA Between the Acts DI The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Vol. I DII The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Vol. II DIII The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Vol. III DIV The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Vol. IV DV The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Vol. V LI The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Vol. I LII The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Vol. II LIII The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Vol. III LIV The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Vol. IV LV The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Vol. V. LVI The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Vol. VI TG Three Guineas EV Eminent Victorians Introduction: Woolf, Bloomsbury and Civilisation Virginia Woolf lived her whole life against a background of War. She was of that generation which lived through two world wars with full adult awareness of the dangers and horrors which those two wars unleashed on civilized life, changing human consciousness and human values irrevocably. Indeed it was the years through which she lived which