DOCSLIB.ORG

The Function of the Mirror Image in the Perception of the Self in Virginia Woolf’S Fiction

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Function of the Mirror Image in the Perception of the Self in Virginia Woolf’S Fiction The Function of the Mirror Image in the Perception of the Self in Virginia Woolf’s Fiction Master’s Thesis Literary Studies: English Literature and Culture By Heleen Buchner 29 May 2019 Supervisor: Prof. dr. P.T.M.G. Liebregts Second reader: Dr. L.E.M. Fikkers Buchner 2 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 Chapter 1: The Mirror Stage ...................................................................................................... 6 1.1. The Mirror Image ............................................................................................................ 6 1.2. Metaphorical Mirrors ..................................................................................................... 13 1.3. The Mirror Stage ........................................................................................................... 18 Chapter 2: Modernist Reflections on the Self .......................................................................... 20 2.1. Subjectivity .................................................................................................................... 20 2.2. Relativity ....................................................................................................................... 22 2.3. Multiplicity .................................................................................................................... 25 2.4. Epistemology ................................................................................................................. 28 Chapter 3: Narration and the Perception of Characters ............................................................ 33 3.1. Unreliable Narrators in “The Mark on the Wall” and “The Lady in the Looking-glass: A Reflection” ........................................................................................................................ 33 3.2. Free Indirect Speech in Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse ..................................... 36 3.3. Third Person Soliloquys in The Waves .......................................................................... 44 3.4. The Mirror Stage ........................................................................................................... 46 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 48 Works Cited .............................................................................................................................. 51 Buchner 3 Introduction The notion of the self and of identity are central themes in Virginia Woolf’s novels. Woolf understands identity to be something that is constantly evolving rather than something that is fixed once a person reaches adulthood (Howard 48; Myk 108). She also believes that identity is complex and that multiple selves can exist alongside each other in one person (Howard 48; Richter 114). Therefore, the different sides that make up one person’s identity are often highlighted in her fiction. Additionally, Woolf emphasises the inherent subjectivity of the self. She raises the question whether anyone can be truly known at all, either by others or by themselves. She tends to show this by ambiguously presenting information about the characters by means of the way in which the texts are narrated, while the characters themselves also question their identities. As such, Woolf’s understanding of the self and of identity reflects the Modernist ideas of subjectivity and relativity. Previous research has related Woolf’s understanding of the notion of the self to different theories of and approaches to the self. One approach that is connected to her work is Jacques Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage, which focusses on the forming of identity in childhood. According to Lacan, the moment a child sees itself in the mirror for the first time is significant in its formation of a sense of self. Before this moment, the child is only able to see itself partially because through the eye it can only perceive parts of the body and never the complete form. Thus, when the child looks into the mirror, it is able to see itself in its entirety for the first time, which, according to Lacan, turns the “fragmented image” the child has of its own body into an image that shows the “form of its totality” (78). Moreover, this mirror image gives the child the idea that it is a complete, separate self. However, as Mansfield points out, this sense of wholeness is defined by something outside of the child, namely by the image that is reflected back. Therefore, the crux of the mirror stage is that even though the mirror image gives the child a sense of a separate self, still the only way to obtain this sense Buchner 4 of self comes from something that is situated outside of its body, and thus “other” (43). As Lacan claims, the mirror stage establishes “a relationship between an organism and its reality” (78). It defines the moment in which the child realises its sense of self while also realising that, as a subject, it is always inevitably related to and defined by external factors (Mansfield 43). In Woolf’s fictional texts, reflections on the self are often accompanied by, or prompted by, an actual reflection of the character in a mirror. Additionally, two or more characters also tend to mirror each other as well. The use of this mirror image in Woolf’s fiction is generally seen as a way to comment on the societal difference in the perception of men and women (Chapman 334; Deppman 31; Squier 274). However, the mirror can also be seen as a “metaphor for perceiving reality” (Chapman 336). As Olk points out, Woolf uses mirrors to emphasise the impossibility of “any kind of direct and unmediated vision” which in turn “emphasises subjectivity” (56), and therefore underlines that the characters cannot perceive themselves or others objectively. Like Lacan’s mirror stage, the mirror image of the characters in Woolf’s novels is an external image that gives them some deeper understanding of themselves. As Taylor argues, the mirror can be seen as “a re-establisher of identity” (64), which suggests that it is used as a mode through which the character’s self-perception is revaluated. Likewise, according to Mansfield, the self is always perceived in relation to other external objects or people (3). As a mode situated in between the self and the other, the mirror can provide a different perspective on the character’s perception of their self. Moreover, both the actual and the metaphorical mirror image stimulate the characters to examine and possibly to adapt themselves. This thesis will examine the use of the mirror image in the reflection on the characters’ sense of self in Virginia Woolf’s novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931), and her short stories “The Mark on the Wall” (1917) and “The Lady in the Buchner 5 Looking-Glass: A Reflection” (1929). For the analysis, the method of close reading will be applied and notions of Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage will be employed. The first chapter will show the ways in which both the actual and the metaphorical mirror images enhance the characters’ reflections on their identity in childhood as well as in adulthood. In the second chapter these realisations about the self will be explored, which will emphasise the relation between the self and the Modernist themes of subjectivity, relativity and epistemological questions. The third chapter will focus on Woolf’s use of stylistic devices to underline the importance of perspective in the perception of a character. Together, these chapters will highlight the significance of the mirror image in the characters’ sense of self. Buchner 6 Chapter 1: The Mirror Stage 1.1. The Mirror Image As mentioned in the introduction, the characters in Woolf’s fiction often contemplate their sense of self while looking in a mirror. Although Lacan’s mirror stage refers to the moment a child looks in the mirror for the first time and starts to form its sense of itself as a subject, in relation to Woolf’s understanding of the self as constantly evolving, these moments can occur in adulthood as well. In fact, in her fiction they seem to have more significance in adulthood. As an example, we may consider the moment Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs Dalloway looks into a mirror, which enables her to collect “the whole of her at one point, … seeing the delicate pink face of the woman who was that very night to give a party; of Clarissa Dalloway; of herself” (40). For her, seeing herself reflected in the mirror signifies a moment of self-reflection in which she is able to draw together the parts that make up her identity. However, although the mirror image can be seen as the reflection of the character’s inner life it can also be a reminder that her reflection might not actually show her true self. According to Varga, Lacan’s mirror stage is a process of “misidentification” because the reflection in the mirror is a composition of the subject’s desired self instead of the “real” one (292). Clarissa pursed her lips when she looked in the glass. It was to give her face point. That was her self – pointed; dartlike; definite. That was her self when some effort, some call on her to be her self, drew the parts together, she alone knew how different, how incompatible and composed so for the world only into one centre, one diamond, one woman who sat in her drawing-room and made a meeting-point, she …
Load more

Recommended publications
  • University of Groningen the Mirror Image Muda, G.E
    University of Groningen The mirror image Muda, G.E. IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2011 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Muda, G. E. (2011). The mirror image: The representation of social roles for women in novels by Charlotte Brontë, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Jean Rhys. s.n. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 26-09-2021 G.E. MUDA The Mirror Image THE MIRROR IMAGE Front cover illustration: Albert Roelofs, Toekomstdromen, [Future Dreams], 1906 Cover Design: Dr. J. B. Hemel Printed by: GrafiMedia, Groningen ISBN: 978-90-367-4648-9 (printed version) ISBN: 978-90-367-4647-2 (electronic version) Copyright: G.E. Muda (2011) Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden vermenigvuldigd zonder schriftelijke toestemming van de auteur.
    [Show full text]
  • Sylvia Plath: a Split in the Mirror Susan E
    Plath Profiles 55 Sylvia Plath: A Split in the Mirror Susan E. Schwartz, Ph.D. I sit… Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot, Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic: Which such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate, What ceremony of words can patch the havoc? "Conversation Among the Ruins" (Plath, Collected Poems 21) Sylvia Plath's writing depicts the anguish of an unresolved and ambivalent attachment with her father. Her poetry, dreams and journal writings reveal the complexities of this relationship, its unconscious strands and blurred boundaries. Through the example of this poetess who killed herself at the age of thirty, I aim to show the complex interactions between daughters and fathers and the line between creativity and destruction. The death of Sylvia Plath's father when she was eight was a decisive experience shaping her life, an aspect drawing her towards death and representing the profound deprivation of this significant parental figure. She wrote in the poem, "Daddy": I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you. (224) Sylvia Plath's words reverberate with paradox, graphically detailing extreme aspects of the distress of a daughter due to traumatic loss of her father. From the psychological destruction of this loss, she creatively wrote about its individual and collective proportions. She addresses the symptoms of our era—the media hype of women, technology and culture—all signifying spiritual, psychological and cultural lack. The passion fostering her creativity, however, is connected to a crushing father-complex affecting her attempts to transform in life which fought those forces uniting with her father in death.
    [Show full text]
  • Art in the Mirror: Reflection in the Work of Rauschenberg, Richter, Graham and Smithson
    ART IN THE MIRROR: REFLECTION IN THE WORK OF RAUSCHENBERG, RICHTER, GRAHAM AND SMITHSON DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Eileen R. Doyle, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2004 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Stephen Melville, Advisor Professor Lisa Florman ______________________________ Professor Myroslava Mudrak Advisor History of Art Graduate Program Copyright by Eileen Reilly Doyle 2004 ii ABSTRACT This dissertation considers the proliferation of mirrors and reflective materials in art since the sixties through four case studies. By analyzing the mirrored and reflective work of Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Dan Graham and Robert Smithson within the context of the artists' larger oeuvre and also the theoretical and self-reflective writing that surrounds each artist’s work, the relationship between the wide use of industrially-produced materials and the French theory that dominated artistic discourse for the past thirty years becomes clear. Chapter 2 examines the work of Robert Rauschenberg, noting his early interest in engaging the viewer’s body in his work—a practice that became standard with the rise of Minimalism and after. Additionally, the theoretical writing the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides insight into the link between art as a mirroring practice and a physically engaged viewer. Chapter 3 considers the questions of medium and genre as they arose in the wake of Minimalism, using the mirrors and photo-based paintings of Gerhard Richter as its focus. It also addresses the particular way that Richter weaves the motifs and concerns of traditional painting into a rhetoric of the death of painting which strongly implicates the mirror, ultimately opening up Richter’s career to a psychoanalytic reading drawing its force from Jacques Lacan’s writing on the formation of the subject.
    [Show full text]
  • Consciousness of “The Mark on the Wall”
    Consciousness of “The Mark on the Wall” A Translation of Virginia Woolf’s The Mark on the Wall (By George Charles Beresford) Bachelor Thesis English Language and Culture, Utrecht University Kim Segers 3364755 Supervisor: dr. Onno Kosters Second reader: Roselinde Supheert November 2010 CONTENTS PAGE Introduction 3 Virginia Woolf 3 “The Mark on the Wall” 5 Feminism 6 Stream of consciousness 8 View of reality 11 Concluding remarks 15 Annotated translation 16 Bibliography 28 Appendix: source text 30 2 Introduction Translating is one of my favourite pastimes and because I wish to do a Master’s degree in Translation Studies, it was a simple enough choice for me to do a translation thesis. During one of my searches for a text, I came across Virginia Woolf. I had heard of her, knew who she was, but had never actually read anything by her before. When I did, I was impressed by the subtle complexity of her style, and her life as a person in general. I decided I wanted to use her, and specifically her short story “The Mark on the Wall,” for my thesis. In my reflection, below, I will mostly focus on the style and historical and cultural context of the story, so as to point out the translation problems and the analysis of the text itself. Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882 under the name Adeline Virginia Stephen. She had a difficult life: she was sexually abused by her older half-brother and at only thirteen years old the death of her mother caused her second mental breakdown and first suicide attempt.
    [Show full text]
  • Virginia Woolf, Arnold Bennett, and Turn of the Century Consciousness
    Colby Quarterly Volume 13 Issue 1 March Article 5 March 1977 The Moment, 1910: Virginia Woolf, Arnold Bennett, and Turn of the Century Consciousness Edwin J. Kenney, Jr. Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq Recommended Citation Colby Library Quarterly, Volume 13, no.1, March 1977, p.42-66 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Quarterly by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Colby. Kenney, Jr.: The Moment, 1910: Virginia Woolf, Arnold Bennett, and Turn of the The Moment, 1910: Virginia Woolf, Arnold Bennett, and Turn ofthe Century Consciousness by EDWIN J. KENNEY, JR. N THE YEARS 1923-24 Virginia Woolf was embroiled in an argument I with Arnold Bennett about the responsibility of the novelist and the future ofthe novel. In her famous essay "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown," she observed that "on or about December, 1910, human character changed";1 and she proceeded to argue, without specifying the causes or nature of that change, that because human character had changed the novel must change if it were to be a true representation of human life. Since that time the at once assertive and vague remark about 1910, isolated, has served as a convenient point of departure for historians now writing about the social and cultural changes occurring during the Edwardian period.2 Literary critics have taken the ideas about fiction from "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" and Woolfs other much-antholo­ gized essay "Modern Fiction" as a free-standing "aesthetic manifesto" of the new novel of sensibility;3 and those who have recorded and discussed the "whole contention" between Virginia Woolf and Arnold Bennett have regarded the relation between Woolfs historical observation and her ideas about the novel either as just a rhetorical strategy or a generational disguise for the expression of class bias against Bennett.4 Yet few readers have asked what Virginia Woolf might have nleant by her remark about 1910 and the novel, or what it might have meant to her.
    [Show full text]
  • Journal of the Short Story in English, 50 | Spring 2008 “To Slip Easily from One Thing to Another”: Experimentalism and Perception In
    Journal of the Short Story in English Les Cahiers de la nouvelle 50 | Spring 2008 Special issue: Virginia Woolf “To Slip Easily From One Thing To Another”: Experimentalism And Perception in Woolf’s Short Stories Teresa Prudente Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/jsse/704 ISSN : 1969-6108 Éditeur Presses universitaires de Rennes Édition imprimée Date de publication : 1 juin 2008 ISSN : 0294-04442 Référence électronique Teresa Prudente, « “To Slip Easily From One Thing To Another”: Experimentalism And Perception in Woolf’s Short Stories », Journal of the Short Story in English [En ligne], 50 | Spring 2008, mis en ligne le 06 février 2015, consulté le 03 décembre 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/jsse/704 Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 3 décembre 2020. © All rights reserved “To Slip Easily From One Thing To Another”: Experimentalism And Perception in... 1 “To Slip Easily From One Thing To Another”: Experimentalism And Perception in Woolf’s Short Stories Teresa Prudente 1 Woolf’s engagement with the short story is to be read as more than an occasional exploration and alternative to her constant experimentation as a novelist: indeed, her short stories appear to unveil the foundation of her experiments in narrative and to provide us with an important insight into her innovative approach to writing. 2 From this point of view, the short stories which Woolf composed between the years 1917-1921, collected in the volume Monday or Tuesday (1921), testify to the writer’s crucial shift from her conventional writing in her first novels, i.e., The Voyage Out (1915) and Night and Day (1919), to more radical forms of writing.
    [Show full text]
  • Sylvia Plath: a Split in the Mirror
    1 Sylvia Plath: A Split in the Mirror I sit… Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot, Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic: Which such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate, What ceremony of words can patch the havoc? Conversation Among the Ruins by Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath's writing depicts the anguish of an unresolved and ambivalent attachment with her father. Her poetry, dreams and journal writings reveal the complexities of this relationship, its unconscious strands and blurred boundaries. Through the example of this poetess who killed herself at the age of thirty, I aim to show the complex interactions between daughters and fathers and the line between creativity and destruction. The death of Sylvia Plath’s father at age eight was a decisive experience shaping her life, an aspect drawing her towards death and representing the profound deprivation of this significant parental figure. She wrote in the poem, ‘Daddy’, “I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you.” Sylvia Plath's words reverberate with paradox, graphically detailing extreme aspects of the distress of a daughter due to traumatic loss of her father. From the psychological destruction of this loss, she creatively wrote about its individual and collective proportions. She addresses the symptoms of our era—the media hype of women, technology and culture--all signifying spiritual, psychological and cultural lack. The passion fostering her creativity, however, is connected to a crushing father complex affecting her attempts to transform in life that fought those uniting with her father in death.
    [Show full text]
  • The Looking-Glass World: Mirrors in Pre-Raphaelite Painting 1850-1915
    THE LOOKING-GLASS WORLD Mirrors in Pre-Raphaelite Painting, 1850-1915 TWO VOLUMES VOLUME I Claire Elizabeth Yearwood Ph.D. University of York History of Art October 2014 Abstract This dissertation examines the role of mirrors in Pre-Raphaelite painting as a significant motif that ultimately contributes to the on-going discussion surrounding the problematic PRB label. With varying stylistic objectives that often appear contradictory, as well as the disbandment of the original Brotherhood a few short years after it formed, defining ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ as a style remains an intriguing puzzle. In spite of recurring frequently in the works of the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly in those by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, the mirror has not been thoroughly investigated before. Instead, the use of the mirror is typically mentioned briefly within the larger structure of analysis and most often referred to as a quotation of Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait (1434) or as a symbol of vanity without giving further thought to the connotations of the mirror as a distinguishing mark of the movement. I argue for an analysis of the mirror both within the context of iconographic exchange between the original leaders and their later associates and followers, and also that of nineteenth- century glass production. The Pre-Raphaelite use of the mirror establishes a complex iconography that effectively remytholgises an industrial object, conflates contradictory elements of past and present, spiritual and physical, and contributes to a specific artistic dialogue between the disparate strands of the movement that anchors the problematic PRB label within a context of iconographic exchange.
    [Show full text]
  • The Magic Mirror” Uncanny Suicides, from Sylvia Plath to Chantal Akerman
    “THE MAGIC MIRROR” UNCANNY SUICIDES, FROM SYLVIA PLATH TO CHANTAL AKERMAN A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English By Kelly Marie Coyne, B.A. Washington, D.C. April 24, 2017 © 2017 Kelly Marie Coyne All rights reserved. ii “THE MAGIC MIRROR” UNCANNY SUICIDES, FROM SYLVIA PLATH TO CHANTAL AKERMAN Kelly Marie Coyne, B.A. Thesis Advisor: Dana Luciano, Ph.D. ABSTRACT Artists such as Chantal Akerman and Sylvia Plath, both of whom came of age in mid- twentieth century America, have a tendency to show concern with doubles in their work—Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman—and oftentimes situate their protagonists as doubles of themselves, carefully monitoring the distance they create between themselves and their double. This choice acts as a kind of self-constitution, by which I mean a self-fashioning that works through an imperfect mirroring of the text’s author presented as a double in a fictional work. Texts that employ self-constitution often show a concern with liminality, mirroring, consumption, animism, repressed trauma, suicide, and repetition. It is the goal of this thesis to examine these motifs in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and the early work of Chantal Akerman, all of which coalesce to create coherent—but destabilizing—texts that propose a new queer subject position, and locate the death drive—the desire to return to the mother’s womb—as their source.
    [Show full text]
  • Image – Action – Space: Situating the Screen in Visual Practice 2018
    Repositorium für die Medienwissenschaft Luisa Feiersinger, Kathrin Friedrich, Moritz Queisner u.a. (Hg.) Image – Action – Space: Situating the Screen in Visual Practice 2018 https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/3686 Veröffentlichungsversion / published version Buch / book Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Feiersinger, Luisa; Friedrich, Kathrin; Queisner, Moritz (Hg.): Image – Action – Space: Situating the Screen in Visual Practice. Berlin: de Gruyter 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/3686. Erstmalig hier erschienen / Initial publication here: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110464979 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer Creative Commons - This document is made available under a creative commons - Namensnennung - Nicht kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 License. For Lizenz zur Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu dieser Lizenz more information see: finden Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 Luisa Feiersinger Kathrin Friedrich Moritz Queisner (Eds.) 2 Image – Action – Space IMAGE – ACTION – SPACE SITUATING THE SCREEN IN VISUAL PRACTICE Luisa Feiersinger, Kathrin Friedrich, Moritz Queisner (Eds.) This publication was made possible by the Image Knowledge Gestaltung. An Interdisciplinary Laboratory Cluster of Excellence at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (EXC 1027/1) with financial support from the German Research Foundation as part of the Excellence Initiative. The editors like to thank Sarah Scheidmantel, Paul Schulmeister, Lisa Weber as well as Jacob Watson, Roisin Cronin and Stefan Ernsting (Translabor GbR) for their help in editing and proofreading the texts. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No-Derivatives 4.0 License.
    [Show full text]
  • Gendered Spaces and Female Resistance: Virginia Woolf's
    GENDERED SPACES AND FEMALE RESISTANCE: VIRGINIA WOOLF’S “THE MARK ON THE WALL” JORGE SACIDO ROMERO AND LAURA M. LOJO RODRÍGUEZ University of Santiago de Compostela [email protected] - [email protected] 93 In a retrospective analysis of the houses she had once inhabited, Virginia Woolf claimed that those spaces “explained a great deal” (1985: 124) of both her private life and her fictional works. The evocative power of space in Woolf’s recollections extends to imagining time and events in architectural terms. As Tracy Seeley has suggested (1996: 89), Woolf’s interior spaces often act as embodiments, reminders and signs. Woolf’s recollections frequently appear attached to spaces: “In order to fix a date, it is necessary to remember what one saw” (1985: 83), the narrator of “The Mark on the Wall” claims. Spaces and their significance help to clarify many aspects of Woolf’s life and work and the connection between the two: their cultural meanings attach not only to Woolf’s personal experience, but also to her aesthetics, in which architectural spaces suggest complex whole lives and describe structures of thought. This paper intends to discuss Virginia Woolf’s conviction that space is never a neutral emptiness, but a web of cultural, social and ideological relations which condition those individuals that inhabit them. Gender and space are constructed as mutually dependant categories, and both appear in need, in Woolf’s view, of revision and rethinking. Woolf’s first published short narrative, “The Mark on the Wall” (1917) dramatises such a need through its main argumentative thread, while also advancing certain assumptions embodied in the construction of a particular imagery which were to be centrally recurrent in some on her most celebrated miscelánea: a journal of english and american studies 34 (2006): pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Virginia Woolf's Short Fiction: a Study of Its Relation
    VIRGINIA WOOLF'S SHORT FICTION: A STUDY OF ITS RELATION TO THE STORY GENRE; AND AN EXPLICATION OF THE KNOWN STORY CANON by David Roger Tallentire B.Sc, The University of British Columbia, 1963 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Arts in the Department of English We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard. THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April, 1968 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirement for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada Date /&, /?6S ii ABSTRACT The short stories of Virginia Woolf have never re• ceived serious scrutiny, critics determinedly maintaining that the novels contain the heart of the matter and that the sto• ries are merely preparatory exercises. Mrs. Woolf, however, provides sufficient evidence that she was "on the track of real discoveries" in the stories, an opinion supported by her Bloomsbury mentors Roger Fry and Lytton Strachey. A careful analysis of her twenty-one known stories suggests that they are indeed important (not merely peripheral to the novels and criticism) and are successful in developing specific techniques and themes germane to her total canon.
    [Show full text]