Department of English and American Studies Sexuality, Creativity And

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Matěj Bregant

Sexuality, Creativity and Psychological Instability in the Early Novels of Virginia Woolf Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D.

2013

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Matěj Bregant

I would like to thank to thank my supervisor, Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D., for encouragement and valuable advice. Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... 1

2. The Voyage Out ...... 3

2. 1. Sexuality in The Voyage Out ...... 3 2. 2. Creativity in The Voyage Out ...... 8 2. 3. Psychological Instability in The Voyage Out ...... 11 3. Night and Day ...... 14

3. 1. Sexuality in Night and Day ...... 14 3. 2. Creativity in Night and Day ...... 18 3. 3. Psychological Instability in Night and Day ...... 22 4. Jacob’s Room ...... 25

4. 1. Sexuality in Jacob’s Room ...... 25 4. 2. Creativity in Jacob’s Room ...... 28 4. 3. Psychological Instability in Jacob’s Room ...... 33 5. Conclusion ...... 36

Works Cited and Consulted ...... 38

Resumé (English) ...... 40

Resumé (Czech) ...... 41

1. Introduction

The aim of the thesis is to explore three important themes in Woolf’s work, sexuality, creativity and psychological instability in the context of her early novels, namely in The Voyage Out, Night and Day and Jacob’s Room. Each one of these themes has significant influence on her work and the goal is to see how the events of her life shaped her personality. Sexuality has long been a touchy issue and there is a lot of controversy surrounding the interpretation of this theme in relation to Woolf herself and her work. Creativity encompasses the vast periods of time Woolf devoted to every piece of writing, not only in the actual process of creating a text but in the arduous process of perfecting every piece of writing she came up with. Psychological instability is a crucial matter in the study of Woolf’s life.

The goal of the first chapter is to explore the autobiographical features of The

Voyage Out as well as Woolf’s writing persona. Sexual abuse, emotional fragility and her work ethic are also explored in this section of the thesis. The second chapter aims to analyze the treatment of Night and Day as a conventional novel, the devotion to a cause as an alternative to romantic relationship and the link between psychological instability and writing. Third chapter presents the analysis of Jacob’s Room as the first novel written in Woolf’s new narrative style, as well as exploring the criticism of society and the relationship of Jacob with some of the characters. Hermione Lee’s biography

Virginia Woolf is one of the major sources for answering questions about Woolf’s life and fiction. This book tries to introduce the novelist from several angles; it begins with an extensive account of her family and goes category by category to describe her entire life. It is an unbiased text which offers a lot of information relevant to the thesis.

Quentin Bell’s Virginia Woolf: A Biography is a concise account of Woolf’s life which

1 brings a great deal of personal memories as well as details on Vanessa’s and Virginia’s households. On the other hand, it has been criticised as incomplete and deliberately eschewing crucial moments of Woolf’s life. Rather than taking each Bell’s observation as a fact, it is recommended to think of this book in terms of a collection of observations. Jane Goldman’s The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf provides many useful facts about Woolf’s life and work; it serves as a good start for a reader who is interested in an overview of her literary legacy. This book is most useful as an all- around reliable source for the basic research of Woolf’s early novels. Thomas C.

Caramagno’s text Manic-Depressive Psychosis and Critical Approaches to Virginia

Woolf's Life and Work provides an opinion on Woolf’s medical condition and a commentary on the approaches for analyzing her psychological instability in the context of her work.

Through the analysis of the three key themes in the novels The Voyage Out,

Night and Day and Jacob’s Room the reader could obtain a certain grasp on how the novelist came to create the characters and the environments they appear in. It is possible to observe the development of her writing persona as well as the way she coped with the constrictive Victorian manners Sir Leslie Stephen tried to instil in his children. The medium she used in dealing with the Victorian heritage and the need to free herself from the world of her father is clear in both the novels and in her extensive correspondence with her siblings and with several of her closest friends. The early novels of Virginia Woolf offer quite an insight into the mind of the author.

2. The Voyage Out

2. 1. Sexuality in The Voyage Out

The main goal of this chapter is to establish the connection of life and art in

Woolf’s fiction, namely how did her upbringing and the influence of Sir Leslie Stephen affect the future novelist. The most important issues to be addressed on the following pages are sexual abuse, the process of writing The Voyage Out and the possible origins of Woolf’s psychological instability.

A number of generalizations have been made regarding Virginia Woolf’s sexuality. While the events of her youth, such as the sexual abuse committed by her half-brother George, undeniably affected her attitude towards human sexuality, it was by no means the only influence on her writing. The urge to be free of the Victorian mannerisms and limits imposed on her and her siblings by Sir Leslie Stephen was very important to her and undeniably contributed to the creation of Bloomsbury Group and

Orlando, the novel dealing with the perception of sexual identity. With regards to The

Voyage Out, the first thing a reader observes is that the actual journey Rachel Vinrace undertakes is not simply an account of a boat trip with some character descriptions thrown in, but it reflects the spiritual awakening of the main character. Jane Goldman opines in her book The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf that starting anew is an important feature of the novel. It may fall into the category of a coming-of-age story but the title can be deceiving in the way it suggests a fresh start “... so optimistic in one sense, (...) is also sinisterly suggestive of a journey that will (...) leave us stranded, unable to return.” (Goldman 40) and yet the knowledge Rachel absorbs arguably leads to her illness and death.

In her book Virginia Woolf’s Novels and the Literary Past Jane de Gay refers to The

Voyage Out as a “courtship novel.” “Rachel’s development takes place in private, through reading and playing music, rather than in society, and her engagement is almost an accident (...).“ (de Gay 23-24)

Another possible interpretation of the journey in the novel is that Rachel’s entry into the world of knowledge and wisdom is a metaphor for losing virginity. Suddenly becoming aware of the vast, untapped resources which were readily at her disposal, only to be shown by St. John Hirst what the pleasure of absorbing ideas and coming up with own thoughts feels like. According to that approach, Woolf uses sexuality to illustrate the great step a young woman makes, trying to escape the morals of the Victorian society and to create a new life for the first time or in this case, a novel. Rachel realises that this task is far from easy and that there may be some complications on the way.

Aside from the feeling of being thrown into cold water, she is shocked by the raw male sexuality, in this novel represented by Richard Dalloway. “Richard took her in his arms and kissed her. Holding her tight, he kissed her passionately, so that she felt the hardness of his body (...). (Woolf 52) This experience, which is described as “physical pain of emotion” (Woolf 52) is crucial to the main character as it shows her that discovering new things is not always pleasant. What is more, this occasion causes emotional trauma, at first difficult to observe but culminating in deep distrust of Richard

Dalloway and to some extent of men in general. The nightmare that follows the disturbing kiss is profound in the effect it makes on Rachel. The little deformed man in the vault might symbolise aggressive and corruptive male sexuality, an image that might be a reference to the sexual abuse of Virginia Stephen at the hands of George

Duckworth. Whereas this event brings anxiety and distress, Helen Ambrose’s guidance proves to sit very well with Rachel; thanks to her she becomes open to meeting people

4 and outgoing, eager to take on the world. It may even be simplified to the opinion that the male influence is somewhat corrupting and in the case of Richard Dalloway, even repulsive. On the other hand, St. John Hirst plays a very important role in The Voyage

Out and without his influence Rachel might not have been able to broaden her intellectual horizons the way she did.

The influence of Terence Hewet is of a different sort, the deep affections towards him she develops in the course of the novel and with him she witnesses Susan

Warrington and Arthur Venning shortly after their engagement. “They saw a man and a woman lying on the ground beneath them, rolling slightly this way and that as the embrace tightened and slackened.” (Woolf 100) This is one of the instances when sexuality is addressed directly and fits very well with one of the key themes in the novel

– exploration. Everything from travelling to South America with a number of strangers to reading Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and the Fall of the Roman

Empire and observing native inhabitants in the village, the main character is thrown headfirst into the unknown world and the issue of sex is bound to appear. Rachel

Vinrace consciously begins a life-altering quest when she boards the ship Euphrosyne and aside from the good and confusing things, it also brings a mysterious illness and untimely death. One way of looking at this tragic event is that her death is the last piece of puzzle, suggesting that death is the final experience of all living things. The other may be based on the idea that the sum of events, including encounters with Richard

Dalloway, observing the newly engaged Susan and Arthur and ultimately falling in love with Terence Hewet were too big of a stress for the young woman to handle. This interpretation suggests that the unspoiled and previously sheltered mind was not accustomed to a surge of information the journey provided and refused to adapt itself to the new circumstances, thus causing the breakout of the unidentified illness.

It is interesting to look at the events in the novel concerning sexuality through the prism of Woolf’s own life – it is not too far-fetched to compare Rachel Vinrace to the young Virginia Stephen and the journey over the sea of the former to leaving the 22

Hyde Park Gate and entering the previously unknown society of the latter. Meeting new people, coming in contact with a wide array of ideas and books and being sexually bullied – this was Woolf’s firsthand experience in the years before she published her first novel. In her text ““My Boldness Terrifies Me”: Sexual Abuse and Female

Subjectivity in The Voyage out”, Diana L. Swanson emphasises the importance of The

Voyage Out in terms of autobiographical features. “Woolf's first novel is her first major articulation of her experience as a patriarchal daughter and her understanding of woman's place in upper-middle-class British society.” (Swanson 287) It would be short- sighted to claim that the sexual abuse she suffered maimed her psychologically for the rest of her life. While the events influenced her deeply, they were by no means shattering in terms of human sexuality or the ability to form sexual relationships. In fact, Hermione Lee claims in the biography Virginia Woolf that whatever happened between Virginia and the Duckworth stepbrother is largely what the reader makes of it.

“There is no way of knowing whether the teenage Virginia Stephen was fucked or forced to have oral sex or buggered.” (Lee 158) There is no hard evidence concerning the abuse and while the effect it had was significant both in terms of creativity and the development of her psychological instability, it is not possible to solely blame these events for the way Woolf’s writing career and personal life turned out.

However, it is possible to draw parallels between what was happening in her life and the situations and plots she created in her novels. Moving out of the gloomy and both psychologically and physically enclosed or even confined home near Kensington

Road after twenty-two years and discovering a completely different way of living with

6 her brother Adrian in Bloomsbury echoes greatly in The Voyage Out. Rachel Vinrace leaves her own isolated and inexperienced persona behind and following her departure, she encounters a brave new world, complete with clashes where the sexuality of certain characters manifests itself. While Quentin Bell might be wrong in some of his views on his aunt in Virginia Woolf: A Biography, he did not want to make a sweeping generalisation and treads lightly around the matter of sexuality in Woolf’s life. “I do not know enough about Virginia’s mental illnesses to say whether this adolescent trauma was in any way connected with them.” (Bell 44)

Aside from the uncomfortable manifestations of male sexuality, Jane Goldman mentions one instance where sexuality is referenced much more subtly than in the Susan

– Arthur encounter. “Helen was upon her. Rolled this way and that, she was speechless and almost without sense.” (Woolf 212) This merry and even ecstatic moment is extraordinary for the troubled and often wistful Rachel. Goldman proposes this brief moment of joy to be an “erotically charged moment between the women suggests an alternative sexuality that Rachel is barred from exploring.” (Goldman 45) This suggested allusion to lesbian love will become one of the important themes in Mrs

Dalloway and it is possible that Woolf was experimenting with the implementation of the deep affection certain female characters can feel for each other. The main character gets thrown into the whirlwind of new ideas, relationships and affection so the option of exploring one’s sexuality is corresponding with the way the voyage changed her attitude towards life. Rachel undergoes the process of reinventing herself and it makes sense that she would be receptive to certain carnal impulses, even though they were strictly off-limits and not viable in the somewhat secluded community. Woolf might have been testing the literary waters for a future expansion of the theme in one of her books and since same-sex relationships were something hardly spoken or written about in the

Victorian society, she was eager to rebel against the old ways and to bring something new and radical to the table. The issue of Woolf’s sexuality is complicated but it is safe to say that she did not hesitate to defend the book The Well of Loneliness in court against censorship and Quentin Bell specifically states that her love interest in Vita

Sackville-West was quite a serious commitment. “Virginia had, in another manner, identified herself with the cause of homosexuality by spending a week in France alone with Vita.” (Bell 139)

2. 2. Creativity in The Voyage Out

Arguably the most important fact concerning the connection of creativity and

Woolf’s first novel is the fact that the first draft of the novel, according to Hermione

Lee, was being written in the spring of 1908 and the manuscript was finished in 1913.

During the prolonged period of writing and redrafting of the novel Woolf received a number of comments from people such as Clive Bell, whose judgement she trusted even in the later stages of her writing career. Woolf benefitted from the fact that her stepbrother, Gerald Duckworth, was a publisher who was eager to take the work and eventually published it in 1915. The reasons behind such a lengthy process are the improvements, numerous corrections and proofreading. The process of proofreading and even the creation itself was slowed down or even stopped on multiple occasions by her psychological instability. The occurrence of the deep disturbance often followed the act of completing a novel, such as the “suicidal bouts of depression and severe misgivings about her work and its reception” (Goldman 43) in 1913 and the feelings of despair after finishing a lengthy novel The Years.

Until she thought the novel to be ready to be seen by the public, or at least was not severely troubled with the work, she would not give it up. Even then, she would doubt the success of the work and owing to the entries in her diary she would often be surprised the level of appreciation a novel received. Woolf was a perfectionist when it came to her writing; she gave herself no quarter regarding her work ethic. The long and meticulous process of creating her fiction was arduous to say the least, oftentimes she was struck by depression for long periods of time and still managed to finish the work she set out to do at the beginning. “Even in a year broken by illness (such as 1925) she would finish revising and publish one novel and a collection of essays, write eight or so short stories, start work on another novel, publish thirty-seven review articles, keep a full diary, read a great number of books and write a great number of letters.” (Lee 4) It should be noted that this year was particularly productive for Woolf; several years of her writing career were so broken up by the issues connected with her mental condition that she was not able to do anything besides proofreading the novel she was currently working on and writing letters. Such devotion to one’s art is extraordinary and shows how much she was invested in creating a body of work, which is to this day admired for its’ novelty, experimentation and the innovative narrative technique she pioneered, among other things.

As for the creative process behind this particular novel, Woolf wanted to use the

“patchwork method” as the means for creating a complex narrative, “to challenge conventional fictional form and to stretch the inclusive capacity of conventional fictional content”. (Goldman 40) Combining the actual description of the journey to

South America, illustrating the interaction of a social group in enclosed spaces and finally using the mysterious illness and subsequent death of the main character to end the story, Woolf created a piece of fiction that is both innovative and appreciative of

9 methods and literary works of the past. One connection presents itself early in the novel; the opening scene with Euphrosyne leaving London via the Thames Embankment does evoke a similar scene in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Referring to the native inhabitants as savages might also be a nod to the 1899 novella.

With respect to implementation of creativity itself in The Voyage Out, Mrs

Dalloway writing a letter early in the novel comes to mind but it is used mainly for illustrating the social and cultural divide of the Dalloways and the rest of the passengers on Euphrosyne. “How long they’ve been all shut up in this ship I don’t know – years and years I should say (...).” (Woolf 31) What is more important is the context of the whole novel and the message it is trying to convey. The process of creation, symbolised by the character of Rachel Vinrace is only little more than a mere husk of a human being at the beginning of the narrative with no real attachment to the world but matures into a young woman with a set of principles and ideas which she created for herself over a relatively short period of time. Creating a persona and observing the metamorphosis is generally a captivating process in literature and Woolf was able to come up with an unlikely heroine who surprised her friends and literary critics alike. The possibility of creating a new existence is an important theme here, Woolf is emphasising the importance of the influence of a number of characters, with Helen Ambrose, St. John

Hirst and Terence Hewet being the most obvious examples. They all contribute in some way to the evolution of Rachel Vinrace and in a way they might be blamed for her death. While it is an extreme way of looking at the actions and intentions of these characters, they might have unknowingly created a great disturbance in the previously dormant mind which was not prepared for an onslaught of emotions and knowledge she was exposed to. Regarding the autobiographic features of The Voyage Out, linking the event of leaving the household of her father and entering an intellectually stimulating

10 world with Rachel Vinrace coming in contact with a group of people who show her a new life does seem like a valid interpretation of the novel.

2. 3. Psychological Instability in The Voyage Out

There have been a number of claims trying to connect elements of Woolf’s writing with the fragility of her mind and the eventual mental illness. While it is hardly possible to simplify the issue by saying that the psychological instability governed her every waking moment and that all of her fiction is based on this affliction, the influence of the troubled and often desperate mind cannot be dismissed. Despite her often crippling condition, she was able to enjoy life as a productive member of a progressive society. “She endured, periodically, great agony of mind and severe physical pain, with little physical pity.” (Lee 175) Ever since Woolf had her first mental breakdown as a teenager, triggered by the death of her mother, she was on a slippery slope towards the total collapse of her psychological well-being and throughout her life she spent countless months with the threat of suicidal behaviour and total collapse of her mind hanging over her head. It is very likely that what we perceive as a serious psychological instability was caused by a combination of factors. Firstly, the fact that Sir Leslie

Stephen’s daughter from the first marriage, Laura, was mentally unstable and later committed to an asylum and he might have justified this action by coming up with conviction that she “had inherited a mental condition from her grandmother, Isabella

Thackeray” (Lee 103) and to refute any possibility that his lack of parenting skills needed to take care of her caused Laura Stephen to spend the rest of her life locked up.

Thomas C. Caramagno’s paper “Manic-Depressive Psychosis and Critical

Approaches to Virginia Woolf's Life and Work” is a helpful introduction into Woolf’s psychological instability and illness. Caramagno analyzes the opinions of several literary scholars regarding Woolf’s mental condition and adds a concise interpretation for her psychological instability. “For Woolf, the central tragedy that seemed to

“explain” her emptiness, despair, and loss of a stable self-structure was the death of her mother in 1895. Julia's sudden death apparently triggered her daughter's first breakdown

(...).” (Caramagno 16) However, psychoanalysis may oversimplify the plight of the mind, often there is not one universal answer to all the questions regarding Woolf’s psychological instability. The reader should bear in mind that pursuing only one interpretation of the writer’s psyche is misleading. After the death of Virginia’s mother,

Sir Leslie developed almost extreme dependence on his children, particularly Vanessa and basically spent the rest of his days mourning and forcing the gloom upon his children, becoming a sort of a tyrant in the process. This extensive experience with death and psychological disturbances in the family has found its way into Woolf’s writing, particularly in the character of Septimus Smith in Mrs. Dalloway and in the mysterious cause of death of Rachel Vinrace in The Voyage Out.

It is possible to speculate that Rachel’s state of growing incapacitation is a manifestation of psychological instability. The character is not anchored in any way and her mind is very often overloaded with emotions, new experience and knowledge. It would be most unlikely if all this influence did not impose any effect on the young, impressionable person. On the other hand, complete psychological stability is unrealistic and an emotionally anchored Rachel would arguably be an uninteresting character. Perhaps if she was exposed to the lives Helen, St. John and Terence represented over a period of time, she might have adapted to them in a certain way but

12 in the scenario Woolf presents, Rachel was a sponge which soaks up nearly anything she is told and what she reads to the idea that she might be in love with a person she barely knows. Her naïveté is also her downfall; the innocence is shattered over time and despite all the effort, she cannot be helped. What starts as a miserable state of mind and feeling of disillusionment with the members of her party transforms into a delirious gaze into nothingness and various hallucinations. “But she only saw an old woman slicing a man’s head off with a knife.” (Woolf 253) There is a possibility of looking at the death of the main character as redemption of the soul; the body is no longer able to support the expanding mind and the only option left is death. The reader can nevertheless choose to ignore this interpretation and accept the belief that Rachel’s death was caused by an uncommon illness and to dismiss the doctors as incompetent in their effort to cure her of the disease. Adopting this stance however means admitting that a piece of puzzle is missing, omitting the issue of psychological instability and subsequent disease of the mind changes the entire perspective of the novel. Looking at the certain similarities in the events happening to Woolf and to Rachel, it is most likely that she drew inspiration from her own troubles and desires, mainly the absorption of all the knowledge of the world she was denied by her father.

3. Night and Day

3. 1. Sexuality in Night and Day

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the circumstances of the second novel’s creation, especially the motivation for writing in a style so different from The Voyage

Out. The important themes of love and devotion to a cause come under scrutiny in this chapter, as well as the adverse effect love can have on a person’s psychological instability.

In her second novel, Woolf explores sexuality of an individual by putting the person in a group and observing various situations in which it could manifest itself.

However, since the group in Night and Day consists only of four people, the interactions are much more personal and every decision and stance regarding sexuality almost always affects the group as a whole. It is worth mentioning that sexuality is not presented quite as openly as it was in The Voyage Out and the whole theme of sexuality is perhaps not as significant as in the first novel. The main focus of Woolf’s second novel is to show the contrast and contradiction of all things in life or a “schematic oppositional symbolism”. (Goldman 47) Love and indifference, walking by the river and sitting in the drawing rooms, talking and listening – there are many instances in which the characters are pitted against each other just to illustrate how different they can be. The protagonist of Night and Day, Katharine Hilbery is different from Rachel

Vinrace in a number of ways. Where Rachel resembles the young and inexperienced

Virginia Stephen, Katharine may represent the more socially apt Vanessa Stephen.

Furthermore, Rachel is passive for a good part of The Voyage Out, whereas Katharine is a self-confident young woman who likes to be in control of the situations which happen around her. The protagonist from the latter novel could also be compared to Emma

Woodhouse from Jane Austen’s novel Emma. Similarly to her, Katharine does not really have a clear goal in life and enjoys the perks of her social standing and barely does anything else besides talking to her relations and friends. A great deal of time is devoted to matchmaking or pairing of the four characters – Katharine, Ralph Denham,

Mary Datchet and William Rodney. In fact, the whole novel is based on the interactions of the four individuals among themselves with a small number of less important characters providing background to the various conversations over the course of the novel.

Arguably the most important theme is thus love and the search for it, compared to The Voyage Out there is little to no personal growth in terms of finding a place in the world. There is a shift in the behaviour of certain characters, such as the increasing radicalism of Mary Datchet or the emotional maturation of William Rodney.

Nevertheless, these changes are nowhere near as crucial or life-changing as those in

Woolf’s first novel. Compared to the somewhat open attitude towards human sexuality in The Voyage Out, the issue is relatively hidden in the second novel and even if there is a mention of a situation in which there is sexual tension, it is very subtle. It is almost as if Woolf was trying to pay homage to Austen not only in the fact that the courtship plot is central to the novel but with the nearly total exclusion of physical passion. Mr

Dalloway’s conquering nature and even Rachel’s omnipresent curiosity have no place here. Night and Day is tame in the sense of pronounced sexuality and so different from

The Voyage Out that it prompted a number of dismissive remarks and judgements, such as the one made by Woolf’s friend E. M. Forster. “[It is] strictly formal and classical.”

(E. M. Forster in Goldman 49) Some of the reactions may have been harsh but Woolf’s friends and literary critics alike were so surprised by the quality of her first novel that they could not hide their disappointment of the second one. It is not that Night and Day

15 was universally regarded as a failure but after such a promising start it may have seemed to be too old-fashioned and far from the youthful, modern and energetic debut.

The first of the very few occasions of addressing sexuality is in chapter 21, where Mary is desperate to keep Katharine’s attention and to make her stay and continue the conversation with her. “Her hand went down to the hem of Katharine’s skirt, and, fingering a line of fur, she bent her head as if to further examine it.” (Woolf

214) What the two characters share might be a fleeting moment of romance without any male input, thus alluding to lesbian love. In consistence with any scenes involving heterosexual affection, the physical aspect of the relationship is fully omitted, leaving it to the reader to conjure a scene where fingering a line of fur may lead to an actual profession of a hidden passion. On the other hand, the scene could be completely innocent and Mary could just be very appreciative of Katharine skirt and trying to get her attention by showing interest in her. Yet the exclusion of men and the fact that

Katharine did not really react to the situation – the idea of being intimate with her friend might have been too alien to her – suggest that Woolf was most likely trying to include a reference to sexuality which was unthinkable in the time of Jane Austen. What is more, including this scene in the novel goes very much against the notion of her second novel being a tribute to the influential British novelist. The reader could interpret her stance towards the issue in a way that Woolf wanted to pay respect to Austen with a relatively straightforward love story but included a few features that stand out, as if to add a personal touch or a twist on the pattern which was used countless times before

Woolf attempted to present her own take on it. Similarly to The Voyage Out, Woolf chose to include references to lesbianism. It may be assumed that the degree of demureness and subtlety with which was same-sex romance described corresponded to the real life situation of the novelist. There is the rather extreme opinion of Quentin Bell

16 saying that “Virginia was sexually frigid” (Bell 6), which refers to her marriage with

Leonard Woolf, and Hermione Lee points to the fact that sexual gratification was not

Woolf’s reason for marrying Leonard. “From early on in their life they had separate bedrooms.” (Lee 332) The effect he had on Woolf’s life was far more important than just providing a sexual release.

The second instance where the theme of sexuality resurfaces is in chapter 33 where Katharine effectively assumes the role of a man and takes control of the situation.

“[Katharine] took her ruby ring from her finger and giving it to Cassandra, said: ʻI believe it will fit you without any alteration.ʼ” (Woolf 376) This development does not really come as a shock to the reader, mainly because Katharine’s interest in mathematics, which she pursues in secret and Woolf makes sure to present it as something very unusual and, in the eyes of the world that surrounds her, unfitting for a woman. This action is in fact a culmination of Katharine’s tendencies to transcend the preconceived notion of how should a young woman of what appears to be an upper- middle class family go on with her life. Despite the fact that Cassandra does not accept the ring from her, opting to wait for William to fulfil his male role, Katharine’s boldness does correspond with Woolf’s attitude towards gender roles and aversion to the treatment of women in the Victorian era. The essay A Room of One’s Own, written ten years later, is a finite statement of the opinion that women should not be inferior to men and it could be argued that this sentiment might have been influenced by the character of Katharine Hilbery.

3. 2. Creativity in Night and Day

When comparing Night and Day with Woolf’s other novels, the first thing the reader usually observes is that the narrative structure is linear; there are barely any scenes taking place in the past, an approach which would be used heavily later in the novel To the Lighthouse, and very little thought is given to what may happen in the future. Since the novel could be described as a courtship drama, the plot is conventional in the sense that the only complication is the switch of Katharine’s suitor and the only unresolved matter at the end of the narrative is the fate of Mary Datchet. Even though there are some twists, the gist of the novel is quite simple – you should create accommodating life for yourself but you will eventually get married no matter how rebellious or progressive you are.

Besides the fact that Night and Day appears to be a quite straightforward romance with a predictable twist at the end, it is interesting that even though the novel was published in 1919, there is, at least on the first glance, no reflection of the Great

War and the wave of destruction that spread throughout Europe. It is as if Katharine

Hilbery and the rest of the characters froze in time several decades before this major event, before all the terrifying consequences of the power struggle in Europe could affect the society which Woolf’s second novel describes. Aside from the idea that this novel is homage to Jane Austen, Woolf might have intended to publish a reminder of an easier time, a tale from the era where young men did not die en masse in the trenches and where mustard gas was not the everyday reality on the battlefield. Despite all this supposed carelessness and often trivial issues described in the book, there are real struggles and problems underneath the dialogue dense plot. Feminism is a movement that does not really fit into the supposed string of themes for the genre in which Night

18 and Day is written – love, marriage, and individuality are on the foremost places of importance.

As the reader sinks deeper into the story, Mary Datchet becomes perhaps the most interesting character of them all, pursuing an agenda that seems bold to some and strange to others. It should be said that she is not a heroine of the movement, being shut up in the office and later spending evenings over the documents is hardly the exciting life of a person who is contributing to the cause of women empowerment. What is more, she is all alone at the end of the novel, left to her ideas of equality in the society. “[They saw] the spirit of the woman within, working out her plans far into the night – her plans for the good of a world that none of them were ever to know.” (Woolf 384) Katharine and Ralph both feel that Mary holds an important place in their lives but her devotion to feminism causes a rift which they are not capable to breach. Mary’s self-imposed isolation is presented as an alternative to the often confusing romance of the pair. In her paper “Revising Jacob's Room: Virginia Woolf, Women, and Language”, Kate

Flint works with the idea of replacing romance with different emotions. “[Woolf worked with the] suggestion that Mary was involving herself in 'the Cause' as a substitute for a satisfying emotional life.” (Flint 362) She is seen as a stubborn individual who goes against the grain of society and achieves some success in doing that – the conflict of an individual and society is an important theme in Woolf’s work and manifests itself especially in Jacob’s Room. Furthermore, being in love does make couples feel torn from the rest of the world and the pair may have felt that they need the strength and empathy to deal with their own problems rather than trying to fit into

Mary’s life which seemed so distant even though they both managed to connect with her on a personal level. In the end they both respect her eagerness but at the same time

19 feel that her way of life is so much different from theirs that a deeper connection is very hard to attain.

The most glaring instance of an actual creative process in Night and Day is when

Katharine observes her mother writing the biography of Richard Alardyce, a great poet and Katharine’s grandfather. While the book is not really crucial for the plot, the act of writing a biography is most likely inspired by two events from Woolf’s early life, specifically witnessing her father’s long and exhausting work on the Dictionary of

National Biography and later seeing him write a book in remembrance of his second wife, Julia, also called the Mausoleum Book. Similarly to The Voyage Out, Woolf brings the events from her life into her novel, albeit on a much smaller scale. While working on the biography of her grandfather is far from the demanding task that the

Dictionary was, Woolf puts effort into describing the creation of the book and the pains connected with the process. “Sometimes Katharine brooded, half crushed, among her papers, sometimes she felt that she should free herself from the past.” (Woolf 46) The fact that the biography is not completed after several years also suggests the connection with Sir Leslie’s lengthy contribution to the Dictionary. Katharine feels that the biography is focused on dwelling in the past and she would like to constantly move forward – improving her skill at mathematics, talking to people, the evolution of her relationship to William Rodney – these actions are in direct opposition to the backward- looking nature of a memoir.

Since the comparison of opposites is the core issue for Night and Day,

Katharine represents all things new and throughout the course of the novel she tries to set herself free from what she perceives as the old world, such as the aforementioned biography. Her choosing to end the engagement with William also corresponds to the conviction of trying to get rid of the old in favour of the new – she could have probably

20 been content with him but she may have felt that there is more to life than being courted by a poet and getting married after some time. She chose to explore other options, such as intensifying her relationship with Ralph and thus creating a new life, one slightly far from the certainty and boredom of the original one. Mary Datchet tries hard to disassociate herself from the past as well but in a different way than Katharine – in her mind, women’s rights is the future and spearheading the movement is her way of letting go of her past, including the possibility of having a relationship with Ralph.

It could be argued that for Woolf the creative process was just as important as the critical reception and the reaction of her friends. While Night and Day did not take such a long time to write as The Voyage Out did, Woolf was conscious of the fact that after publishing her first novel which was well received, she was under a considerable pressure. The comparison of the two books is interesting especially since the first novel relies on looking forward to the bright future, whereas the second one seems as if it was frozen in time. “[It] was a deliberate evocation of the past, (…) but it belonged to the past in another way: it was a very orthodox performance.” (Bell 69) It is up to the reader to analyze why did Woolf return to what seemed to Katherine Mansfield like an obsolete and utterly boring literary form instead of developing the narrative technique she utilized in The Voyage Out. It is worth mentioning that the reaction to Night and

Day was not altogether negative. According to Quentin Bell, Clive Bell and Lytton

Strachey praised it and Mansfield was most likely alone in her great aversion towards the novel.

3. 3. Psychological Instability in Night and Day

It may be a challenge to look for references to psychological instability and illness in Woolf’s second novel, mainly for the reason that the inclusion of this theme would not really fit into the genre. Nevertheless, if the reader takes into account the circumstances of the novel’s creation, it is possible to make out how some elements of

Night and Day can be linked to Woolf’s mental instability and the methods that were supposed to help her to cope with this debilitating condition.

After the publication of The Voyage Out Woolf was recuperating from a period of intense depression. She suffered mental exhaustion after the completion of nearly every novel, this pattern that would repeat itself quite often throughout her career. Since the doctors believed that the prolonged strain of the mind was caused by endless hours of writing, her time devoted for this activity was limited. There was a little experience in treating such a complicated illness in the early twentieth century – some of the manifestations of Woolf’s mental instability included “weeks of intense depression, night’s anxiety or a sudden faint. Closely associated with her condition were a variety of symptoms (…): a headache or a back-ache, an attack of influenza or a high temperature.” (Lee 175) The occurrence of these often crippling signs of psychological instability varied but it could not be denied that Woolf’s work ethic was often very strenuous. The effort she put into creating novels and writing reviews as well as copious number of letters might have aggravated her fragile mind, which resulted in several suicide attempts and in months of almost unbearable depression. It is understandable that the treatment included the effort to lessen the strain caused by her writing by allowing her to write “for only one half hour a day.” (Woolf in Lee 48) It does seem like a drastic measure, especially for a writer who was able to come up with a relatively large number of texts, such as in the previously mentioned year 1925. What is more,

22 writing was at this point Woolf’s livelihood and separating her from the thing she excelled at must have been a new source of anguish, not to mention the steadily rising cost of her treatment which cut into Virginia and Leonard’s finances.

There is, however, another way to look at the treatment of Woolf’s condition of mind. The fact is that twenty-first century medicine would not most likely utilize a rest cure and it was suggested that the severe limitation or writing did hurt Woolf in the long run, taking away her natural way of relieving stress and exerting a significant amount of energy. The symptoms of the disease she suffered from are, according to Lee, “[similar to] what is called manic-depressive illness, or bipolar affective disorder, or (more recently) bipolar disorder.” (Lee 176) Even in today’s world the treatment of such an illness is a very complicated undertaking which requires a lot of time and advanced medication, in the early twentieth century many people dismissed the symptoms of this sickness as madness or hysteria if it involved young women. When looking at Woolf’s history of suicide attempts and months spent in bed, there is one factor which did help her to live with the burden of psychological instability – Leonard Woolf. He would try his best to comfort Virginia and arrange for the best care he could obtain at the time.

The theme of psychological instability made a swift entry into Woolf’s fiction, with the prime example being the character of Septimus Smith in Mrs. Dalloway but since Night and Day is far more conventional in the sense of character development and narrative technique, there is little to find about such a thing. There is a mention of a rest cure when Katharine talks to her mother about Richard Alardyce and his wife, suggesting that this supposed cure has been around for quite some time and Mrs. Hilbery advises her daughter that love is of the utmost importance in marriage. “ʻAh Katharine, when you marry, be quite, quite sure that you love your husband!’” (Woolf 89) Her advice

23 may suggest a connection of depression and unhappy marriage and this issue re- emerges later in the novel.

The development of Ralph’s affections towards Katharine presents a more serious case of mental instability – Woolf explores the possibility of becoming mad from love. Ralph becomes nearly obsessed with her and gradually his longing after her starts altering his mind in the way he idolises her to the point of becoming obsessed with her. Ann Ronchetti’s book The Artist, Society & Sexuality in Virginia Woolf’s

Novels provides a good degree of insight into Woolf’s novels. The most important and relevant feature is the analysis of the connection of the artist and sexuality. “Denham’s powerful infatuation with Katharine causes him to transform her into a romantic ideal, despite his conscious effort efforts to appreciate her for herself.” (Ronchetti 33)

Beginning with admiration, Denham develops deep affection for Katharine and eventually his life gets so disturbed that he just stares into the windows of Katharine’s family. Since a deep psychological disturbance and its consequences would not really fit the tone of the book, Denham manages to work with Katharine in creating a meaningful relationship. In terms of seriousness, Denham’s psychological instability is quite mild but it is interesting to see how love can change the nature of human being, gradually forcing him to devote all the time to the pursuit of what is often an illusion of happiness.

William, in comparison was not able to give himself fully to the admiration and idolisation of Katharine and it is possible to speculate that while she was shocked by such devotion on Denham’s end, she felt flattered and liked the fact that she was so important for him. Ending the novel on such a romantic and uplifting note is to be expected and it may have been one of the causes of such negative reaction from

Mansfield and others.

Compared to The Voyage Out, the ramifications of psychological instability are almost non-existent – Katharine and Denham talk about the issue and they part with the promise that love conquers all. It is up to the reader to consider how the imbalance on

Denham’s end will affect the romance between them and what will happen when the awe and idolisation fades. Rachel Vinrace, on the other hand, displays a slight degree of mental instability and possibly thanks to this weakness subsequently dies, showing the readership that psychological instability has different expressions.

4. Jacob’s Room

4. 1. Sexuality in Jacob’s Room

One of the main goals of the third chapter is to illustrate the circumstances of the third novel’s publishing, especially the new narrative technique and the fragmentation of the plot. The analysis of the main character is crucial in determining how Jacob’s

Room deals with the issue of Great War. Woolf’s third novel is generally accepted as one of the first ventures outside of the framework of a conventional novel, it is a book in which the reader may get lost trying to single out the real experience of the characters from the memories. With this thought in mind, approaching the theme of sexuality in

Jacob’s Room may be challenging in the way that compared to the previous two novels, sexuality is hardly an issue that raises many eyebrows.

Since this novel is an incomplete and sketchy memoir of Jacob Flanders, the manifestations of sexuality take place during his adventures. Compared to Woolf’s earlier novels, it could be argued that sexuality does not bear such a high degree of importance – Jacob meets different women and forms relationships but the romance and physical affection is not very relevant to the novel. On the other hand, the involvement of Rachel Vinrace with Terence Hewet is a major development in the story and most

25 likely contributes to the death of the protagonist. Ralph Denham is mad with love for

Katharine and the affection is crippling – romance and sexuality are important themes in

Night and Day and the novel would be incomplete without them, not to mention devoid of any conclusion. Realizing this, the reader observes Jacob float through life without being really affected by a love for a woman (or a man for that matter) and while he certainly is not asexual, the relationships do not seem to have a big impact on his journey through life. The love he has for Clara Durrant appears to be quite shallow, yet she is somewhat admired, especially when compared to the other women Jacob has affairs with. “She had a spark of her mother’s spirit in her – was somewhat heroic.”

(Woolf 531) There are a lot of characters in Jacob’s Room and Clara is just a piece of the puzzle that is supposed to illustrate the life of a young man before he died in the

Great War – just as the other love interests of Jacob. In Night and Day, the plot would crumble without romance and while the physical aspect of love is omitted, it important as well. Jacob Flanders is not trying to avoid commitment or intimacy but the reader can observe that the emotions wash over him, rendering him a little more than a mere symbol of a young man trying to find his place in the world. “Women – mothers, girlfriends, wives, students, debutantes, prostitutes, art-models – are placed in Jacob’s room as furniture he overlooks or makes use of.” (Lee 437) In fact, it is possible that the most important woman in the novel is the one who is the only one left after Jacob dies – his mother. The element of a caring mother is something which is new; Helen Ambrose is only a surrogate mother to Rachel and Mrs. Hilbery is too preoccupied with the biography of Richard Alardyce to help her daughter with the issues she has.

Perhaps the first direct reference to sexuality is when Jacob is admired by a pair of dancers during the Guy Fawkes Night. “ʻWe think that you are the most beautiful man we have ever seen.’” (Woolf 472) The admiration, complete with the following

26 scene of putting a wreath on his head repeats itself at least once more in the novel when

Jacob establishes a relationship with Sandra Wentworth Williams, who imagines him as an ideal of beauty. “Jacob is compared to a classical Greek work of art, the zenith of

ʻcivilizationʼ.” (Goldman 52) Despite all this idolisation, Jacob seems unfazed and appears to be detached from his surroundings, almost as if the character was not fully connected with reality and was just swept away by different circumstances. Despite his substantial experience with women of various social ranks, he never manages to see them as an integral part of his life; they are in fact “puzzling and quite foreign.”

(Ronchetti 45) Woolf explores the education of young men at the time, especially the opinions on women they might have adopted at the universities – Jacob most likely acts under the influence of his peers, never madly falling in love but rather conquering one woman after the other and leaving for some other adventure. One would argue that this is the desire of most men or a deep-set, primal yearning and oftentimes just a fantasy.

Woolf used the attitude of Jacob and his friends to criticise the polarisation of British society, where the men are the leaders and women are reduced to taking care of their homes – the culmination of this process is the war which takes many lives of these young men, including Jacob’s. The second feature of the British society of the early twentieth century Woolf criticises by the means of the characters in Jacob’s Room is the lack of option for young women to obtain a higher education. This was a personal struggle of Woolf, since Sir Leslie Stephen, conforming to the Victorian tradition refused higher education to his daughters and Virginia took this injustice very hard and never forgave her father for barring her from going to university.

The introduction of male character as the protagonist of her third novel is one of the first features of the book a reader recognises. At first it may look as a collection of impressions of a young man’s journey with the focus on the world he sees with his own

27 eyes. As the novel progresses, Fanny Elmer and especially Florinda become important characters in the novel and while they may seem sketchy at first, it is important to keep in mind that Jacob rushes through his life and the weight of experience builds up slowly. Introducing a male protagonist is perfectly in line with the conviction that

Woolf did not want her novels to be described as repetitive, she strived for innovation.

According to Hermione Lee, Woolf disliked being labelled, be it a “Sapphist” or a

“writer of novels”. “She wanted to avoid all categories.” (Lee 490) Mainly for this reason her novels hardly ever touch the same subject and her extensive body of work is so multifaceted that even the broadest category cannot perfectly summarise her writing.

To summarise the claims made in this section, Jacob’s Room as the first of the experimental novels does not treat sexuality as an overly important issue, rather than presenting it as an important theme to the titular character, Woolf used it to add colour to the picture that is the life of Jacob Flanders. The scenes involving sexuality are sketchy and perhaps lack the impact of the scenes in The Voyage Out but they nevertheless contribute to the experience of the novel. While love and relationships are the core elements in Night and Day, in her third novel Woolf chose to focus on the individual.

4. 2. Creativity in Jacob’s Room

Similarly to Woolf’s two previous novels, the focus is almost completely on the protagonist and almost all of the characters of the book serve just as the connection of

Jacob and the world. Since the history of Jacob’s brief life is created in a relatively sketchy manner, the reader can fill in some of the gaps made by the novelist by his or her impressions of the character. E. L. Bishop’s text “Toward the Far Side of Language:

Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out” deals with numerous revisions in Woolf’s third novel. “Unlike the leisurely The Voyage Out or the voluminous Night and Day, Jacob's

Room is pared close to the bone. Yet much of the compression comes from the fact that where she described in her earlier novels, she now dramatizes.” (Bishop 122) Jacob’s

Room is also Woolf’s first attempt to create a novel which is not subject to what was perceived as conventional at the time of its publishing.

Virginia Woolf’s third novel is one of the first examples of work that is marked as modernist. This label may be too vague but may help the reader with understanding the importance of Jacob’s Room in the context of the body of work Woolf managed to create. Night and Day was conventional in the sense that the frame of the novel was quite obvious and the outcome was quite predictable – Jacob’s Room on the other hand demands the reader to be more involved. According to Carol Ohmann’s paper “Culture and Anarchy in Jacob’s Room”, Woolf’s third novel is an achievement of novelty.

“[Jacob’s Room] achieves and expresses in its new form (with its rapidly shifting points of view, its narrative discontinuities, its oblique choice of incident) a pattern of attitudes that is also new both in range and decisiveness.” (Ohmann 160) Rather than just following a linear narration, the frequent changes of setting and moving along the timeline of Jacob’s life force the reader to adapt a different approach to understanding a novel. Alex Zwerdling’s text “Jacob's Room: Woolf's Satiric Elegy” discusses the importance of the main character in the novel. “Jacob Flanders seems to be a classic instance of psychological inscrutability in fiction.” (Zwerdling 894) Grasping the character and making sense of his actions is sometimes a challenge. The first unusual feature of the novel is the fact that Jacob is sometimes missing from the narration; more often than not he is a memory of his family or friends.

He is a shadow representing a generation which had many possibilities. “[Missing Jacob is] a fore-shadowing both of his final absence from the text, and of the half-unformed, half-enigmatic presence which he is to emanate through-out.” (Flint 361) Unlike

Katharine Hilbery, who is present in almost every scene and the reader is able to observe and understand her actions throughout the novel, Jacob is unpredictable and often unsettled.

The decision to make the protagonist of the third novel so different compared to the characters of the previous two and to distance her from the conventional novel did gather several positive reviews. “You have freed yourself from any compromise between the traditional novel and your original gift.” (T. S. Eliot in Bell 88) Publishing of the novel in 1922 Woolf would embrace her new narrative technique and venture towards even more experimental pieces of fiction, such as The Waves. What is more,

Jacob’s Room was the Woolf’s first novel to be published by Hogarth Press and it signified another step towards independence, just as leaving 22 Hyde Park Gate and moving into the house at Gordon Square did several years earlier. Vanessa Bell created the cover for the book which was another way of establishing the split from Duckworth.

“Visually, it stood as a symbol of aesthetic independence and self-assertion from established connections-including the uncomfortable connection between Woolf and her half-brother. “ (Flint 378) It would be wrong to consider Gerald Duckworth as an overly harsh publisher but by establishing their own, albeit small business the Woolfs were able to publish what they pleased without any possible interventions by Gerald or anyone else. Creative freedom was of the utmost importance to Woolf and even though there were many problems associated with running Hogarth Press, being able to publish the works of Virginia, Leonard as well as some others was very valuable.

The title would suggest one man’s quest for the place in his world but as the novel progresses, it becomes apparent that the thought process behind creating this work was to show how a person is able to form the memories of the people he or she meets.

The physical location in the world is not nearly as important as the personal connection the protagonist is able to make with the people he meets – despite him not caring that much, they remember him vividly and by establishing the personal connections he becomes an inseparable entity of their surroundings. Another interesting aspect is how

Woolf treats personal identity – the reader first sees Jacob as the son of Mrs. Flanders, deeply set into the life of at least one person. In the last chapter, he becomes a casualty of war, a number on a list. The ending could be seen as a criticism of the state or even society which is willing to send their “young men in the prime of their life” (Woolf 529) to die in foreign lands because the politicians were unable to solve the issues that have been brewing up for years, as was the case with Great War. This event serves as a dramatic backdrop to the story but the important idea of Jacob’s Room is how a person is created, starting from a very real child to a shadow of a young man, nearly indistinguishable from the army of men like him.

There are some instances of creativity in the novel, Jacob’s mother is writing a letter in the opening and there are several instances of Jacob himself writing a letter to his friend Bonamy. In fact, correspondence with him provides the reader with a quite lot of details about Jacob, about his opinions on life and society. There is another matter to consider, compared to Woolf’s two previous novels, the protagonist has much bigger freedom to create his own life. Rachel undergoes a severe transformation but still is under the influence of Helen, St. John and other characters and Katharine has her life lined before her and she is able to make very little deviations. All in all, Jacob is free to admire the beauty of Greece, fall in love whenever he pleases – he is creating a life for

31 himself which is essentially boundless. Just as Jacob lives in the moment, Woolf wanted to write a story unrestricted by form or by stylistic features. “I think the main point is that it should be free.” (Woolf in Lee 439) While The Voyage Out has some properties of Bildungsroman and does not really step beyond the limitations of this genre and it could be argued that Night and Day is a little more than an exercise in the traditional novel. Jacob’s Room forgoes the limitations of the previous works and sets off a new era for Woolf. “To be free meant to be structurally adventurous, less weighted down by tradition, shorter, more condensed and fragmentary.” (Lee 436) She was influenced by

Joyce’s Ulysses, a novel which she was impressed by mostly thanks to the novelty it brought into the literary world. Breaking the pattern of what we perceive as a conventional novel Woolf managed to exploit the want for a new type of novel – a courageous, fresh and daring. Even if she felt the pressure of her father’s legacy in the beginning of her writing career, her third novel was an unmitigated success in terms of coming up with a new way of telling a story. Jacob’s Room finally enabled her to find a voice and was able to fully utilize her talent, which is something she craved ever since her first attempts at writing with Vanessa and Thoby in 1891. The Hyde Park Gate

News was a children’s affair but Virginia nevertheless showed her interest in journalism and writing at a young age and did not stop until she was incapacitated by her mental condition.

In conclusion, Jacob’s Room is groundbreaking on several occasions – the protagonist is often a shadow behind the narration, a young man among many of his generation. The plot is not that important, at least compared to Woolf’s two previous novels and the narration is often broken up into smaller fragments. Jacob’s consciousness permeates through the novel and more often than not, he lives in their thoughts and memories.

4. 3. Psychological Instability in Jacob’s Room

The publishing of Woolf’s third novel brought the usual cycle of anxiety – fear of negative criticism and the onset of a psychological instability signified by severe depression. Even though Jacob’s Room is not a lengthy book, she spent almost two years putting it together and making sure it was as good as she wanted it to be. This emotional strain proved to be a serious issue in the coming years as Woolf was never able to overcome her mental disturbance and every major literary work undermined her fragile mental health.

Perhaps the best way to determine how psychological instability affected Woolf in her work is to take into account her own point of view. “And I haven't said anything very much, or given you any notion of the terrific high waves, and the infernal deep gulfs, on which I mount and toss in a few days.. . . and I'm half ashamed, now I try to write it, to see what pigmy egotisms are at the root of it. “ (Woolf in Caramagno 11) A lot of space in Woolf’s diaries is devoted to describing various symptoms of the instability and later the full-fledged illness, often epitomized by depression that would sometimes last for months. It was indeed a vicious circle – since she was subjected to rest cure, she was not able to put the creative energy to use and in turn long months of writing and proofreading novels, not to mention the countless letters, damaged her fragile mind. Woolf’s mental state got admittedly better after staying at the mental institution in Twickenham but her mood swings and the alternating periods of sheer joy and unbearable misery stayed with her until she realized that she is not able to retain any more control over her mental condition. “At the turn of the year [1940] she began to feel that she could no longer write.” (Lee 753) This cathartic moment happened some twenty years after writing Jacob’s Room but it shows that she fought with the psychological instability for her whole adult life and if she is admired for her literary

33 genius, she might as well be admired for her stubborn will. Some scholars may simplify the reasons for the state of her mind but she was undeniably a warrior, however frail and weak she appeared to be at the end of her life. It would be wrong to consider her weak for choosing to end her life by jumping into the river Ouse because she more than likely tried every available treatment or procedure to help her with the illness. Only the sheer power of will as well as the support of Leonard, Vanessa and a handful of closest friends held her together and enabled her to produce a wealth of literary work.

Compared to The Voyage Out and Night and Day, there is little reference to psychological instability in Jacob’s Room. In the first novel Woolf explored the idea how a sudden powerful surge of knowledge can potentially bring suffering and eventually death. Addressing this issue was akin to playing with madness, namely because she was prone to debilitating periods of depression and the memory of the suicide attempt does not simply vanish. Ralph Denham seems to be going mad from love in Night and Day but his apparent psychological instability is most likely of a different kind than the one Woolf fought with. It could be argued that the event near the end of the novel when Betty Flanders has hallucinations is a manifestation of psychological instability. Woolf herself did occasionally suffer from hallucinations and she translated her own difficulties into fiction, one of the instances being the severe depression of Septimus Smith caused by shell shock in Mrs Dalloway. On the other hand, mistaking the sound of crashing waves in the night for naval guns is not that unlikely association. Woolf probably used the somewhat interchangeable sounds as a basis for establishing the coming war and since the reader only realizes Jacob’s death in the last chapter, he might have died in the gunfire at the eve of Great War. Shortly before the sudden conclusion of the story in Jacob’s room, some of the characters see

Jacob but similarly to his mother, they know that it was not really him but a

34 hallucination. What they saw was a ghost, a remnant of a person they knew but has since transformed into an elusive character. In fact, his celebrated beauty and individuality might have dissolved into the mass of young men just like him. Woolf may have tried to illustrate how an undisturbed mind continuously breaks down under the influence of society and that Jacob is a representation of a consciousness that gradually breaks down only to be absorbed by the world.

Woolf’s personal experience with psychological instability was the greatest source material and inspiration for the depiction of this theme in her work. Her short text On Being Ill provides some insight into what her attitude towards illness was like.

“In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality. We grasp what is beyond their surface meaning, gather this, that, and the other (…).” (Woolf 21) The hallucinations in

Jacob’s Room and the continuous assimilation of Jacob’s character into the society are all things she in some way experienced. She would still be able to tell the stories of the characters from her books if she was mentally stable but by going through decades of seemingly incurable illness of the mind, she was able to describe the plight of Rachel

Vinrace, Ralph Denham or Septimus Smith with eerie precision. What is more, given her family history of mental instability, she had a lot of inspiration for the various psychological issues the characters of her novels suffer from.

When looking at the theme of psychological instability in Jacob’s Room, Woolf was able to use her own experience in describing the hallucinations of the characters in the novel. The combination of the upcoming war and continuous dissolving of the titular character proves to be a powerful background to the story of a young man.

5. Conclusion

The three key issues, sexuality, creativity and psychological instability had an enormous influence on Virginia Woolf’s early fiction. As it was shown on the events from Woolf’s youth, sexual abuse, strict upbringing and disturbance of the mind were great motivators for the novelist. The suffering caused by psychological instability was tremendous and culminated in several suicide attempts. This issue really stands out from the three; her fragile mind was almost constantly under pressure and the effect it had on her was more significant than any other experience. The representations of a disturbed mind are not uncommon in her writing; The Voyage Out shows a character overwhelmed by impressions of the mind, Night and Day shows a character losing his mind thanks to love and Jacob’s Room shows the madness of the war.

The importance of sexuality in Woolf’s early fiction lies in the fact that she was able to include allusions to lesbian love in her fiction. Her own experience was the source of material for the novels, be it the incident with George Duckworth or her relationships with Violet Dickinson and Vita Sackville-West. Same-sex love is not the most important theme in her early fiction, instability of the mind and the search for a place in the world is more important. The two major biographies by Hermione Lee and

Quentin Bell are the most helpful sources with regards to this thesis, thanks to them the reader is able to understand Woolf’s motivation behind writing fiction as well as her approach to creativity in general. The early novels The Voyage Out, Night and Day and

Jacob’s Room are a great start for anyone who is looking to explore the creative process of Woolf. The comparison of the three in terms of style and narrative technique is also very helpful.

The comparison of the first novel and the events of Woolf’s early adulthood prove that the autobiographical features are prevalent in her early fiction. The first chapter tries to shed light on the possible origin of Woolf’s psychological instability, using some secondary sources. The second chapter deals with the depiction of love in

Woolf’s early fiction and with the motivation for writing the second novel in a conventional style. The third chapter aims to explore Woolf’s signature narrative style and the evolution of her psychological instability. In conclusion, exploring the themes of sexuality, creativity and psychological instability can provide the reader with a good deal of information on the early novels of Virginia Woolf. It is possible to obtain a basic understanding of Woolf’s creative process through reading the three books and since they are arguably easier to understand than her later, more experimental work.

Works Cited and Consulted

Primary Sources

Woolf, Virginia. The Voyage Out. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. Night and Day & Jacob's Room. Ware: Wordsworth, 2012. Print.

Secondary Sources

Bishop, E. L. “Toward the Far Side of Language: Virginia Woolf's The Voyage

Out.”Twentieth Century Literature 27.4 (1981): 343-361. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

Bell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography. London: Random House, 1996. Print.

Caramagno, Thomas C.“Manic-Depressive Psychosis and Critical Approaches to

Virginia Woolf's Life and Work.” PMLA 103.1 (1998): 10-23. Web. 14 Nov.

2013.

De Gay, Jane. Virginia Woolf's Novels and the Literary Past. Edinburgh: Edinburgh

UP, 2006. Print.

Flint, Kate. “Revising Jacob's Room: Virginia Woolf, Women, and Language.” The

Review of English Studies 42.167 (1991): 361-379. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

Goldman, Jane. The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf. Cambridge: CUP, 2006.

Print.

Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. London: Vintage, 1997. Print.

Ohmann, Carol. “Culture and Anarchy in Jacob’s Room.” Contemporary Literature 18.2

(1977): 160-172. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

Ronchetti, Ann. The Artist, Society & Sexuality in Virginia Woolf's Novels. New York:

Routledge, 2004. Print.

Swanson, Diana L. ““My Boldness Terrifies Me”: Sexual Abuse and Female

Subjectivity in The Voyage out.” Twentieth Century Literature 41.4 (1995):

284-309. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

Woolf, Virginia, and Julia Stephen. On Being Ill. Ashfield, MA: Paris, 2012. Print.

Zwerdling, Alex. “Jacob's Room: Woolf's Satiric Elegy.” ELH 48.4 (1981): 894-913.

Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

Resumé (English)

The main goals of this thesis are to determine how Virginia Woolf’s life influenced her early fiction, what was her motivation for creating a new narrative technique and to discuss the possible origins of her mental instability. The most important issues to be addressed in thesis are sexual abuse and its effect on teenage

Virginia Stephen, the rebellion against her father and the evolution of her psychological instability. Each chapter dealing with one novel is divided into three subchapters which discuss the themes of sexuality, creativity and psychological instability. The three novels, The Voyage Out, Night and Day and Jacob’s Room offer a good introduction into Virginia Woolf’s fiction, namely because they are arguably easier to understand than her later, more experimental work. A variety of secondary sources was used to consult in the creation of the thesis; the most important ones are the biographies by

Hermione Lee and by Quentin Bell. This thesis shows that psychological instability is the most important theme in terms of influence on the novelist.

Resumé (Czech)

Hlavním cílem této práce je zjistit, jak život Virginie Woolf ovlivnil její tvorbu v letech 1908 až 1922, co bylo její motivací pro vytvoření nové techniky vyprávění a prozkoumat možný původ její psychické nestability. Nejdůležitějšími záležitostmi v této práci jsou sexuální zenužití a jeho vliv na mladistvou Virginii Stephen, rebelie proti jejímu otci formou psaní a vývoj její psychické nestability. Každá kapitola pojednává o jednom románu a každá kapitola je rozdělena na tři podkapitoly, které se zabývají tématy sexuality, tvořivosti a psychické nestability. Zmíněné tři romány představují dobrý vstupní bod do literární tvorby Virginie Woolf, hlavně z toho důvodu, že jsou pravděpodobně čtenářsky přístupnější než její pozdejší, experimentálnější tvorba. Při práci bylo použito několik sekundárních zdrojů, jako nejzásadnější se ukázaly být biografie od Hermione Lee a od Quentina Bella. Tato práce ukazuje, že téma psychologické nestability je to nejzásadnější ze třech zminovaňých a to hlavně z pohledu vlivu na Virginii Woolf.