VIRGINIA WOOLF

                      VIRGINIA WOOLF ( 1882-1941 )

Virginia Woolf is one of the greatest novelists of the modern period. She reacted against the novel of social manners as produced by writers like Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy. For her the realities were inward and spiritual rather than outward and material and meant the thoughts, feelings and impressions. The exclusiveness of the inner realities is the recurrent theme of her novels.

it is in the field of technique that she makes her most important contribution to the novel. She entirely rejects the conventional technique and replaces emphasis on incident, external description and straightforward narrative by an overriding concern with character presentation by the stream of consciousness method. She uses this technique with a sureness of purpose; her keen mind and magnificent artistic sense enable her to weld the parts into a unified artistic whole. Her studies of mood and impulse are handled with an almost scientific precision.

Virginia Woolf believes that the purpose of all novels is to express character- not to preach doctrines or sing songs. She expresses her concern with character in the following way: "Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness." In her novels she proves the inner workings of the mind with a penetrating insight.

Woolf represents the poetization of prose style. She realizes that the very atmosphere of the mind, the chaotic welter of sensations, feelings, impressions and motives can not be adequately reproduced with the ordinary resources of prose. She uses words charged with rhythmic and musical potentialities. The Waves is the best example of her rich figurative style.

Her best novels are Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves.