Lecture notes
Modern Fiction: Mrs Dalloway Lecture 1 Notes
- Module
- Modern Fiction
- Institution
- University Of Leeds (UoL)
Some notes provided by Doctor Robert Jones, a lecturer at the University of Leeds, on 'Mrs Dalloway'.
[Show more]
Content preview
30/09/2024‘Mrs Dalloway’ Lecture 1
Introduction to the Module:
● Introduction to British and American Fiction from 1920-1980. Different experiences of
modernity, modes of narration and forms of novel.
● Things to think about - times, spaces, places, changes, differences, forms and experiments.
Virginia Woolf
● Born in 1882 - dies during WW2. Prosperous and well-connected family.
● Theorist of the Modern Novel - commentator of the ‘contemporary moment’ and is a crucial
feminist writer.
‘Mrs Dalloway’
● Novel set in mid 1920s; 1923 to be precise - ramifications of the war are deeply felt.
● Principally concerned with crises and resolution within the head of its crucial character, Mrs
Dalloway.
● Spend the day, self-doubting and self-exploring Clarissa - her doubts and desires explore
feminism and doubts misunderstood today.
● Woolf’s novel can be deemed feminist and modernist, not just because of what it sets out to
explore, but how it undertakes that journey.
● Helped define literary modernism in England, especially in opposition to realism.
● Realism in fiction using it to chronicle in detail the lives and struggles of their principal
characters. Woolf’s earliest fictions exhibit the key practices of late 19th century fiction, ways
of writing which she would eventually modify or reject.
● Realism plays a key role in her early novel, ‘The Voyage Out’. Stable relationship between
objects and events. Some of Woolf’s concerns are present in this novel and the way in which
it is represented is different.
● Post war armistice novel.
● Realism = not pointing to an opposition to romance or modern fiction or plausible or
convincing, a set of assumptions and practices in the 19th century brought together to create
a recognisable representation of life - a knowable, external reality which can be rationally
described and analysed accordingly e.g. Wind in the Willows, clear of who’s speaking, what
they’re doing and why.
● Focus was on middle class and lower middle class - combination of convention and order that
is crucial and the hierarchies and exclusions of those chosen conventions they relied on or
generated.
● 19th century realism charted the rise of which social, economic and other forces were
perceived to shape lives and to act upon the minds making that perception. Interactions seen
as rational and positive.
● Woolf, like other Modernists, is interested in less tangible forces and connections e.g. chiming
of Big Ben - affect people’s curiosity but the key thing is the perception of what is happening
or what it is like to be alive is not limited to or disconnected from rational causation. The
experience of the mind comes forward and is paramount.
‘Character in Fiction’
● This attention to character won’t do any longer - it no longer makes sense to write fiction in
this way. It has become stale and unconvincing to engage the reader with a representation.
She offers a parody of the workings of novels trying to describe an older lady, ‘Mrs Brown’.
, ● Realism, writing a character through a rational description, some form of change is needed.
Not because of a generational restlessness, but because the very basis of the novel character
can and must change.
‘And so it goes on from character to character all through the splendid opulence of the Victorian age. They love,
they joke, they hunt, they marry; they lead us from hall to cottage, from field to slum. The whole country, the
whole society, is revealed to us, and revealed always in the same way, through the astonishing richness and
reality of their characters. How do I begin to describe this woman's character? And they said, 'Begin by saying
that her father kept a shop at Harrogate. Ascertain the rent. Ascertain the wages of the shop assistants in the
year 1878. Discover what her mother died out. Describe cancer. Describe calico. Describe - But I cried, 'Stop!
Stop!' and I regret to say that I threw that ugly, clumsy, incongruous method out of the window, for I knew that if I
began describing the cancer and the calico, my…..vision...would have been dulled and tarnished and vanished
forever.’
Virginia Woolf, 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs Brown' and 'Character in Fiction' in Selected Essays.
Change of Personality
‘My first assertion is one I think you will grant - that every one...is a judge of character. Indeed it would be
impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practiced character-reading and had some skill in the art.
Our marriages, our friendships depend on it; our business largely depend on it; every day questions arise which
can only be solved by its help. And now I will hazard a second assertion, which is more disputable perhaps, to
the effect that on or about December 1910 human character changed. I am not saying that one went out, as one
might into a garden, and there saw a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not
definite and sudden like that. But change there was. The Georgians had,..a difficult task before them, and if they
have failed,..there is nothing to surprise us in that. To bring back character from the shapelessness into which it
has lapsed, to sharpen its edges, deepen its compass, and so make possible those conflicts between human
beings which alone rouse our strongest emotions - such was their problem’.
● Change is not definite and sudden but change there was. How personality or character
changes / generational shift about Christmas 1910 - also personality of people that fiction is
trying to describe which has undergone some sort of change.
● Woolf says the way characters in fiction are understood has changed, going into the ‘recess
of the mind’, their inner-self, private self. This view of personality replaced older explanations
of how personhood was best explained (connections, society, economics)
● Georgians e.g. novelists of the reign of George the 5th - 1910 to 1935 - Lawrence, Joyce,
Forster. Her generation have attempted to reclaim character as something that has inner
drama, something that has been influenced by various European theories of which
psychoanalysis e.g. Sigmund Freud - see the sense of inner life and the sense of oneself as
being determinate as much or more than economic circumstances.
● Two key developments in Woolf’s fiction: stream of consciousness and moments of being
Stream of Consciousness (represent and articulate a new form of character in the real world and
fiction) = thoughts in the head e.g. interior monologue - a flow of sense expressions e.g.sight, sound,
taste, touch and often their relation and recollection of memories. It’s to see what those streams of
consciousness do and what they enable in the form of fiction.
Moments of Being = how time, space and consciousness come together to form identities. Thought
that ‘cotton wool’ obscured what really underpinned their lives, narrowed their experience and
perceptions. Moments of being removed from their eyes. The pattern of life is revealed and
connection to past and present is fully disclosed.
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller chocolatedaisy03. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for £5.99. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
69605 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy revision notes and other study material for 15 years now