ESSAY CEMETERY

Virginia Woolf’s 1922 novel Jacob’s Room is set in post-industrialization, post-urbanization England. Throughout the novel, Jacob lives in cities, relocating from Scarborough to Cambridge University to London. Although the premise of Jacob’s Room is realistic, descriptions of these cities are often accompanied by mystical and supernatural imagery. Through metaphors of light and darkness, Woolf explores the role of the city and of education in man’s increasing estrangement from nature. In spite of the city’s bright appeal, Woolf exposes intellectual urban life as an ineffective barrier against the unavoidable chaos of existence and the inescapable mortality of man. Chapter Three sees Jacob leaving his mother and his home in Scarborough to attend university at Cambridge. His first impressions of Cambridge are of the brightness of its cityscape. “They say the sky is the same everywhere... But above Cambridge--anyhow above the roof of King's College Chapel--there is a difference. Out a...

In her 1923 essay “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”, Virginia Woolf places characterization at the center of the novelist’s concerns. For Woolf, the novelist is defined primarily by his or her obsession with capturing character, a task she deems nearly impossible. “Few catch the phantom [of character]; most have to be content with a scrap of her dress or a wisp of her hair” (21). Despite this ostensible focus on characterization, Woolf has been criticized for creating shallow, incomplete characters in her works. Indeed, in her novel, Jacob’s Room, published in 1922, remarkably little attention is given to the title character. Only a vague outline is provided of the progression of Jacob Flanders from early childhood to his death, and key transitional moments in Jacob’s life are elided from the narrative. Whereas the title character is often absent from the action and narration of Jacob’s Room, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children protagonist Saleem Sinai is omnipresent throughout that narrat...

Themes Descriptions of sensations Memories Disaster feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling ... one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. City life In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. Being in the moment Mixed, nonlinear temporality For it was the middle of June. The War was over, except for some one like Mrs. Foxcroft at the Embassy last night ...

THEMES Fiction Women Money Chance STYLE ellipsis Stream of thought, the way thought moves from thing to thing Interruption People are not named Self-reflexivity KEY WORDS Woman Fiction Virginia Woolf

Summary of chapters 1 and 2. Bottom line: for women to be independent of men, they need money. Chapter 1 Woolf begins her long essay by explaining how difficult the questions of fiction and women and their relationship are. All she knows for sure, she says, is that " a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". She hopes that through exploring the manner in which she arrived at this conclusion, that the topic of women and fiction will become clearer. She proceeds to tell a fictitious story (I think) to illustrate her point. A woman walks on the lawn on the grounds of a college. She has an idea, which she forgets when she abruptly remembers that only fellows of the college are allowed on the grass, and others on the gravel paths. She ponders the writing of two authors, when she remembers that their manuscripts are in the library on the grounds. She decides to view the manuscripts, but finds that women are not allowed in the library...

THEMES  The struggle of writing Experiences in writing Limitations for woman writers The taboos for woman writers Men's constraints on women The definition of woman The profession of writing Other professions for women The future of women as professionals KEY WORDS Books Women Man Angel in the House Pen Ink Experience Profession Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is addressing a group of women seeking employment in a workforce predominated by men. She speaks of the struggle present for all women writers, and that is to break out of the conventions society has for women- being pure, and conservative, and sycophantic towards men without a mind of their own. This is a mental barrier that she was able to break, with great difficulty, in order to incorporate her own voice into her writing. She was able to do so thanks to her financial independence, which allowed her to not depend on writing for a livelihood and allowed her to break conventions. Now that women will join the workforce, Woolf says that it is important to ask questions regarding what all of this implies, and how women are to behave once they are professionals, and to explore the individual voice that women will need to bring to their jobs. Virginia Woolf

Woolf, Virginia. "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown."  Essentials of the Theory of Fiction . Ed. Michael J. Hoffman and Patrick D. Murphy. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. 21-34. Google Books . Web. 15 June 2012. This is an essay by Virginia Woolf, originally a speech she made it seems. Its tone is rather informal. Summary Writing an essay is tough. There is a notion of a character which haunts the writer until he is compelled to begin writing. It is crucial for the novelist to be obsessed with character. She ascribes ultimate importance to convincing characterization- that that is, in fact, the purpose of novels. The essay will explore: What "real" character means What "character" means Why young novelists fail to create characters We all "read characters". Woolf claims human character changed around 1910. There was a shift in human relations, a sort of liberation, around this time, which was reflected in all areas of life. Arnold...