Paper
Name :
The
Modernist English Literature
Assignment
Topic :
Reflection
of twentieth century in To The Light House
Name:
Solanki
Pintu V
Sem
: 3
Roll
No :
29
Enrollment
No:
PG15101037
Submitted
to :
M.K.
BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY
Department
Of English
Reflection
of twentieth century in To The Light House
To
the light house is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel focuses
on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland
somewhere around 1910 and 1920.
“To
the Lighthouse”(1927) is a novel of childhood, a summer house,
intellectual life and art. In which the passage of time is set by the
consciousness of the characters rather than the big bong of a clock.
The events of a single afternoon are narrated in over half the book,
while the events of the following ten years are compressed in few
pages. In the novel nothing happens actually; all the events take
place in the characters’ minds.
- Historical
Background of the twentieth century:
Every
single age in the historical backdrop of English writing has some
extraordinary characteristics that recognize it from all other,
Pioneer or Twentieth century likewise had some checked components
that separate it from past ages. The move from Victorian age to
Advanced age was speedier forward and in reverse. Innovation best
depicted as scholarly and creative period from the main portion of
the twentieth century.
In
the main portion of that fifty years of the twentieth century human
race propelled speedier and in reverse than amid maybe fifty eras of
before. Human race moved speedier in industrialization and creations
of innovation, with the assistance of that society prompt to advance,
and as a result of material development and logical improvement there
was otherworldly relapse, human race debased in the matter of
religion and deep sense of being.
The
world war one and two, the writing that was delivered amid this time
was an endeavor to consult over the injury of such broad enduring and
the subject of force and pitilessness. The war additionally uncovered
the delicate way of human presence. The whole writing of the
twentieth century can, contaminate be perused as an endeavor to
manage the disclosure of misery of the mettle and frailty of
humankind notwithstanding war. It is additionally conceivable to
contend that abstract methods like "continuous flow" in
James Joyce and Virginia Woolf were reaction to the merciless way of
substances of war. Writers and specialists looked to get away from
the brutal substances of torment, devastation and mercilessness by
holding into the psyche. Instead of investigating genuine, they liked
to investigate the brain. (NAYAR)
SOME
CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE
-
Art
for life sake/ art for art sake
-
Growing
interest in the poor and the working classes
-
Anxiety
and Interrogation
-
Development
In psychology and other science
-
Influence
of Radio, Cinema and Television
-
Impact
of two World Wars
-
High
degree of complexity in structure of literature
-
An
interest in subjectivity and the working of the human consciousness
The
period of Virginia Woolf’s life spanned the transition from the
Victorian to the modern world. In the nineteenth century, the
industrial revolution had made Britain the ‘factory to the world’
and solidified its economic power.
To
The Lighthouse,
along with Woolf’s two preceding novels Jacob’s
Room and
Mrs.
Dalloway,
emerges from the period of painful recovery from the war, and
displays Woolf’s innovations in prose fiction. Most strikingly, the
major events of the novel are contained in brief, condensed
parentheses, while the day-to-day thoughts and memories of the
characters expand to fill the surrounding pages. Although the novel
is set on an island off the coast of Scotland, the house and
surrounding landscape are closely based on St. Ives, Cornwall, where
the Stephen family spent their summers until Virginia’s mother’s
death in 1895. It has therefore often been read as one of Woolf’s
most autobiographical novels.
- What
is Stream of consciousness?
Stream
of consciousness was a phrase used by William James in his Principles
of Psychology (1890) to describe the unbroken flow of perceptions,
thoughts, and feelings in the waking mind.
Stream
of consciousness is the name applied specifically to a mode of
narration that undertakes to reproduce, without a narrator's
intervention, the full spectrum and continuous flow of a character's
mental process, in which sense perceptions mingle with conscious and
half-conscious thoughts, memories, expectations, feelings, and random
associations.
Virginia
Woolf saws us a particular person in this novel not only through the
Consciousness of the other persons. The Conventional novel did not
express life adequately. She was of the opinion that life was a
shower of ever failing atoms of experience, and not a narrative line.
Life, she said, was a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope
surrounding us from the beginning of Consciousness to end.
Generation
gap, family relationship and eluding parental guidance
Virginia
Woolf’s To the Lighthouse that deals with the topic of how the
characters establish relationships among them, and how they are many
times unsuccessful. What this analysis will try to add is report how
gender roles expectations play a crucial part in the inadequacy of
character relationships in the novel. Also, to answer how these
conflicts are resolved, or not resolved, in the novel.
In
the very few opening chapters you will realize this. There is
continuous confrontation between old and new, whether it is Mrs.
Ramsay’s traditional perception of life or it is Lily’s strong
individualism there we can see a gap between old generation and the
new generation. Virginia Woolf’s use of the stream of consciousness
technique allow us to read what they think about each other, what old
think about a new and new about old, for instance in the below
passage is about what Lily thinks about the daily life of Mrs.
Ramsay.
Growth
of Science and Technology
The
20th century was marked by bold scientific developments. Charles
Darwin’s theory of evolution undermined an unquestioned faith in
God that was, until that point, nearly universal while the rise of
psycho analysis, a monument led by Sigmund Freud, introduced the idea
of unconscious mind. Such innovation in ways of thinking had great
influence on the styles and concerns of contemporary artist and
writer like those of Bloomsbury Group. Bloomsbury name derived from a
district of London in which its members lived, this group of writers,
artists and philosophers emphasized on the nonconformity, aesthetic
pleasure and intellectual freedom.
Indirect
interior monologue
Interior
monologue, in
dramatic and nonromantic fiction, narrative technique that exhibits
the thoughts passing through the minds of the protagonists. These
ideas may be either loosely related impressions approaching free
association or more rationally structured sequences of thought and
emotion.
The
term interior
monologue
is often used interchangeably with stream
of consciousness.
But while an interior monologue may mirror all the half thoughts,
impressions, and associations that impinge upon the character’s
consciousness, it may also be restricted to an organized presentation
of that character’s rational thoughts.
The
first thing to note about this novel is that Woolf uses a specific
form of the stream of consciousness technique called “indirect
interior monologue.” “Interior” means that we are inside the
consciousness of one character speaking to herself (“monologue”),
thinking or remembering some past experience. Unlike “direct
interior monologue” where the reader knows which character’s
consciousness is being presented, the consciousness being explored in
the “indirect” method of Woolf is not always obvious.
Sometimes
it’s one character’s consciousness, sometimes the narrative
voice, sometimes another character’s consciousness, and often these
are blended within one sentence without obvious signals being given
as to the change of perspective.
