III.

Works

Woolf's early novels—The Voyage Out (1915), Night and Day (1919), and Jacob's Room (1922)—offer increasing evidence of her determination to expand the scope of the novel beyond mere storytelling. Her fourth novel, Mrs. Dalloway, is considered by many to be her first great novel, revealing a mastery of the form and technique for which she would become known. The novel centers on the separate worlds and interior thought processes of two characters: Clarissa Dalloway, a gracious London hostess in her 50s whose husband is an uninspired politician, and Septimus Warren Smith, a young ex-soldier suffering a mental illness triggered by a friend’s death in battle during World War I (1914-1918). The two do not know each other and never meet, but their minds have curious parallels. Although Septimus is considered mentally ill by society and Clarissa is considered sane, both experience dizzying alternations in feeling: joy over the tiny leaves of spring, dread of onrushing time, terror over impending extinction, and guilt over the what they feel is the crime of being human. The story takes place on one June day in London after the war, and it explores the idea of time by including past memories and future hopes of the characters. The novel ends with a party given by Clarissa, at which Septimus’s cold but distinguished doctor tells Clarissa of Septimus’s suicide. 'Here is death, in the middle of my party,' she thinks. Instinctively she feels she understands her symbolic double, Septimus—his sensitivity, despair, and defiance. Some critics maintain that Clarissa and Septimus represent two aspects of the same personality, and that both are semiautobiographical representations of Woolf.

The power of Woolf’s fifth novel, To the Lighthouse, lies in its brilliant visual imagery, extensive use of symbolism, and use of the characters’ stream of consciousness to evoke feeling and demonstrate the progression of both time and emotion. Behind the backdrop of ordinary domestic events, the novel’s real concern is with the impact of the radiant Mrs. Ramsay—representing the female sensibility—on the lives and feelings of the other characters, even long after her death.

The story draws on Woolf’s childhood experiences at a summer home by the sea. The novel investigates the contrasts in the behavior and thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, the father and mother of the household. The couple are often considered loose portraits of Woolf’s own parents. To the Lighthouse is split into three distinct parts. The first section, 'The Window,' covers a September day, before World War I, in the lives of the Ramsays, their eight children, and their four houseguests, who include Lily Briscoe, a young painter, and Augustus Carmichael, an older poet. In this section Woolf explores the impressions each character has throughout the day. The Ramsays' six-year-old son, James, talks about his most cherished dream, which is to go to the nearby lighthouse, whose beacon flashes at night. Mr. Ramsay, however, says the weather will not permit such a trip. As the day passes the friends chat and dream; Lily starts a painting of Mrs. Ramsay and James sitting at a window; meals are eaten; the children go to bed; and the Ramsays read.

The second part of To The Lighthouse, 'Time Passes,' starts as the night of that first day, but is then fused with another night, ten years later. In the course of those ten years, Mrs. Ramsay has died; the Ramsay’s eldest son, Andrew, has died in World War I; and their daughter Prue has died in childbirth. Lily and Augustus return to visit Mr. Ramsay and James, who is now 16 years old, at the house.

The third section, 'The Lighthouse,' covers the following day, on which James and his father finally make their trip to the lighthouse and Lily finishes the painting she started ten years earlier. Although Mrs. Ramsay is dead, her presence haunts the thoughts and feelings of the other characters throughout this section. The successful trip to the lighthouse by father and son, and the completion of the painting seem to represent some completion to the purpose of Mrs. Ramsay’s life.

Orlando, loosely based on Woolf’s friend, writer Vita Sackville-West, is a historical fantasy and an analysis of gender, creativity, and identity. The writing is a succession of brilliant parodies of literary styles, and the work satirically comments on society’s changing ideas and values. The story traces the life of Orlando, who is both a boy in 16th-century Elizabethan England and a 38-year-old woman four centuries later.

The Waves (1931) is Woolf's most experimental and difficult work. It is organized into nine units, each of which records a series of stream-of-consciousness monologues given entirely in the present tense by six characters, one after another. The monologues reveal the personalities of each character in their inner experiences of external events. Each of these nine units is introduced by an italicized passage describing the sea, the sky, a garden, hills, and a house during some imaginary day. As in her other novels, Woolf is primarily concerned with rendering the quality of inner life, but here inner life is presented in a highly stylized, unrealistic way. While the voices uttering the monologues have different names, sexes, and histories, the similar language of their monologues often seems more like different aspects of the same consciousness, perhaps representing the various aspects of humankind as a whole.

Besides novels, Woolf also published many works of nonfiction, including two extended essays exploring the roles of women in history and society: A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). Her works of literary criticism include The Common Reader (1925) and The Common Reader: Second Series (1932). After her death, Woolf’s diaries were edited and published in five volumes between 1977 and 1984 as The Diary of Virginia Woolf. The Letters of Virginia Woolf appeared in six volumes from 1975 to 1980.