Woolf, Virginia,--1882-1941--Criticism and interpretation

In their essays and fiction, both Virginia Woolf and Christa
Wolf address epistemological limitations inherent in
patriarchy. In A Room of One's Own, Woolf investigates the
gendered roles of author and character in Western literature
and literary tradition. In Voraussetzungen einer
Erzaehlung: Kassandra, Wolf analyzes the history and
repercussions of Western patriarchal social structures in
aesthetics and politics. Woolf's Between the Acts and
Wolf's Nachdenken ueber Christa T. and Kassandra enact
literary transitions past a prescriptive epistemology, which
categorizes all experience according to gendered
preconceptions of reality, to a unified view of aesthetic
experience. Moreover, critical response to their writing
reflects an historically grounded shift in interpretation.
Woolf's contemporaries were interested in stylistic and
technical innovations. Critics writing after 1970 have
focused chiefly on the epistemological implications in the
works of both authors.

In her first novel, The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf captures the complexity of human relationships and the difficulty of establishing meaningful connections with people. Her main character, Rachel Vinrace, struggles with these issues as she embarks on a discovery of self. Rachel's journey begins with a disrupted childhood, moves through her battle to regain a sense of belonging, and ends with her eventual withdrawal from the human struggle, thereby recreating herself and transcending the limitations of society and relationships. Rachel's actions throughout the novel mirror an oscillation between the fundamental concerns of personality development. Her behavior reflects the typical ego defense mechanisms employed by people preoccupied by interpersonal relatedness followed by an exaggerated emphasis on self-definition.

This study of three novels by Virginia Woolf---Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves---examines the various narrative techniques Woolf employs to construct her concept of character in the modernist novel, and also considers her related assumptions about the multiple dimensions of identity. As Woolf questions whether life and reality are "very solid or very shifting," she generates a series of framing devices---such as mirrors, portraits, dinner parties, and narratives---that acknowledge a solid, visible, and structured reality within the frame amidst a shifting, invisible, and unstructured reality outside it. Woolf's attention to the operation of the frame as simultaneously facing inward and outward enables her to umbrella this contradistinction of elements in her expression of identity. This analysis of Woolf's orchestration of multiple framed perspectives and images evidences her visionary contributions to studies in narrative and human character.