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The Biographical Mode in the Novels of Virginia Woolf
Author(s) -
Saariluoma Liisa
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.1990.tb01961.x
Subject(s) - mode (computer interface) , character (mathematics) , plot (graphics) , individualism , perspective (graphical) , focus (optics) , narrative , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , literature , aesthetics , history , sociology , art , computer science , visual arts , physics , law , statistics , geometry , mathematics , optics , quantum mechanics , political science , operating system
Although Virginia Wooirs modernist novels abandon the plot and characterization of the traditional Victorian novel, they use and modify in different ways its biographical mode. Her modernist novels can be seen as a dialogue with this mode in that several of them follow it in their external framework or actual contents and even the rest of them deal with problems connected with it. Her interest in the biographical mode comes from her individualist way of looking at life: the only way in which we can give shape to life is by trying to form a whole of the experiences of the individual. In Jacob's Room , the biographical mode provides the external frame of the novel but this mode is hollowed out from within because the protagonist and his life are lacking in coherence. In her one‐day novel, Mrs Dalloway , the capturing of the wider perspective of the life and personality of the main character is achieved by a “tunnelling process.” In The Waves , the outer framework is the life‐time of six people who are all of the same age, but their life‐stories are not told; instead, their sense of living at various phases of their lives is vividly conveyed. The Years appears to be a family novel, but it is really the lives of the separate individuals which are the focus of attention in this novel.