Virginia Woolf and the Modern novel

We are studying Joseph Conrad this week and will be going on to read Virginia Woolf's  Mrs Dalloway in the following two weeks.

You may find Mrs Dalloway tough going at first, but please persist. Do use Spark notes or any of the other guides to help you. Remember, the modernists, as we discussed last week, were interested in rendering not a representation of reality onto the page but rather a sense of the feeling of the experience of life.

If Mrs Dalloway seems disjointed and confusing it is because we are being invited into the consciousness of the characters. We are being given a rendition of their thought processes rather than any rational description or explanation of their actions.

To get an idea of what Virginia Woolf was trying to do. Read her essay MODERN FICTION to be found here:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300031h.html#C12

And you might like this lecture on Virginia Woolf: