Abstract
In a letter written in 1919, George Eliot’s centenary year, Virginia Woolf confessed to her correspondent: ‘I am reading through the whole of George Eliot, in order to sum her up, once and for all, upon her anniversary’1 — a typically extravagant and irreverent statement, mocking the centenary convention. Despite the tongue-in-cheek attitude evident here, Virginia Woolf is touching upon a natural desire, which a centenary prompts, to gain some firm perspective on a writer’s work. I hope that the following consideration of consciousness and group consciousness in Virginia Woolf will allow me to trace a current of thought and feeling which runs throughout her writing, and to suggest a placing of Virginia Woolf’s work in the kind of historical perspective which a centenary celebration might encourage us to consider. I intend to explore an idea which links Virginia Woolf clearly to a current of thinking which was of great importance in her lifetime, but which has since been somewhat neglected, or obscured, or treated in only a fragmentary way. As the discussion will be of an aspect of her work which her contemporaries, her first reviewers, seized upon, then perhaps my argument should be seen as an effort of recovery; an attempt to look afresh at one aspect of the wave of critical commentary which has accompanied Virginia Woolf‘s work from the very beginning of her career as an imaginative writer.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Virginia Woolf, The Question of Things Happening: The Letters of Virginia Woolf eds Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (London: Hogarth Press, 1976) Vol II, p. 321.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925; rpt. London: Hogarth Press, 1947) p. 168.
William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890; rpt. New York: Dover, 1950) Vol I, p. 239.
William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology (1899; rpt. London: Longman, 1910) p. 17.
James Naremore, The World Without a Self (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973) P. 73.
Avrom Fleishman, Virginia Woolf: A Critical Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975) pp. 84; 59.
‘Les Copains’, review of Jules Romains, Les Copains, Times Literary Supplement, 7 Aug. 1913, p. 330.
E. M. Forster, review of The Voyage Out, Daily News and Leader, 8 April 1915, P. 7.
Jules Romains, The Death of a Nobody, trans. Desmond MacCarthy and Sydney Waterlow (London: Howard Latimer, 1914) p. 37.
Virginia Woolf, ‘Modern Fiction’, Collected Essays, ed. Leonard Woolf (London: Chatto & Windus, 1966) Vol II, p. 106.
Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf ed. Anne Olivier Bell (London: Hogarth Press, 1977) Vol. I, p. 80.
See Hermione Lee, The Novels of Virginia Woolf (London: Methuen, 1977) p. 218.
Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf eds Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie (London: Hogarth Press, 1980) Vol. II, p. 22.
Carl Woodring, Virginia Woolf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1984 Allen McLaurin
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McLaurin, A. (1984). Consciousness and Group Consciousness in Virginia Woolf. In: Warner, E. (eds) Virginia Woolf. Studies in 20th Century Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17489-8_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17489-8_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-17491-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-17489-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)