Abstract
The primeval and the prehistoric have powerfully fascinated many twentieth century writers, notably Conrad and Eliot. The idea of origins and the idea of development are problematically connected in that of pre-history. And in the twentieth century the unconscious has often been presented in the guise of the primeval. These associations have been engendered by the most powerful new metaphor of the past 150 years. The development of the individual organism has always been a rich resource for metaphor; but evolutionary theory, and in particular, Darwin’s writing, suggested that species also developed and changed. The analogy between ontogeny (individual development) and phylogeny (species development) has proved to be the most productive, dangerous, and compelling of creative thoughts for our culture, manifesting itself not only in biology, but also in psychology, race-theory, humanism, and in the homage of our assumptions about the developmental pattern of history.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (1938; rpt London: Hogarth Press, 1943) pp. 326–7.
Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, ed. Leonard Woolf (London: Hogarth Press, 1953) P. 365.
Virginia Woolf, ‘A Sketch of the Past’, Moments of Being, ed. J. Schulkind (University of Sussex Press, 1976) p. 80.
Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (London: Hogarth Press, 1941) p. 101–2.
For a related discussion of Virginia Woolf’s evasion of plot, see my article ‘Beyond Determinism: George Eliot and Virginia Woolf’ in Women Writing and Writing About Women, ed. Mary Jacobus (London: Croom Helm, 1979) pp. 80–99.
Virginia Woolf, The Waves: The Two Holograph Drafts, ed. J. Graham (London: Hogarth Press, 1976) I, p. 42.
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (London: Hogarth Press, 1930; rev. ed. 1963) p. 5.
Woolf, The Waves (1931; rpt. London: Hogarth Press, 1946) pp. 205, 206.
T. H. Huxley, ‘Lectures on Evolution’, Science and Hebrew Tradition (London: Macmillan, 1893) p. 73.
Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (London: Hogarth Press, 1939) pp. 129–30.
For an analysis of Darwin’s narrative language and of his myths, see my study, Darwin’s Plots (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983).
For discussion of Conrad’s reading of evolutionary theory see Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century (London: Chatto & Windus, 1979).
Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (1915; rpt. London: Hogarth Press, 1929) p. 327; 331.
John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol. III (1856; rpt. New York: John Wiley, 1881) Part iv, Ch. 12, 6, 11, p. 161.
see Perry Meisel, The Absent Father: Virginia Woolf and Walter Pater (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980)
Virginia Woolf, diary entry dated 20 Oct. 1940, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, eds Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie (London: Hogarth Press, 1982) Vol. V.
H. G. Wells, The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind (Rev. ed. London: Cassell, 1920).
Roger Poole, in The Unknown Virginia Woolf (Cambridge University Press, 1978) convincingly establishes connections between Three Guineas and Between the Acts.
T. S. Eliot, ‘Dry Salvages’ Four Quartets, Collected Poems 1909–1962 (London: Faber & Faber, 1974) pp. 205, 208–9.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1984 Gillian Beer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Beer, G. (1984). Virginia Woolf and Pre-History. In: Warner, E. (eds) Virginia Woolf. Studies in 20th Century Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17489-8_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17489-8_8
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)