MODERN FICTION BY VIRGINIA WOOLF SUMMARY & ANALYSIS

 "life is not a series of gig lamps, symmetrically arranged"

 

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), a modern English novelist and critic, well known for her works Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and A Room of One's Own (1929).

The essay ‘Modern Fiction’ was written in 1919 but published in 1921 in the famous journal ‘The common reader and critical method’. It acts as a manifesto for modern fiction to express whatever they feel, not what society or publisher want them to write. As far as she is concerned one should write what inspires them and not to follow any special method. She believed that Writers are constrained by the publishing business, and society dictates how literature should be written. Woolf believed it is a writer’s Job to write the complexities in life and the unknown.

‘Modern fiction’ is one of the most path breaking treatises in criticism which marks a clear break of modern fiction from the Victorian tradition. At the outset she estimates the progress of the novel from its inception. In the 18thCentury, according to Woolf, the earlier novelists really did what they actually could within their limited means. With their simple tools and primitive materials, it might be said “Fielding did well and Jane Austen even better”. Thus, she evaluates the trend of modern novel, and attacks certain writers who still follows the traditional method. Novel as the term itself suggests, supposed to be something new not mere an improvement. She Criticises H.G. Wells, Arnold Benett, John Galsworthy of writing about unimportant things and called them materialists. She remarks that, they hadn’t put life into their novels. They are mainly concerned with the body, not the soul of the novel.  This is particularly because they are all materialists and are concerned with fixities not with movements. But Mr. Benett is perhaps the worst culprit of the three, in as much as he is by far the best workman. He can make a book so well constructed but life escapes from it. She suggests that it would be better for literature to turn their backs on them.

While Woolf criticizes these three authors, She praises and appreciates the remarkable and innovative approaches of Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conard, William Henry Hudson, James Joyce and Anton Chekhov. She praises them for their experimental attempt. This group of writers she name spiritualists, mainly to James Joyce. As a typical modern novelists and critic Mrs. Woolf advises the modern novelists to look within and see what life is like then write about it. “look within and life, an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions- trivial, fantastic, evanescent or engraved with the sharpness of the steel”. Thus, she strongly advocates to portray the mind within the pages, it seems, is very far being like this. “life is not a series of gig lamps, symmetrically arranged. Life is a luminous halo (bright circle of light), a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of the consciousness to the end” .Life for Virginia Woolf is not fixed, but a changing process. It is a flux and “ incessant showering of innumerable atoms”. It is the duty of novelist to convey these sensation and impressions.

There should be no limitations or conventions. A writer is indeed a free man and not a slave, he should write what he chose, not what he must. Modernism in general challenged to step away from the traditional and write in a way that they can express their visions. The job of the writer is to write. There should not be any set of rules that an author has to follow.

When it comes to the proper stuff of fiction. She says : “The proper stuff of fiction does not exist, anything can be a proper stuff of fiction”.