Self-invention, self-construction, self-reinvention: versions of self in the novels of Virginia Woolf
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1995
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Abstract
This thesis describes Virginia Woolf's representation of the self in three novels. In Mrs Dalloway, the self is a continuously-changing entity, confronting through particular memories former selves from the perspective of the present moment and the present self. Therefore the self is made up of a successive series of selves, progressively moving towards the present composite self. Woolf retains this view of the self in To the Lighthouse and The Waves, but alters the way in which she presents self-composition. In To the Lighthouse, the self is rendered as a painting. Woolf reinvents the self in The Waves by minimizing the narrator's voice so that the selfhoods of the six characters emerge entirely from their thought processes. Jacob's Room introduces this study, showing Woolf's initial work towards her fully-constructed vision of selfhood. Between the Acts is considered in the conclusion as a novel emphasizing that the Modernist self is fragmented to the point of disintegration.
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Bibliography: p. 93-94.
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Bryce, L. H. (1995). Self-invention, self-construction, self-reinvention: versions of self in the novels of Virginia Woolf (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/19035