Virginia Woolf Influences

Unlike Annie Dillard, Virginia Woolf was an essayist during the turbulence of the early twentieth century, where she witnessed the atrocities of both world wars and the lack of women in the intellectual realm. Ultimately, Woolf decided to end her own life by drowning herself. Therefore, her views of life

Virginia Woolf and Annie Dillard are two exceptionally talented authors who wrote two comparative pieces. In response to Woolf's essay, “The Death of the Moth”, Dillard wrote a companion piece titled “Death of a Moth”. With vivid imagery and creative diction, both authors wrote themselves into the narrative and became a character within their own story, giving them a unique point of view. As they each recounted the moments leading up to the symbolic end of their moths’ life, it becomes clear both writers were affected by the death, but the impressions that the moth left were greatly contrasted. Witnessing the moths failed attempt at escape, Woolf was inspired to accept death and the finality that comes with it.

Joyce Carol Oates’ unique style of writing has left an impactful, yet meaningful mark on many individuals lives today. The compelling literature she has written over the span of her career has established a unique style that has won many awards. At age fifteen, Joyce Carol Oates wrote her first novel, which was at first rejected by publishers for being too depressing for teenage audiences. From a plethora of books, novels, short story collections, poetry, young adult fiction and plays, her work has had an impactful last on our society today. Joyce still continues to expand her knowledge and continues to follow her love for writing as a Professor at Princeton University, in New Jersey.

The essay “The Death of The Moth” was published posthumously in 1942, a year after Virginia Woolf lost a battle with depression and mental illness, and at age 59 committed suicide. Virginia Woolf's "The Death of the Moth" shows the audience the power of death through a short narration about everyday, yet very symbolic moth. Woolf uses her own experience of watching a moth die to apply it to a larger theme. Woolf connects a simple moths lifespan to paint a gorgeous picture of “life” and then destroys it right in front of the audience's eyes, to leave a lasting impression of Woolf's perception of life and death. With further analysis and a more in depth look at its message, it is a essay filled with literary devices,

The Modernist movement began as America began to divulge from the ideals of the Victorian Period. Modernism was provided as a response to the ongoing WWI. New artists divulged into the new writings about rationalism and individualism. Modern artists Wrote about struggles and the conflict between fragmentation and order. As time progressed the modernist movement changed, one subsection of the modernist movement was the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was influenced by the political, social and economic change of the United States during the early twentieth century and left an everlasting impact on African American culture.

When the novel was published on 27 October 1922 by the Hogarth Press and printed by R. & R. Clark of Edinburgh, Woolf was terribly anxious about its critical reception because of her radical experimentation in the work (Letters 574) and its departure from the fictional conventions of works by writers like Bennet and Wells, as well as her own previous novels. She was strongly impressed by the Russian writers of the late nineteenth century, who had only recently been translated into English. As a writer always seeking new

Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf both wrote beautiful essays, entitled “Death of A Moth,” and “Death of the Moth,” respectively. The similarities between the two pieces are seen just in the titles; however, the pieces exhibit several differences. While both Dillard and Woolf wrote extensive and detailed essays following deaths of moths, each writer’s work displays influence from different styles and tone, and each moth has a different effect on the respective writer; Dillard utilizes more blunt, and often graphic description in her writing, contrasting with Woolf’s reverent and solemn writing. Dillard is affected by allowing her to contemplate the concept of eternity and purpose

Moreover, the fluidity, represented by the thoughts of the characters, is enhanced by the form of the novel: Mrs Dalloway is not divided into chapters; thus, it does not leave behind a sense of completeness. It is largely intertwined with the narration of Clarissa and that of the other characters and the action largely takes place in the mind. This is presented in form of free indirect discourse: the narrative conveys the thoughts of the selected character. This leaves the readers with an impressionistic story. To demonstrate how different characters bring about unequal messages, here is an illustration from the work: when Clarissa is strolling the streets of London, she and Septimus both see the same car. The vehicle leads them to different thoughts: for Septimus it is seeing in it the power of the modern world, which “was about to burst into flames” (13) or rather the oppressive relationship of technology and war, which ultimately leads to his suicide. He is bound by the internal, his suffering thoughts cannot help but to be captured in the memories of the World War I he fought in. For Clarissa, hearing the noise of the car provokes her to think she has heard “a pistol shot in the street” (12) (which later turns out to be true). By using such a form of representation, Woolf points to the invisible connections of people in a dehumanised, yet technology-bound, world, which create between them a form of interaction that serves as compensation for what Septimus (and

Woolf writes about life for women during that time period. She herself being a woman, found it hard to get her work to become public. During that time women are seen as property and that they must follow social norms. Things such as obeying her husband and waiting to be allowed to speak(if she were allowed to speak) were “just how things are done”. In society women are looked down on and seen as things or property rather than people who have feelings,

Post World War I London society was characterized by a flow of new luxuries available to the wealthy and unemployment throughout the lower classes. Fascinated by the rapidly growing hierarchal social class system, Virginia Woolf, a young writer living in London at the time, sought to criticize it and reveal the corruption which lay beneath its surface. Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf’s fourth novel, was born in 1925 out of this desire precisely. A recurring focus in many of Woolf’s major novels is the individual and his or her conscious perceptions of daily life. Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf uses this technique, known as a “stream-of-consciousness,” to trace the thoughts of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith during one day in London five years after the Great War. It is exactly this narrative technique which allows Woolf to compare the lives of these two characters which belong to different social classes to argue that social placement has a negative effect on one’s life and psychological being.

Modernism was a movement that was developed during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Modernism developed due to the changes happening in societies at the time. Around the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century there was a rise in the industrial society’s where there were advancements in technologies and machines, and a rapid growths in cities. This lead to a change in cultural trends and philosophies, which is known as modernism. Modernism was well known for the rejection on traditional way, such as the arts and beliefs. It rejected the idea of realism and religious beliefs. During these years modernism could be distinguished by two aspects, High and Low Modernism.

This was soon followed by the death of her mother and the inevitable estrangement and death of her father. Due to these events, Woolf became close to her sister, Vanessa; whom both shared to goal of escaping the “constraints of Victorian womanhood” (Hussey 377). This mainly stemmed from the sisters not being able to go to traditional school like their brothers. Not being mainstreamed into the school system provided Woolf with few friends and lead to many of her mental disabilities. After the death of her father, Woolf attempted suicide for the first time by jumping out a window. Soon after this event, her doctor and family members deemed Woolf mentally unstable. This led to Woolf’s passion of writing, it allowed her to explore her mania-depression on a deeper level. Her mental issues also led to her feminist tendencies, in which she eventually turned against men completely, even her husband Leonard.

Modernism describes the ideology of the art and design that were produced during the modernist period. There has been a lot of controversy about when modernism started, yet many believe it initiated sometime in the late 19th century and continued to the early 20th century. The modernist movement was meant to be a break from traditions and it was set up to separate the value of certain works from the conservative realism. For instance, Unlike the traditional art that was aesthetic, this movement was more about space and form. In modernist design, shape and organization of products and buildings were based on their functional requirements. As a result, designs became simpler without the traditional decorative concepts. The idea behind the

Virginia Woolf is thought to have bipolar II disorder. As a young child, her eldest brother sexually abused her. She had three major breakdowns and was hospitalized for one of them. She endured many deaths in her early years. The Sudden death of her mother in 1895 and two years later the death of half-sister, Stella, in 1897, lead to Woolf’s first mental breakdown from ages 13-16 (Woolf). Later in her early adult years, her father passed away in 1904 and 1907 her beloved brother, Thoby, passes away; these deaths caused her second breakdown (Woolf). In 1913,less than a year after being married, she falls into her third and final mental breakdown (Woolf). Woolf was said to never fully recover from her 1913 mental breakdown. During the years of 1910-1913, Woolf sent on a ‘rest cure’ in Twickenham to a private nursing home for women with nervous conditions (Woolf). Before the final downfall of Virginia she was on her way to becoming a well-known author. She was apart of the Bloomsbury group. A quote from her famous book Mrs. Dalloway, “ It achieves it is the vision of reality through the reception by Mrs. Dalloway’s mind of what Virginia Woolf called those myriad impressions- trivial fantastic, evanescent or engraved with the sharpness of steel”(“Virginia Stephen Woolf”). Although people raved about her novels, she could never feel the joy in her success. In 1915 as was recorded to be considered her good years, happily married, publishes her first novel, Leonard and Woolf have plans to make their own printing press (Woolf). Even though to the public her life seems to be everything she could have wished, it was slowly taking it’s turn for the worst. The 26th of March in 1915 she Publishes “ Voyage Out” and enters a Nursing home for the next six months

The Modernist Period was first a reaction against the previous Victorian culture. Intellectuals and artists of the 20th century believed that the previous era’s way of doing things was a cultural dead end and they wanted to break away from traditions.