"The Thing Beneath The Semblance of The Thing": Virginia Woolf's Concept of Reality

Abstract

<p>This thesis undertakes a co-ordinated study of the public and private writings of Virginia Woolf with the purpose of defining her concept of reality as presented in her major novels.</p> <p>The topic is subdivided into four categories which are discussed in four chapters under the following headings: Sex, Time, Life and Love, and Death. In each chapter extracts from the private papers of Virginia Woolf are! compared with her public writings in order to clarify such key concepts as "moments of being" and "androgyny".</p> <p>The thesis itself is cyclical in that it begins and ends with a discussion of Virginia Woolf's sexual beliefs and the ways in which these inform the lifework. It is certain aspects of this discussion (the link between sex and death, for example) which make an original contribution to the continuing revaluation of the lifework of Virginia Woolf and of her place among Modernist writers.</p>