A study of the figure of the artist in the novels of Virginia Woolf

Abstract

This thesis examines the artists in five of Virginia Woolf's novels. It relates their characters to their individual qualities as artists and discusses their roles in the novels in which they appear, drawing particular attention to their importance in relation to the main preoccupations of the novels. It is suggested that a study of this relationship is particularly relevant to an understanding of the novels. The main themes which emerge are the relations between art and life, art and nature, art and the primitive and art and civilisation.The relationship between art and life is seen as being particularly important and this relationship is examined on many different levels. The widespread, though often unacknowledged, assumption that Virginia Woolf was guilty of a refined and soulless aesthetisicm is challenged, and the introduction offers a comparison - for the sake of clearer definition - between E.M. Forster's and Virginia Woolf's ideas about the relations between art and life.Virginia Woolf's rendering of the creative act is studied especially in the chapter on To the Lighthouse - and is related to the central themes of the novels.The concept of creativity is seen as being particularly important for an understanding of To the Lighthouse and Between the Acts .An assessment is often implicit of the extent to which Virginia Woolf's fictional artists represent a form of critical writing, and on occasion her artists are related to some contemporary artistic 'problems'.