Virginia Woolf's "An Unwritten Novel"

Woolf's "An Unwritten Novel"

The spirit of free thought and intellect is encouraged by members of the Bloomsbury Group. Woolf, a member of the group is encouraged to develop her independence. She eventually uses novel ways to express her vision of the modern world. For example, in her short story, "An Unwritten Novel," Woolf experiments with style and form which she later uses in her novels Jacob's Room (1922) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925).

In "An Unwritten Novel, a parody, Woolf makes fun of the contrived plots the narrator fantasizes about. For example, the narrator renames the old woman on the train, Minnie Marsh. She envisions Minnie as a spinster, but in actuality she is a mother. This is symbolic because the narrator is a mother also - the creator of stories - "the unborn children of the mind." The narrator then is the creator and ruler of the fictional world. In fact, she is a writer of the type of fiction that Woolf did not admire. Her fantasies are absurdly melodramatic and disconnected from reality.

As a writer, Woolf is more concerned with the process of the story and the artist's response to the external world through the creation of a fictional world. In this short story, as the narrator continues to daydream, her thoughts become more chaotic, which is a sense of her unrestrained imagination. Woolf's feelings about art was that it should be imaginative and intellectual, not emotional. She wants to express truth by searching for a form of literature that breaks traditional rules. One of the patterns that she breaks is that she does not use conventional order of action.

"An Unwritten Novel" dramatizes the problem of writing and how difficult it is to close the gap between the narrator and the woman she is describing. Are the narrator's daydreams reflective of her own emptiness?

Bibliography

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