Mirror & Voidness

Generally speaking, seldom do people associate E.M. Forster with Virginia Woolf in the study of English literature, mainly due to the seemingly sharp contrast in their style and thematic concern. The author of this thesis happens to be struck by the contrast and its significance in the study of their representative novels: Howards End by E.M. Forster and To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, and comparestheir styles and themes by associating their positions in the cultural historical dimensions that are composed of philosophical, aesthetic and literary history, and by distinguishing their overt gender identities. The findings of the comparison reveal that, on the one hand, modernism furnishes the pre-conditions for modern self-conscious women literature. On the other hand, when modem male literature is beset in the impasse of empty and disillusioning modernism, women literature manifests its realistic value in faithful presentation of women's life, and unique feminine aesthetic value. The establishment of woman values in literature also has indisputable ideological value in the collapsed, chaotic patriarchal society.Chapter One points out that it is evident in their novels that the Bloomsbury intellectual climate has shaped their visions of the world similarly. Meanwhile, they both claim their individualities by respectively present themselves as serious pre-modern moralist and modern female.Chapter Two further illustrates the Bloomsbury thought, which in its evolution divides itself into pre-modemism, including neo-Hegelianism and Moorean ethics, and modernism, represented by Formalistic Aesthetics. These theories are all "empty", for neo-Hegelian reconciling hybrid nature, Moorean aestheticism and Formalism.Chapter Three is based on the close examination into the text of Howards End. As a quasi-historical novel, what it really has recounted is the male writer's futile neo-Hegelian attempt to resume system of the chaos in his vision of the world, when he witnesses the collapse of the rational values in the traditional stable patriarchal society. He tries to restructure the disconnecting dichotomies by connection, but his connection is based on his "empty" codes of Moorean aestheticism. In the end, he is only left a reconciling hybrid, still desperate at the chaos, and ends up in the hopeless nostalgia for the past stability. Even his work is merely a pre-modern hybrid of the meta-fiction of realism on the literary level and symbolism on the symbolic level, rather than a mirror held up to the reality.Chapter Four first states that it is just the "emptiness" of Bloomsbury theories that makes the modern women literature possible. First of all, by asserting the autonomy of the art, both beauty in aesthetics and form in formalism are not only devoid of historical and social reality, but also the patriarchal values that have long hindered women's creative power. Secondly, objective presentation is replaced by personal, subjective expression in the "Significant Form", which makes it proper for women to write with a purely female identity. Lastly, Post-Impressionistic techniques in painting inspire women to create their own sentences and writing techniques, and thus free them from the '"heavy", "pompous" male language's distortion of the natural shape of their thought. Modernism can be viewed as a Renaissance for women literature.Then the thesis moves onto the detailed analysis of To the Lighthouse. This Post-Impressionistic novel is indeed "empty", since it is almost void of social realistic factors. Nonetheless, the psychological realism on its literal level purports a mirror to the character's psychological reality. It has a much broadened and deepened symbolic setting than the patriarchal society in Howards End, so the manand the woman are viewed essentially equal. The limitation of human reason, on which the man is dependent, prevents him from finding order in chaos. The woman plainly accepts the chaotic essence of life, giving orders to life by managing the trivia. Inner heart sternness and...