The Testimony Of Life, The Writing Of The Soul

Virginia Woolf is well known as a ereative novelist of stream of consciousness.Being one of the leading writers in the twentieth Century,WooIf is also a master of elegant essays.Indeed,Woolf is always accomplished in essay writing which is closest to her natural speaking style.Her essays includ woolf’s thinking in women,society,literature and other fields.The definition of the English word "essay" is different from the word "essay" in Chinese context.English essay generally falls into two categories:familiar essays and formal essays.Virginia Woolf’s essays belong to familiar essays,while the prevailing English essay then,influenced by the empirical atmosphere in the end of 19th century,was mostly of masculinely scientific and analytic style.Woolf devoted herself to change the status of English essay and her understanding of essay is more similar to such European essayists as Lukacs and Adomo.Woolf’s female view is the core of her other social political or literary viewpoints.Woolf remains ambivalent about the first feminist wave she has experienced.Her feminist thoughts are time-transcending,as she points out that women’s obtaining of the equal voting rights does not virtually solve the problem of gender inequality and that the key issue lies with patriarchal system which should be subverted.Because of the pressure from patriarchal system,females disappear from people’s view in actuary life and literature history.Woolf proposes searching for female history and female literature history.Woolf thinks feminist movement might attach more emphasis to the distinctive characters of both sexes,which is detrimental to the harmonious progress of them,so she puts forward the theory of "androgyny".Woolf’s social political theory is idealized.Woolf proposes to establish a free,equal and peaceful social order.In order to realize this social order,Woolf advocates"reading" as a common education method to create harmonious society and"indefference" as the core of enfluential political view on the social relationship of antagonism between man and woman.Woolf classifies the English society into three classes:the upper class,the middle class and the lower class.As a female,Woolf could not enjoy the rights of males of her class,which brings female color to her social class views.Objectively speaking,Woolf’s social political theory is immature.However,it is under these thoretical influences that Woolf’s literature views struck people as original and innovative.Woolf’s literature view is influenced and established by her female views and social political views.In literature creation,Woolf proposes impersonal writing theory which is consistent with her theory of "androgyny".Her impersonal theory differs obviously from T.S.Eliot’s theory.Eliot suggests extinction of personality and dialogue with tradition,while Woolf thinks the male tradition is to reject females and she focuses on transforming the individual to the non-individual in hope of achieveing a dialogue not with the tradition but with general readers by depicting normal feelings of human beings.Woolf thinks the sample of impersonal literature is Greece literature.Woolf thinks the only way for English literature is to change the orientation of literary creation from focusing on outside world to inner world.Woolf comments on Russian literature and English literature by this standard.Finally Woolf puts forward her idea about the prospect of literature development:with the collapsing of social class barriers,females and workers will bring new resources for future literature.Future novels will assembly the features of poem,essay,drama and novel.Woolf’s works of criticism are vivid and pleasant to read.First,Woolf recognizes the relationship among authors,critics and readers in a new way.In her point of view,authors are expected to abandon their authority and get closer to common life;readers should establish dialogue with authors so as to come up with their own judgment;it is also suggested that critics suggest and forecast future literary development,helping readers to establish their judgment and thus serving as the bridge between authors and readers.Finally,Woolf elaborates her opinions about literary history.She hopes to add more tallented yet obscure female writers to literary history,breaking the tradition of merely listing great masters in chronological order.Woolfs essays reflect her profound insights and thoughts of the whole world and human nature.What’s more,her essays and novels can justify,complement and inspire each other mutually.