| In recent decades much has been written about Virginia Woolf and science. It is my contention that Between the Acts, what was to be Woolf's final novel, is her most subtle, most fully nuanced expression of scientific theory. Her interweaving of ideas concerning the primordial, history, the role of the observer, space, matter, and time all come together to make this book her most radical and innovative. While extensive studies have been done involving Woolf's entire oeuvre, no in-depth reading has focused exclusively on Between the Acts as it reflects the theories of Charles Darwin, Sir James Jeans, Sir Arthur Eddington, Albert Einstein, and quantum mechanics.;As background I look at the Victorian world into which Virginia Woolf was born and describe the scientific context with its particular attention to philology and language theory in England. The Victorians had great need for the predictability and order of the Cartesian-Euclidean-Newtonian universe. There was little room for randomness in such a setting, and writers depicted the world through "realistic," cause-and-effect description. But attending to the very important Darwinian information, William James in his 1890 The Principles of Psychology introduced the idea of "stream of thought," where he described thought as a continuous flow deflected, nonetheless, accidentally, like the stream of a river by the accidental features of the river bed. Woolf was intrigued by the issues of sensation and perception and their connection to evolutionary development in her life-long endeavor to capture the transitory nature of human consciousness through language.;I offer a concentrated analysis of a work which served as a pivot from the Victorian into the Modern Age. In addition, I deepen the discourse concerning the interplay between language and science during this crucial moment. Through close reading and passage exegesis this dissertation establishes the inextricability of scientific rumination in Virginia Woolf's language in what would be her final attempt to move beyond the limitations of linear, deterministic, patriarchal, realist fiction. Between the Acts remains an exquisite work about the ephemerality of the cosmos and human experience and about the creative spirit in all its forms. |
