A Study On War Psychology In Virginia Woolf’s Literary Works

Virginia Woolf（1882-1941）is one of the representative writers of western stream-of-consciousness,the forerunner of the 20^th century English modernist literature and feminist criticism.She has made an outstanding contribution to the development of world literature.Virginia Woolf experienced two great wars in life:the First World War and the Second World War.As a war witness,her war psychology is often revealed through her literary works.Such war psychology doesn’t mean that she is belligerent,on the contrary,it illustrates that she is affected by the war,and her cognition of war and writing style are in a relationship of mutual construction.This dissertation is divided into five parts.The introduction part summarizes overseas and domestic research status of Virginia Woolf,the research background,research methods and innovation of this dissertation.A comprehensive study on war psychology in Woolf’s literary works is helpful to promote Woolf’s overall research.Chapter One expounds three components of Woolf’s war psychology in her literary works,which are resistance,escape and ambivalence.Woolf resisted the war,questioned the legitimacy of war and believed that the conquest shown in the war had something to do with the long-standing antagonistic mode between men and women,which led to human trauma.Woolf’s escape was not to avoid the war itself.On the contrary,she severely accused the war by shaping the role of“rebellion”,which went against the traditional values.She exposed the evil side of the war through images such as“room”and“water”,and encouraged the“Outsiders’society”to pursue profuse humanity and human dignity.However,facing with Britain,the country which was no longer prosperous,Woolf felt deeply worried.Her literary writing gradually showed a kind of complicated and contradictory war psychology:on the one hand,she was eager to break through the barrier of life and death;on the other hand,she was afraid of facing the cruel reality.How to pick up the community life through literary creation has become the theme of Virginia Woolf’s literary works.Chapter Two probes into the artistic expression of war psychology in Woolf’s literary works.Woolf’s war psychology can be displayed through stream of consciousness,gamification and sexualization.Woolf payed attention to human’s ordinary and trivial consciousness activities.Most of her war writings broke the development regulation of linear time,and deleted the description of the content;nevertheless,she captured human’s momentary sense of the wartime life,which brought life to significance.In Woolf’s works,war was not only a political game,but also a game between genders.Chapter Three starts with Woolf’s unique life experience,cultural atmosphere and the ethos of wartime,and makes an analysis of the causes of war psychology in Woolf’s literary works.It points out that Woolf’s war psychology closely related to her literary family,rebellious Bloomsbury Group,complex social events and domesticated social medicine.Chapter Four discusses the significance of war psychology in Woolf’s literary works.Virginia Woolf adopted a unique mode of introspective war writing.Instead of giving a radical description for the war,Woolf innovated the traditional war literature by de-contextualizing the war scenes,de-heroic figures and blurring the war value.Through literary writing,Woolf resisted the absurdity of war,pursued harmonious culture beyond war literarture and called for androgyny to understand the meaning of life.By exceeding the cognition of war culture,Woolf exposed the utilitarianism of war culture governed by the government,which was beneficial to the harmonious development of British war literature and had cultural connotative meanings.Britain in the twentieth century was associated with a series of wars,which had produced a great influence on the country’s politics,economy and culture.Instead of saying that human took part in the war,the war had already permeated into the daily life of mankind.From the background of war,analyzing Virginia Woolf’s literary works can help us get a better understanding of Woolf’s individual psychological needs and her cognitive styles of wars.Woolf reexamined her country,looked at it from the micro-view of cultural consciousness,social perceptions and domestic life,instead of giving a panoramic description for the war.As a war witness,Virginia Woolf’s unique war psychology responds to her unique literary style and aesthetic experience and demonstrates Woolf’s anxiety and hope for the country and the whole world.Therefore,a study on war psychology in Virginia Woolf’s literary works will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the imbalance of social life in20^th England and deepen our cognition and pursuit of the community with a shared future for mankind,which is full of eternal practical significance and ultimate value.