The "Significant Form" Study In Virginia Woolf’s Novels

As one of representative writers of modernism, Virginia Woolf successfully finds a breakthrough of reform and innovation for modern novels development and realizes a historic breakthrough of British novels in form while the art development of traditional novel art is confined in fence.As a master of British stream-of-consciousness novels and core person in "Bloomsbury Group", Virginia Woolf always shows unique form aesthetic view in novel theory and creation. The formation of this view is related to her literary talent, and also benefits from the leavening influence of her friends Roger Fry and Clive Bell in "Bloomsbury Group" who focus on visual arts.Roger Fry is an excellent British art connoisseur, critic, and painter in the 20th century. He devotes to advocating modern art and introduces French "post-impressionism" into Britain for the purpose of changing conservative painting style in Victorian era. He makes use of rigorous visual terms to analyze formation of artistic works and ascends formal analysis to a kind of height of aesthetic theory. Through researching on Cezanne painting art, he proposes that the artistic works shall realize the creation with "significant form" on the basis of "internal truth". As the inheritor and promoter of Fry’s formal theory, the formalistic aesthetician Clive Bell officially proposes the view of "significant form" and then further explains lines and colors as well as their combination relation in works which can evoke people’s aesthetic emotion. Woolf accepts and approves their aesthetic opinions to a great degree, and she holds appreciating attitude toward Cezanne’s painting creation advocated by them. However, due to the fact that Bell has vicious circle and extreme separation between form and content as the view of "significant form", his theoretical opinions can’t be fully applicable to literary creation. Therefore, in terms of novel practice, Woolf is closer to the core of Fry’s aesthetic ideology and creates the novel of imitating visual art.In the short story Kew Gardens and full-length novel Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, Woolf strives to reflect the subjective truth advocated by Fry via natural photochromic change, and the essay The Sun and The Fish is just the confirmation of this feature. In To the Lighthouse and The Waves, Woolf deletes detailed descrption on realistic life and shows the protagonist’s image in an abstract way. In numerous short stories and full-length novels after Jacob’s Room, Woolf practices Fry’s formal view and Cezanne painting’s structural design and multiple perspective.Therefore, Fry and Bell’s formalistic aesthetic view and Cezanne’s painting art lay a foundation for formation of "significant form" in Woolf’s novel creation to make her novels show the power beyond words and unique charm of visualart.