A Study On The Deconstruction Of Binary Oppositions In Jacob's Room,A Stream Of Consciousness Novel By V.woolf

Jacob's Room is the first stream of consciousness novel by Virginia Woolf and it represents the turning point of her literary career: the renunciation of the mode of traditional realism novels and the beginning of her first experiment of stream of consciousness literature.Though the idea of deconstruction as a theory is formulated later than the literary works by Woolf,there exist a lot of affinities between the two with regard to the source of thoughts,the critical objects and the theoretical appeal.Therefore,this thesis attempts to unfold how Woolf tries to deconstruct a series of binary oppositions in Jacob's Room and eventually makes use of the innovative literary form to criticize and surpass some viewpoints on ontology and realistic literature recognized by the mainstream society at that time.The main body of the thesis consists of three parts.The first part analyzes the absence and presence of description about protagonist Jacob when he is alive and dead,demonstrating Woolf's unique interpretation of being and non-being,which is related to ontology.The second part focuses on analyzing author is how to overturn two pairs of spatial binary oppositions including objective room and subjective room along with men's room and women's room through the deconstruction,revealing the multiple attributes of space and fulfills the aim to transcend the metaphysical concept of space.The third part reveals Woolf is how to deconstruct the binary oppositions of objective time and subjective time along with linear time and nonlinear time in a bid to smash traditional concept of time in novels.Woolf hopes to puncture people's rigid mindset of spatial time and numeric time,proposing us to look upon time with the renewed viewpoint of differentiation and mobility through the literary form of stream of consciousness.In the end,we come to a conclusion that Woolf's stream-of-consciousness literature is not only a bold experiment,but also reflects the transformation of people's cognition on the essence of the world.To interpret Woolf's stream-of-consciousness literature from the perspective of deconstruction is conducive to throw light on the formation of Woof's notion of stream-of-consciousness literature and the motivation of her literary creation.