Virginia Woolf's Experiments with Consciousness, Time, and Social Values

There were many paradoxes Virginia Woolf had to resolve in her fiction writing - how to bring readers into close touch with life and yet keep them at a distant by means of the special life in fiction; how to follow the details of real life and yet symbolize meaning; how to write prose and yet discharge some of the functions of poetry. Consciousness was her way of contending with the paradoxes - consciousness by the characters of their unique selves, of the influence and interaction of other characters, a flow of inner consciousness. The consciousnesses are not abstract; they are always connected to a phenomenal world of action, environment, and time. This examination of the major themes and style of Woolf's writing covers all her major works.