MODERN FICTION

RAJAT KUMAR

ENH/16/045

MOTILAL NEHRU COLLEGE

DELHI UNIVERSITY
If we start counting the few names who contributed immensely to the English literaure, Virginia
woolf would make it through the list by great consensus. As a novelist and critic, she produced
some of the most appreciable works of all time. Started a different style of novel writing , a very
eloquent type of narrative technique.

Modern fiction was published in 1919. This work of woolf was

published to lighten up the writers of her time. She was the product of the blend of Victorian era
and Modernism. She was widely appreciated now and then also, she was very bold when she
criticize some writing technique. She criticizes being as a woman in that era where the
significance of woman was not vey much. In the modern fiction woolf adviced her
contemporary writers to focus more on the things which they like about to write rather than ,
what the other people wants them to write. Modern fiction is the clear break from the Victorian
era and entering into the more resolved state of writing i.e, modernism.

She traces the progress of the novel from the 18th century, according to
her the novelists had done well, whatever the sources they had available. With their simple tools
and primitive materials, it might be said “Fielding did well and Jane Austen even better.” As T.S.
Eliot said that the literature is what which makes our present, like everything else it is also keep
changing. And on this point Virginia woolf agrees with him and says

“We do not come to write better, we only keep on moving now a little in this direction, now in that but
with a circular motion.”(2,MODERN FICTION)

She harshly criticizes the M.G. Wells, Arnold Benett, John Galsworthy
, because they wrote about the materialistic things. They are mainly concerned with body and not
with pure soul. Writing only just to gain fame and wealth not because to satisfy the soul. She also
praises some of the writers likes James joyce. She wants the writers to write about the problems
and opportunities of life. As a writer her writing was done intuition rather than by the analytical,
scientific research. She points out as follows
“Life escapes and perhaps Life nothing else is worth while. It is a confession of vagueness it have to make
use of such a figure.” Life for Virginia Woolf is not fixed, but a changing process. It is a flux, shower of
atoms of „luminous halo”. The human consciousness is a shelter of sensation and impression. It is the
duty of novelist to convey these sensation and impressions. There should be no limitations or
conventions. Thus, Virginia Woolf is the fist theorist of the “Stream of Consciousness.”(27,ERITIC
WRITER)

Though her works had the perfect knit plots, coherence and perfect
structure. But she strongly points out that a novelist should not follow the old rules of writing,
rather listens to their heart and should produce a work that would touch the soul of both the
readers and author.

She wanted the writers to write in such away that, it would shows the
life not the materialistic setting of life. She inspired writers of modern fiction by calling for
creativity, criticizing those who focused on the minor things and comparing the differences of
cultural authors, all for the sake of fiction and literature.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Woolf, Virginia. “Modern Fiction”. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature” The
Twentieth Century and Beyond. Ed. Joseph Black 2006.227 Print.

2. Goldman Mark. “Virginia Woolf and the critic as Reader.” PMLA 80.3 (1965):275-284
Jstor.web.21 February 2012.