Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > Special Commissioned Essay on Virginia Woolf, Philip Tew - Woolf's Era

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

WOOLF'S ERA

FROM THE LATE VICTORIAN PERIOD TO WORLD WAR II

Woolf's life covers a period stretching from the last twenty years of the Victorian era right up to World War II. At the time of her death, she felt great personal anguish and pessimism about England's uncertain future. She had earlier planned a joint suicide with her husband if Adolf Hitler's forces invaded. Woolf's work covers many of the social tensions and issues of these times of immense change and turmoil.

In her work Woolf describes the restrictive social values of her Victorian childhood and Edwardian youth. She shows through strong young female characters the partial breakdown of patriarchal families. In Mrs. Dalloway she explores through Clarissa Dalloway and her circle the post-World War I crisis of identity. In The Years Woolf analyzes the Victorian past and how, in terms of family experience, the past was a prologue to her contemporary world. In the autobiographical...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. About Virginia Woolf
3. Woolf At Work
4. Woolf's Era
5. Woolf's Works
6. Woolf On Woolf
7. Woolf As Studied
8. Copyright

1. Virginia Woolf