Young Women In Virginia Woolf's Novel

Female characters in novels by Virginia Woolf are studied in their relationships as wives, mothers, daughters and prospective brides. The novels selected are those where the writers are concerned with families dominated by Victorian ideals. The socio-economic, religious and ideological origins of the Victorian ideals are traced, esp. as they are related to the writers family background in the tradition of English intellectual life. The central theme of the four novels by Woolf is the mother daughter relationship which is analyzed in its components of love and resentment, often revealed in an interior monologue. It is shown how the plot, dialogues and authorial intrusions are used to depict a liberation from the constraints of the Victorian ideal of family life. The mothers in the Victorian ideals of family life are shown to be repress tentative of various aspects of the Victorian ideal of Womanhood. The attitudes of men towards women vary from those typifying Victorian conceptions of male superiority to more modern ideals of equality and natural companionship