Clever Title about DH Lawrence and Virginia Woolf’s Abhorrence of Past Literature

The early twentieth century was a time filled with great anguish. World War I had resulted in a massive death toll, and England’s strict social standards made it nearly impossible for people to grieve without seeming bizarre. This repression fostered a sense of dislocation amongst the citizens, and a rebuttal in the Christian faith. It should come as no surprise, then, that modernism emerged as a way for contemporaries to defy the “prescriptions and limits” (1901) of the Victorian Age. Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence were among the most influential writers of the modernist era – Woolf with her appeal to “look within” (2152) the human consciousness, and Lawrence with his call for expression of the “deep-rooted, [and] elemental… in people and nature” (2481). Together, they created a completely new type of narrative – the modernist “English” narrative.

The modernist narrative developed through a mutual abhorrence of the Victorian Era’s fiction. Lawrence specifically objected the “mechanical and artificial,” (2481) that invaded the books of the past, while Woolf argued that the books of the past were written about “unimportant things” (2151). Woolf’s “Modern Fiction” argues that although the stories of the past are “so well constructed and solid in its craftsmanship,” (2151) there is no life in it, and it does not make the reader “quiver from the tremulation of the ether,” (2509), as Lawrence would put it. Woolf argued that the writers of the past spent far too much effort sorting out details and tying up all loose ends, which inadvertently sucked the life out of the novel. According to Woolf, however, the writer is not altogether responsible; rather, the writer is a “slave” who “[writes] what he must… and [bases] his work upon… co...

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...ration” (2299). The story ends in typical Modern fashion, with an ambiguous notion that Gabriel may change his way of life and live carelessly.

Modernism developed as a way to reach out to human beings. The effects of World War I left many people struggling to pick up the broken pieces of their previous lives, and left many people wondering about the future of mankind. Modernist writers attempted to bring together those broken individuals with relatable characters and real-life narratives. Modernist writers knew that the ‘little things’ in life were often the most impactful and emphasized simple acts such as smelling some flowers, or eating a pastry, because they knew their readers could relate. They acknowledged the displacement that their readers felt and worked to connect with those readers in effort to establish some sort of connection, and restore humankind.