Modern Elements in Woolf, Conrad, and Hartley's Masterpieces - Essay Example

Modern Elements in Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”, Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and L.P. Hartley’s “The Go-Between” Roll No: : Subject: Teacher: Date: 14th November 2008 University Modernism is linked to the experimentation and innovation that the writers, poets and other persons displayed in their works (Bradbury 1994). Modernism is termed as an age in which, the literary people were involved in doing experimentations. Harold Rosenburg called Modernist Art ‘the tradition of the new’ and this if wholly true as the works of that time period depict different kinds of experimentations, new styles and forms were introduced. Literature also became a middle class activity (Lodge 1977). The modernists come up with symbolism, stream of consciousness and new styles of expression, which attracted a huge audience towards the literary work (Bradbury 1988). Moreover, their belonging to middle class also gave expression to many issues faced by middle class only. Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”, Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and L.P Hartley’s “The Go-Between” depict the modernist aspects as all of these works employ new forms of expressions or we can say that they experimented with forms. A novel consists of two things—one is the actual facts and figures of the story or the events in the time and space; and the other is the way of presenting those events or the style of the novel (Sherry 1971). The material facts of “Heart of Darkness” by Conrad is very simple and straight forward as Marlow is on the board the ship, “Nellie” along with the director, the lawyer and the accountant. He narrates his experiences of the Dark Continent. The experience of being appointed as captain of steamer ship bound for Congo. He first reaches the company’s station, then central station and finally the inner station where he meets Kurtz. Kurtz, appointed to make a report for “International Society for Suppression of Savage Customs”, dies in the hands of Marlow on board the steamer. Marlow returns to Brussels, meets Kurtz’s girl friend and delivers her papers and her portrait as painted by Kurtz in his hut in Congo jungle. Now, the above material can be presented in plain and straight sequences of events but Conrad’s narrative technique is quite different to the prevailing techniques of that time. In the novel, all the threads of the events are in the hands of Marlow, as he is the only narrator of the story. Conrad is regarded as the “novelist of extremes” (Guetti 1967). His heroes always remain in isolation facing a difficult choice between betraying the just cause and ruining their own self. Kurtz, the protagonist of the novel, “Heart of Darkness” falls prey to his own greed (Sherry 1971). The events of “Heart of Darkness” are laid down in the dark area of Africa. The plot has not a well established beginning, middle and an end, as Conrad structured his novel in a different format. There is experimentation with the structure of the novel, “Heart of Darkness”. Conrad introduced a number of imageries and symbolism in the novel (Massie 1990). Symbolism in each and every aspect and thing is another feature of modernist writers (Bradbury and McFarlane 1991). Conrad’s symbolism cannot be taken lightly as there are several undercurrent messages in the text of the novel. In “Heart of Darkness”, the most visible imagery is light and dark imagery. The journey of the narrator, Marlow to Congo is a journey from lighter Europe to the darker Africa (Sherry 1971). His journey is from an emphatic world to a chaotic continent. The narrator in his opening description mentions “haze” and “darkness” over the sky in London. Marlow often mentions Congo as a darker place, contrary to the light of London. Conrad shows the jungle of Congo as a symbol of evil and darkness. The jungle is represented in the book as “evil”, “profound darkness” and “death trap”. The jungle becomes a cage for Kurtz from where his escape becomes impossible. Death and moral exploitation is rampant in the jungle (Guetti 1967). Conrad shows the jungle as a “mortuary of all evils”. Marlow, the narrator of “Heart of Darkness” and Kurtz, the protagonist are represented in the novel as symbol of white civilization (Sherry 1971). Marlow locates Kurtz in the midst of jungle, rescues him, receives his message, brings him to his steamer and after his death on board buries him at the bank of the Congo River. Here, we find two “whites” working for each other. Another white man, the Russian, praises Kurtz’s intelligence and his popularity among the natives. Marlow, too, mentions Kurtz as a “gifted man”. Kurtz is also depicted as a white evil in Africa. Both, Marlow and Kurtz represent the white superiority of white over black (Guetti 1967). Hence, symbolism is employed to a great extent to depict various aspects that Conrad wanted to indicate in his work. In the novel, “To the Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf introduces new styles of writing and makes use of extensive symbolism in her writing. The modernists believed that every word can be symbolic (Faulker 1986). Virginia Woolf innovated the technique of stream of consciousness that was quite an innovative stance taken by her. The novel is based on two days that are ten years apart. Many features that are emphasized in other form of novels are not emphasized in this novel, such as when deaths of the characters are described, they are described as a reality of life and no extra description is given about the gloominess of the other characters. Stream of consciousness is a technique in which, the writer shows nothing in actual but through the thinking patterns of the characters. The protagonist of the novel is Mrs Ramsay and she is always involved in thinking about not only present, but about past and future also. It does not mean that Mrs Ramsay performs no actions and thinks only. Mrs Ramsay thinks while working. Also the other characters are shown as thinking while doing other tasks. Woolf used stream of consciousness as a technique that is employed by people in general (Faulkner 1977). Every day in every place, we are involved in thinking procedures along with our works; similarly, Virginia facilitated her characters to speak in their minds about what came to their minds while doing different tasks. Mrs Ramsay’s house is symbolic of the whole society and is depicted as a microcosm of a larger society. The lighthouse is symbolic of something strong and perfect but when Lily watches the lighthouse near the end of the novel, she regards as imperfect (Kaehele and German 1962). Lily also matches the lighthouse to Mrs Ramsay. She was inspired by Mrs Ramsay but finds her also imperfect. There are a number of other images employed in the novel for depiction of various aspects in the novel such as the boar’s skull that is hung in the children’s room is matched with as a sign of death (Kaehele and German 1962). The children get afraid of the skull and Mrs Ramsay suggests covering the skull with a cloth, which means that she hides the reality for that time. Lily’s painting is also symbolic of the gender and conventions. Her painting also depicts her liking for Mrs Ramsay. With her painting, she makes Mrs Ramsay alive again. The sea is also symbolic of the change that is brought up in lives of people but also highlights that something remains the same (Daiches 1942). Mrs Ramsay is not present in the last part, “The lighthouse” but she is kept alive in people’s thinking. Lily continues to remember her and Mr Ramsay also feels alone in Mrs Ramsay’s absence. Lily as an artist learns throughout the novel. A number of colours are also employed to depict various personalities of characters such as purple colour indicates royalty and is used by Mrs Ramsay; green and blue colour is employed by Lily while painting which indicates her less egoistic nature. With Mr Ramsay, red and brown colours are employed that depict him as fully egoistic (Daiches 1942). Lily is also depicted with blue that depicts impersonality and Mrs Ramsay’s purple colour also indicates towards her balanced personality. The novel, “To the Lighthouse” is written with the technique of stream of consciousness and also the time of ten years is depicted in the shortest most chapter of the book, “Time Passes”, while the first day before ten years takes the maximum number of pages of the book. There is not a structure of a particular start, middle and end. The novel moves in a different format. The employment of the chapter names is also symbolic. Window can be seen symbolic of a place through which, you can look into lives of people (Kaehele and German 1962). Time passes indicates various deaths of the characters of the novel and also highlights about the passing of ten years while the last chapter, “The Lighthouse” is named as such because it is in this chapter when the remaining characters of the novel reach to the lighthouse. Reaching to the lighthouse is also symbolic of reaching to a conclusion or to a certain understanding as Lily gains an understanding in the last chapter (Kaehele and German 1962). “To the Lighthouse” contains aspects that are purely modernistic. There is experimentation in the novel. The form is also innovative like Conrad’s form of the novel. The novel forms of Conrad and Woolf are not alike but experimental in different aspects. Stream of consciousness is employed in the whole novel and there is only a little dialogue in the novel. Characters are described not through straight forward introductions but through other person’s thinking processes or how other characters think about them (Levenson 1991). The characters of the novel are introduced in the chapter, “Windows” that is considered symbolic of allowing the readers to know about the characters of the novel (Kaehele and German 1962). Therefore, it is quite evident and straightforward that Virginia Woolf takes help of symbolism and stream of consciousness to write her novel . (Williams 1970). Both of the techniques are modernistic and innovative. There was something new in the novel in the form of symbolism and stream of consciousness. The novel, “The Go-Between” by L.P Hartley is considered as a modernist novel because of the style, symbolism and the structure of the novel. The protagonist, Leo thinks mostly about his past in summer 1900 and narrates the incidents that he faced while being in that era. He informs in his prologue, “The past is a foreign country, they do things different there”. He was just a twelve year old boy. He used to take messages from Marian to Ted. Marian was a girl of upper class family while Ted was only a farmer. Initially, Leo was unaware of the nature of the messages and the relationship between Marian and Ted, but when he got awareness of the sexual relationship and messaging of the two lovers, he got disturbed and tried to stay away from this affair. His effort to stay away was useless as he was emotionally blackmailed to continue his services. As a child of only twelve years of age, Leo describes the world, his experiences with the adults and his perceptions. The eminent feature of the novel and the newness is that a child is employed to explain about the adult world. There is a lot of symbolism in the novel. Zodiac signs are considered by Leo as the upper class people (Cornille 2001). As a child, he is unaware about the class differences but still he regards the upper class people as better than others. It only happens because of class difference that the affair of Marian and Ted end in a tragedy and that is Ted’s death. Due to Ted’s death, Leo is psychologically affected and feels this affectedness all his life (Cornille 2001). The novel is written with the perceptions of a child and how he considers the adult world and feels about them. The structure of the novel is also innovative as the protagonist looks behind towards the past when he was a child. The name of the novel as “The Go-Between” is named after the protagonist’s activity as a messenger, he was a go-between the two lovers, Marian and Ted. He is also symbolic of connecting two classes that are upper class and lower class but the ending tragedy of the affair indicates and is symbolic that the two classes cannot be united (Cornille 2001). Leo as a child character is depicted as a child who has rich imaginative power, as he finds symbolic associations between objects such as weather, zodiac signs, stars, seasons and colours. He links different things to people and aspects. He regards the upper class people as stars and zodiac signs and categorizes them as superior (Cornille 2001). Leo also aspires to be like the upper class people as they appear attractive and superior to him. Leo feels inspired by the adult world and tries to be aware of them. His knowledge of the adult world is not fully right due to which, he fails in his understanding. The novel, “The Go-Between” takes into consideration symbolic elements like other modernist works and also experimentation is found out in the work in form of a narrator that is a child but is affected and inspired by the adult world (Cornille 2001). All the three works, Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”, Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and L.P Hartley’s “The Go-Between” depict modernistic aspects, as all the works show experimentations by their writers. There is employability of extensive symbolism, the structure of novel writing is different and innovative as contrasted to the old forms of novel writing and the styles adopted by the writers to depict the story are unique in their own regards. In each and every novel, there was newness and innovatory ideas in terms of structure, style, form and content. Symbolism, stream of consciousness and no employability of a particular beginning, middle and end make the writers as modernist writers. References Bradbury, Malcolm 1988, The Modern World: Ten Great Writers, Secker and Warburg, London. Bradbury, Malcolm 1994, The Modern British Novel, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Bradbury, Malcolm and McFarlane, James (eds.) 1991, Modernism 1890-1930, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Cornille, Jean-Louis 2001, The Go-Between, Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies, 10 (2), 163-177. Daiches, David 1942, The Semi-Transparent Envelop, Casebook Series, Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse, pp. 90-104. Faulkner, Peter 1977, Modernism, Methuen, London. Faulkner, Peter 1986, A Modernist Reader: Modernism in England 1910-1930, Batsford, London. Guetti, James L 1967, The Limits of Metaphor: A Study of Melville, Conrad, and Faulkner, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York. Levenson, Michael, ed. 1999, The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Levenson, Michael 1991, Modernism and the Fate of Individuality: Character and Novelistic Form from Conrad to Woolf, Cambridge University Press. Lodge, David 1977, The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy and the Typology of Modern Literature, Edward Arnold, London. Kaehele, Sharon and German, Howard 1962, To the Lighthouse: Symbol and Vision, Casebook Series, Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse, pp. 189-208. Massie, A. 1990, The Novel Today: A Critical Guide to the British Novel, Longman, London. Nicholls, Peter 1991, Modernisms: A Literary Guide, Macmillan, London. Sherry, Norman 1971, "Conrads Western World", Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Williams, Raymond 1970, The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence, Chatto and Windus, London Read More