Modernism based on: Virginia Woolf «Professions for Women», James Joyce

«The Dead», E.M. Forster «The Road from Colonus», D.H. Lawrence «Odor
of Chrysanthemums».

Modernist literature is the literary expression of the tendencies of Modernism,

especially High modernism. Modernistic art and literature normally revolved
around the idea of individualism, mistrust of institutions (government, religion),
and the disbelief of any absolute truths. Modernism as a literary movement reached
its height in Europe between 1900 and the middle 1920s. Modernist literature
addressed to aesthetic problems and can be viewed largely in terms of its formal,
stylistic and semantic movement away from Romanticism, examining subject
matter that is traditionally mundane. It often features a marked pessimism, a clear
rejection of the optimism apparent in Victorian literature. It attempted to move
from the bonds of Realist literature and to introduce concepts such as disjointed
timelines.
Modernism as a literary movement is seen, in large part, as a reaction to the
emergence of city life as a central force in society. Furthermore, an early attention
to the object as freestanding became in later Modernism a preoccupation with
form. Where Romanticism stressed the subjectivity of experience, Modernist
writers were more acutely conscious of the objectivity of their surroundings.
The most prominent modernist authors are: T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Virginia
Woolf, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph
Conrad, Franz Kafka, Knut Hamsun, Gertrude Stein, Mikhail Bulgakov, Marcel
Proust, John Steinbeck, Ezra Pound, Katherine Anne Porter, Rainer Maria Rilke, F.
Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Frost, Boris Pasternak, Sherwood Anderson and a lot of
others. But now I would like to pay special attention to Virginia Woolf and her
novel «Professions for Women», James Joyce «The Dead», E.M. Forster «The
Road from Colonus» and D.H. Lawrence «Odor of Chrysanthemums».
So I will start with Virginia Woolf «Professions for Women», which was written
about Women's Service League in 1931. Virginia Woolf discussed two
impediments in her work as a professional woman writer. The first was the torment
she endured at the hands of the "Angel in the House," a personal phantom named
after the heroine of a famous poem. This phantom continuously attempted to
convince her that women should not deal freely and openly with questions of
human relations, morality, or sex. Rather, "they must charm, they must conciliate,
they must - to put it bluntly - tell lies if they are to succeed." Whenever Woolf
began to write, the phantom appeared, the phantom could not be easily dismissed.
Woolf's necessary murder of the Angel in House was hard-won:
"Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my
page, I took up the ink pot and flung it at her. She died hard. Her fictitious nature
was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. She
was always creeping back when I thought I had dispatched her. "
The second impediment, "telling the truth about my own experiences as a body,"
Woolf did not solve by murdering the angel. "I doubt that any woman has solved it
yet," she said. "The obstacles against her are still immensely powerful - and yet
they are difficult to define." Speaking in the third person of her experiences as a
woman novelist and the inhibitions she encountered speaking truthfully about sex.
In a compilation of women's autobiographies, Written by Herself, she introduced
her anthology with "slave narratives, accounts by women of their sexual
exploitation in slavery and their dramatic and heroic breaks for freedom." In her
memoirs, she pointed out that women's stories had not typically been viewed as
heroic.
"Profession for Women" is an great example of modernist literature, with it`s
new style of writing which makes it more extraordinary and touches the problems
which are very actual also nowadays, problems that were not discussed before and
were hidden from the audience.
The second example of modernism about which I would like to talk is "The
Dead" by James Joyce. The Dead is a story about love, lost loves, and the inability
to forget those who have been loved and lost. A venerable portrait is drawn for the
reader, who sees the aunt's home, Michael Furey and his grave clearly and, maybe
most importantly, the snow on the ground. At this point in history, there is obvious
oppression of Ireland by England - an oppression that carries over to the characters
in the story. Characterization is central to not only the plot, but also the theme of
"The Dead." Gabriel Conroy is a Dubliner, but sees himself as a bit "better" than
the rest of those attending the party. He thinks of his aunts as "two ignorant old
women," and there is even a touch of disdain present for his wife, Gretta, at the
thought of her Irish colloquialisms and peasant roots. Gabriel, in essence, is
ashamed of his heritage and tries to deny it. His intellectual and social snobbery
pervades all he does, and builds an emotional wall between him and Gretta that
precludes him ever knowing who she truly is.
In contrast, Michael Furey, though dead, is more alive than Gabriel. Michael,
unlike Gabriel, had a true and undying love for Gretta and did die for her. As
evidenced by his last name, Michael Furey is a passionate man, one willing to
catch his death in the rain for a woman he loves. Biblically, Michael refers to the
"Angel of Death." In this instance, however, Michael gives death a positive
connotation. Everything touching Michael, including the snow that covers his
grave, is lovely and beautiful. Michael was able, in contrast to Gabriel, to give
Gretta the passionate, self-sacrificing love that Gabriel never could. Michael, the
Archangel, is associated with the Day of Judgment and brings Gabriel to his. It is
through Michael that Gabriel is able to cast aside his own inflated self-absorption
to become a man willing to face the truth and the sobering reality of his own
country, his own wife, and himself. He realizes that that Michael, even in his
death, is more alive than Gabriel himself has ever been. For all of Gabriel's pomp
and circumstance, he has utterly failed to communicate with his wife.
The entire story is a poignant and heartbreaking demonstration of the conflict
between Modernism and Victorianism. Gabriel Conroy has been the penultimate
victim of the Victorian school of thought, in which elevated social status and
intellectual snobbery and disdain are the goals to be attained and the means by
which anything of value can be accomplished. By ascribing to Victorian
philosophy, he has become a member of the living dead, with no meaningful
connection to anyone in his life.
Third novel is written by Forster "Road from Colonus". Forster uses a Greek
mythology: he compares Mr. Lucas and Ethel with Oedipus and his daughter,
Antigone. The story's meaning lies largely in its departure from the Greek one. For
Oedipus there is no road from Colonus. Mr. Lucas was considered as Oedipus. He
had something in common with Oedipus that he was growing old and also wanted
to choose the same place as his destination. But their endings are quite different.
For Mr. Lucas, he couldn't take charge of his own fate. He was forced to return to
England and to age and die slowly and without much dignity.
In Forster’s version, Mr. Lucas is forced to relinquish his vision of meaning and
the dramatic death he desired and which was, evidently, awaiting him in the tree’s
fall. He must return to England, to be abandoned by his Antigone, and to age and
die slowly and without much dignity. In return, he abandons his glimpse of
meaning and his dream of a good death, becoming disaffected and selfish and
lonely.
The Greek kind of tragedy with its heroism and its sense that the world is
intelligible even when most painful is replaced by a more modern kind of tragedy,
where meaning is lost to failed communication and social dictates. A powerful
reminder of the importance of respecting the insights and needs of the aging. The
others patronize Mr. Lucas because he seems unreasonable, even incompetent.
They think they have rescued him. Instead he has been diminished, fatally.
The last work I will talk about is "The Odor of Chrysanthemums" by D.H.
Lawrence. I would like to examines the interrelationship between D. H.
Lawrence’s Odor of the Chrysanthemums and modernism and submits that D.H.
Lawrence’s depiction of Elizabeth and Walter’s marriage through death reinforces
the modernist concept of self awareness and identity; which in turn fuelled the
redefinition social behavior and relationships under the modernism paradigm. The
concept of modernism developed from refutation of creationism and reinforced self
identity and self consciousness as a form of expression.
The chrysanthemums, which bloom a little while in the fall and then die, are
symbolic in this story of the fragility of our inner lives. Elizabeth Bates suddenly
discovers that inside herself she is a person, with unique thoughts and passions and
fears; her husband was just as much of an individual as she, but one whom she
never really sought to know beneath the surface. Their marriage had been dead
long before her husband lost his life that night in the mine. In the end, even the
vase of flowers is clumsily knocked onto the floor, leaving nothing tangible
behind, just an odor. The chrysanthemums symbolize a spot of beauty
unrecognized by the myopic Elizabeth, just as she never appreciated what she
could have had with Walter until it was too late.
As Elizabeth tends to Walter’s body, Lawrence writes that she feels “the utter
isolation of the human soul,” and this sense of isolation permeates the entire story.
Early on, Elizabeth is isolated in her home as she waits helplessly for Walter, and
she is further isolated when she seeks help in finding him and thus becomes the
subject of gossip among the other wives. Pregnant and left alone with her other
two children, Elizabeth loses herself in anger and resentment. When Walter’s
mother arrives and the two women learn of Walter’s death, both women are
isolated in their own way. Walter’s mother is lost in grief for a man she knew best
as a child, whereas Elizabeth must face the fact that her husband was little more
than a stranger to her.
Throughout the story, chrysanthemums primarily suggest unpleasantness and
death, and Elizabeth cannot look at or smell them without being plagued by
unhappy associations. We first see chrysanthemums as Elizabeth’s son, John,
strews them over the path toward the house, and Elizabeth chastises him because
the petals look “nasty.” At home, waiting for Walter to return, Elizabeth
remembers bitterly the first time Walter came home drunk, sporting brown
chrysanthemums in his buttonhole. When Elizabeth is told that Walter is dead, she
notices two vases of chrysanthemums and their “cold, deathly smell” in the parlor,
where she plans to lay out Walter’s body. When the men eventually carry him in,
one knocks over a vase of chrysanthemums, and Elizabeth tidies up the mess
before she turns to face the body.
Numerous examples of foreshadowing crowd “Odour of Chrysanthemums,”
providing a sense of inevitable tragedy. Lawrence gives us clues to Walter’s fate
from the beginning of the story, when Elizabeth bitterly says to the children that he
“can lie on the floor” when he comes home and that he’ll be “like a log.” Later,
when she seeks the help of Mr. Rigley, he escorts her down the dark alleyway in
front of his house, warning her to be careful of the deep ruts in the earth, afraid that
someone could slip in the uneven surface of the ground. This idea of accidental
physical harm is echoed in Walter’s death, caused by a cave-in at his mine.