Year of Award

2010

Document Type

Thesis - Campus Access Only

Degree Type

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Name

English (Literature)

Department or School/College

Department of English

Committee Chair

Christopher Knight

Keywords

beauty, loss, memory, time, Virginia Woolf

Abstract

This thesis seeks to explore how Virginia Woolf depicts beauty in the literary scenes, characters, and language in her fictional works. In The Voyage Out (1915), Woolf writes, “When one gave up seeing the beauty that clothed things, this was the skeleton beneath” (12). In this passage, Woolf is defining one aspect of beauty. Beauty can disguise and is transient. This thesis explores beauty as a meditation on time, loss, and recovery of the past in memory and in vision (grounded in creative memory). All of these meditations are dependent on characters’ moments of being, or their awareness of being human. My findings are based on discussions of To the Lighthouse (1927), Jacob’s Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), and Between the Acts (1941).

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© Copyright 2010 Kyndra Elizabeth Meusel