“The Duchess and the Jeweller”

Modernism and Virginia Woolf

Modernization

• New means of transportation, such as the steamship, the railroad, the automobile, and the airplane.

• Other technologies, such as the telegraph and the telephone.

• People were living in large cities, and the world population more than tripled.

World War I

World War I

• World War I took place mainly in Europe• It was the most mechanized war to date • It killed fifteen million people. • After the United States joined the war in 1917

the Allies (France, Britain, Italy) repelled Germany from the Western Front (in Belgium and France).

• In the East, Germany and Austria-Hungary drove into Russian territory, which led to the establishment of a Communist dictatorship under Lenin.

Communist Russia

Russia’s near-defeat contributed to the Revolution of 1917, with Lenin establishing a Communist “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Nazis

• Nazism arose as a National Socialist Movement and came to power under Adolf Hitler in 1933

• The Nazis’ agenda included national rearmament and authoritarian politics held together by the glue of anti-Semitism.

The Final Solution

Starting in 1941, Hitler authorized the Final Solution, aimed at destroying the Jewish people, exterminating six million Jews and several million Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political enemies of the Nazis.

Great Depression

Great Depression

• Beginning on October 24, 1929, the stock market crash heralded the Great Depression.

• Within a few years, a third of American workers were unemployed; hunger and joblessness spread throughout the industrialized world.

• Franklin Roosevelt was able to reverse the worst effects of the Depression in the United States with the New Deal, which included public works spending and the introduction of Social Security.

World War II

World War II began after Hitler’s military force invaded Poland in 1939. Germany allied itself with Fascist Italy and authoritarian Japan, which had earlier conquered Korea and occupied China. The United States entered the war after the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Modernism Linked political crises with the crisis of representation. break with literary conventions including plots, verse forms,

narrative techniques, and the boundaries of genre Charles Darwin - the animal nature of human existence is

explored Karl Marx - the struggle between social classes is the main

drive of history Friedrich Nietzsche - attacked a belief in God and the

conviction that humans are fundamentally rational Sigmund Freud - stress on the unconscious and power of

sexual and destructive instincts Writers had significant mobility, often studying or working

away from their native residences.

Scientific Advances

Scientists found that the natural world does not necessarily function in the way it appears to. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and other discoveries, such as radioactivity, X-rays, and quantum theory, presented counterintuitive understanding of the physical universe that conflicted with classical Netwonian physics and even common sense.

Novelists

• The great modern novelists, including Conrad, Proust, Joyce, and Woolf wrote realistic works in the manner of Flaubert or Tolstoy.

• However, they shifted toward interiority and focused on the limited perspective of an individual, often idiosyncratic character.

Asia Asian writers embraced Communist or Socialist politics and a related style of politically engaged fiction. Their works—as in Ryunosuke, Jun’ichiro, Fusako and Man-sik, often blend modern techniques with old folklore or cultural practices of earlier Japan to make a political statement.

Negritude

During the 1930s, a group of African and Caribbean intellectuals, led by Léopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire, met in Paris (where they were pursuing higher education) and formed the Negritude movement, which celebrated the culture of Africa and the African Diaspora to provide leadership for decolonized states.

Test Your KnowledgeWhich event had arguably the greatest impact on the early twentieth century?

a.the Russian Revolution of 1917

b.the Great Depression

c.the Second World War

d.the First World War

While each of these events was world changing, nothing compared to the destabilizing impact of the First World War. Death and destruction on that scale had previously been unknown—even unimaginable—for most people.

Test Your Knowledge

Modernist artists depended primarily on which of the following?

a.Reason

b.Experimentation

c.Science

d.tradition

Literature across the globe responded to world-changing events (world wars, revolutions, financial collapse) with an unprecedented wave of artistic experimentation, as though the previous modes and forms of art were simply no longer able to capture, recreate, or express the shocking realities of the modern world.

Test Your Knowledge

Fiction that includes references to itself is called: __________ .

a.Metafiction

b.Hyperfiction

c.stream of consciousness fiction

d.experiential fiction

A story or novel, for example, might address the reader as he or she is in the act of reading. Thus the very act of consuming art (whether reading, listening, or watching) becomes part of the art being consumed. (This technique is also known as self-referentiality.)

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) Daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, a notable historian, author,

and critic and Julia Stephen, a renowned beauty. Was raised in an environment filled with the influences of

Victorian literary society. Henry James, George Henry Lewes, and James Russell Lowell were among the visitors to the house. She was taught the classics and literature.

The sudden death of her mother in 1895, when Virginia was 13, and that of her half-sister Stella two years later, led to the first of Virginia's several nervous breakdowns.

The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she was briefly institutionalized.

Virginia Stephen married writer Leonard Woolf on 10 August 1912. They were closely bonded in their marriage and professionally (founders of Hogarth Press).

The onset of World War II, the destruction of her London home during the Blitz, and the cool reception given to her biography of her late friend Roger Fry all worsened her condition until she was unable to work. On 28 March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, walked into the River Ouse near her home, and drowned herself.

Feminism and her work Woolf is known for her precise evocations of states of

mind and body. She explored (directly in her essays and indirectly in her

novels and short stories) the situation of women in society, the construction of gender identity and the predicament of the woman writer.

Though unmarried, she lived with several men (some of them openly homosexuals), challenging the social conventions.

Her poetic use of language brings to life the concrete, sensuous details of everyday experience.

She explores the structures of consciousness. Her focus was not on the object under observation, but on the observer’s perception of it.

The Duchess and the Jeweller

A mirror of English soceity It was an age of transition. The high-ups (Duchess) were coming down because

of their moral decadence and the commoners (Jeweler) were taking lead in spite of their obsessions.

Oliver Bacon had become so important that each day he received invitation cards from the aristocracy of the English society. Even the Duchess of Lambourne waited for his pleasure outside his private office.

The Duchess was always in financial difficulties because of her moral decadence. She gambled. To arrange for the money she sold fake pearls to Oliver twice but this was not all. She had so much moral decadence that she used Diana, her daughter, to entrap Oliver Bacon.

How did the Duchess induce Oliver Bacon into buying fake pearls?1) Friendly address - she started calling him ‘dear Mr.

Bacon’. Then, she called him an ‘old friend’ four times. Then she addressed him by his first name.

2) Using her daughters - she mentioned the name of her daughters and told him that she was selling the pearl only for them. She knew that Oliver loved Diana.

3) Taking advantage of his inferiority complex - She invited him to a party at her estate. She induced him by telling him that the Prime Minister, his Minister, his Royal Highness, and Diana would be there.

4) She cries.

What obsession did Oliver Bacon have in spite of becoming one of the richest jewelers of England?

We find that the jeweler had two obsessions. Firstly, he wanted more and more wealth. It appears that his greed did not have an end. Secondly, he had inferiority complex and wanted to move among aristocratic circles to satisfy this complex.

“They were friends, yet enemies; he was master, she was mistress; each cheated the other, each needed the other, each feared the other.”

Oliver Bacon was a commoner. Later, he became the richest jeweler of England. On the other hand, the duchess was the member of the aristocracy by birth. Therefore, there was a great class difference between the two. These two classes could never be friends. However, the duchess was forced to call him an ‘old friend’ because of her moral decadence and financial problems.

Oliver became the richest jeweler of England by using fair and unfair means. Therefore, he was a master in the sense that he was a great cheat. On the other hand, the Duchess was a cheat too. She induced the jeweler into buying the fake pearls.

Both needed each other. She needed him for money and he needed her to go the party to be with her daughter. In spite of that, both feared each other because each knew the secrets of the other.

Group discussion Group 1: Morality Group 2: Class struggles Group 3: Women’s rights