The purpose of this thesis is to track Virginia Woolf's enactment of conscious experience over the course of her 3 most consciousness forward novels, To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931), and Mrs. Dalloway (1925). This thesis aims to examine Woolf's ideas and theories about individual consciousness, collective consciousness, and how gendered consciousness plays a role in both. Set against the consciousness philosophy of Woolf's time, this thesis sets Woolf's ideas apart from the abstractions of philosophy and attempts to trace Woolf's enactment of consciousness throughout three of her most famous novels. In researching this project, I studied the consciousness scholarship that was circulating within scholarly circles during Virginia Woolf's time. I also read about what Virginia Woolf herself had to say about philosophy and its usefulness. Finally, I researched what scholars of Virginia Woolf had to say about her work and the philosophy of consciousness. By using all these avenues for my research, I was able to paint a portrait of Virginia Woolf's involvement with philosophy, her ideas about conscious experience, and how those ideas took shape in her novels. In her novels, Virginia Woolf transcends academic philosophy by creating a way to understand and visualize the phenomenology of consciousness that is unique and entirely her own. In the first chapter of this thesis, I explore Woolf's depiction of gendered consciousness in her novel To the Lighthouse. In this chapter, I argue that Woolf suggests a difference between the way men and women experience the world. She explores the implications of those experiences for the collective consciousness, and the delicate line that balances gendered individual consciousness with the collective experience. In the second chapter, I look at Woolf's theory of group consciousness in The Waves, which explores what it means to be part of a collective experience while also balancing being an individual with one's own inner experience. In this chapter, I argue that Woolf formulates a coming-of-age narrative to enact the development of both the individual and collective consciousnesses. She also splits the coming-of-age narratives into two different groups, based on gender. I argue that Woolf does this to highlight the different ways in which men and women experience, how that experience develops from adolescence to adulthood, and the balance that must be maintained to reach Woolf's idea of enlightenment. Finally, in the last chapter, I discuss Woolf's ideas about inner and outer experience in Mrs. Dalloway, including the novel's implicit assertion that there must be stability, or balance, in both inner and outer conscious experience if one is to function within the collective consciousness of society. I argue that Woolf shows this balance, or lack thereof, in the parallel narratives of Clarissa and Septimus. In doing this she once again asserts that there is a gendered difference in the way men and women experience and shows how the balance of inner and outer experience functions between both men and women. By analyzing these three texts, I hope to show both Woolf's understanding of conscious experience and the ways in which she enacts this understanding in her three most consciousness-forward novels. / Master of Arts / What is consciousness? What does it mean to have an experience? For years scholars have attempted to answer these questions. Consciousness, as an area of study, raises a few questions. These questions include: What does it mean to have an experience? What is it like, both cognitively and physically, to perceive what's happening around you, and why does it matter in the first place? In the early 20th century, consciousness, and the study of it were at the center of scholarly attention. Influential philosophers such as William James and G.E Moore were just beginning to formulate their theories about conscious experience and to bring them into public view. In this thesis I argue that Virginia Woolf provided her own answer to these questions about consciousness during her career. By reading Woolf against consciousness scholarship, I aim to discuss the ways in which Woolf creates a new idea or philosophy of consciousness, one that considers gender, society, and the individual, and depicts how all these things coalesce into what we understand as "experience." Woolf's thoughts and philosophies were no doubt influenced by those who came before her, but she also created a concept or way of enacting consciousness in her novels that was uniquely her own. In the first chapter of this thesis, I explore gendered and collective consciousness in To the Lighthouse (1927) and the balance that must be maintained within both. In the second chapter, I explore collective or group consciousness in The Waves (1931) and explore how Woolf enacts a coming of age of both collective conscious identity and individual conscious identity, Finally, in the last chapter, I explore Woolf's ideas about inner and outer conscious experience in Mrs. Dalloway (1925), and how one must balance these experiences if they are to function in the collective consciousness of society.

The purpose of this thesis is to track Virginia Woolf's enactment of conscious experience over the course of her 3 most consciousness forward novels, To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931), and Mrs. Dalloway (1925). This thesis aims to examine Woolf's ideas and theories about individual consciousness, collective consciousness, and how gendered consciousness plays a role in both. Set against the consciousness philosophy of Woolf's time, this thesis sets Woolf's ideas apart from the abstractions of philosophy and attempts to trace Woolf's enactment of consciousness throughout three of her most famous novels. In researching this project, I studied the consciousness scholarship that was circulating within scholarly circles during Virginia Woolf's time. I also read about what Virginia Woolf herself had to say about philosophy and its usefulness. Finally, I researched what scholars of Virginia Woolf had to say about her work and the philosophy of consciousness. By using all these avenues for my research, I was able to paint a portrait of Virginia Woolf's involvement with philosophy, her ideas about conscious experience, and how those ideas took shape in her novels. In her novels, Virginia Woolf transcends academic philosophy by creating a way to understand and visualize the phenomenology of consciousness that is unique and entirely her own. In the first chapter of this thesis, I explore Woolf's depiction of gendered consciousness in her novel To the Lighthouse. In this chapter, I argue that Woolf suggests a difference between the way men and women experience the world. She explores the implications of those experiences for the collective consciousness, and the delicate line that balances gendered individual consciousness with the collective experience. In the second chapter, I look at Woolf's theory of group consciousness in The Waves, which explores what it means to be part of a collective experience while also balancing being an individual with one's own inner experience. In this chapter, I argue that Woolf formulates a coming-of-age narrative to enact the development of both the individual and collective consciousnesses. She also splits the coming-of-age narratives into two different groups, based on gender. I argue that Woolf does this to highlight the different ways in which men and women experience, how that experience develops from adolescence to adulthood, and the balance that must be maintained to reach Woolf's idea of enlightenment. Finally, in the last chapter, I discuss Woolf's ideas about inner and outer experience in Mrs. Dalloway, including the novel's implicit assertion that there must be stability, or balance, in both inner and outer conscious experience if one is to function within the collective consciousness of society. I argue that Woolf shows this balance, or lack thereof, in the parallel narratives of Clarissa and Septimus. In doing this she once again asserts that there is a gendered difference in the way men and women experience and shows how the balance of inner and outer experience functions between both men and women. By analyzing these three texts, I hope to show both Woolf's understanding of conscious experience and the ways in which she enacts this understanding in her three most consciousness-forward novels. / Master of Arts / What is consciousness? What does it mean to have an experience? For years scholars have attempted to answer these questions. Consciousness, as an area of study, raises a few questions. These questions include: What does it mean to have an experience? What is it like, both cognitively and physically, to perceive what's happening around you, and why does it matter in the first place? In the early 20th century, consciousness, and the study of it were at the center of scholarly attention. Influential philosophers such as William James and G.E Moore were just beginning to formulate their theories about conscious experience and to bring them into public view. In this thesis I argue that Virginia Woolf provided her own answer to these questions about consciousness during her career. By reading Woolf against consciousness scholarship, I aim to discuss the ways in which Woolf creates a new idea or philosophy of consciousness, one that considers gender, society, and the individual, and depicts how all these things coalesce into what we understand as "experience." Woolf's thoughts and philosophies were no doubt influenced by those who came before her, but she also created a concept or way of enacting consciousness in her novels that was uniquely her own. In the first chapter of this thesis, I explore gendered and collective consciousness in To the Lighthouse (1927) and the balance that must be maintained within both. In the second chapter, I explore collective or group consciousness in The Waves (1931) and explore how Woolf enacts a coming of age of both collective conscious identity and individual conscious identity, Finally, in the last chapter, I explore Woolf's ideas about inner and outer conscious experience in Mrs. Dalloway (1925), and how one must balance these experiences if they are to function in the collective consciousness of society.

This thesis traces the self-creation and autonomy of the woman artist figure in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, and Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye. The first chapter conveys the progression of autonomy and self-creation in Western-European philosophy through contemporary thinkers such as Charles Taylor, Robert Pippin, Alexander Nehamas, and Richard Rorty. This narrative culminates in a rift between public and private, resulting from the push--especially by Nietzsche--toward a radical, unmediated independence. Taylor and Rorty envision different ways to resolve the public/private rift, yet neither philosopher distinguishes how this rift has affected women by enclosing them in the private, barring them from the public, and delimiting their autonomy. The second chapter focusses on each woman artist's resistance to socially scripted roles, accompanied by theories about resistance: Woolf with Rachel Blau DuPlessis on narrative resistance, Lessing with Julia Kristeva on dissidence, and Atwood with Stephen Hawking and Kristeva on space-time. The third chapter contrasts the narratives of chapters 1 and 2 and reveals how the woman artist avoids the problematic public/private rift by incorporating the ethics developed within the private into her art; she balances her creative goals with responsibility to others. Drawing on the work of women moral theorists, this thesis suggests that women's self-creation and autonomy result in an undervalued but nevertheless workable solution to the public/private rift.

This thesis examines different facets of feminine artistry in Virginia Woolf's novels with the purpose of defining her conception of women artists and the role sacrifice plays in it. The project follows characters in "Mrs. Dalloway," "To the Lighthouse," and "Between the Acts" as they attempt to create art despite society's restrictions; it studies the suffering these women experience under regimented institutions and arbitrary gender roles. From Woolf’s earlier texts to her last, she embraces the uncertainty of identity, even as she portrays the artist’s sacrifice in the early-to-mid twentieth century, specifically as the creative female identity fights to adapt to male-dominated spaces. Through a close-reading approach coupled with biographical and historical research, this thesis concludes that although the narratives of Woolf's novels demand the woman artist sacrifice for the sake of pursuing creation, Woolf praises the attempt and considers it a crueler fate to live with unfulfilled potential.

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This dissertation situates literary modernism in the context of a nascent form of globalization. Before it could be fully acknowledged global encroachment was, by virtue of its novelty, repeatedly experienced as a kind of shattering or disintegration. Through an examination of three modernist novels, I argue that a general modernist preoccupation with space both expresses and occludes anxieties over a globe which suddenly seemed to be too small and too undifferentiated. Building upon recent critical work that has begun to historicize modernist understandings of space, I address the as yet under-appreciated ways in which globalism and its discontents informed all of the locales that modernist fictions variously inhabited. For Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, the responses to global change were as diverse as the spaces through which they were inflected. / I begin by identifying a modernist predilection for spatial metaphors. This rhetorical touchstone has, from New Criticism onward, been so sedimented within critical responses to the era that modernism's interest in global space has itself frequently been diminished. In my readings of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Joyce's Ulysses, and Woolf's To the Lighthouse, I argue that the signs of globalization are ubiquitous across modernism. As Conrad repeats and contests New Imperialist constructions of Africa as a vanishing space, that continent becomes the stage for his anxieties over a newly diminished globe. For Joyce, Dublin's conflicted status as both provincial capital and colonial metropolis makes that city the perfect site in which to worry over those recent world-wide developments. Finally, I argue that for Woolf, it is the domestic space which serves best to register and resist the ominous signs of global incursion. In conclusion, I suggest that modernism's anticipatory attention to globalization makes the putative break between that earlier era and postmodernity---itself often predicated upon spatial compression---all the more difficult to maintain.

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