Ce mémoire présente une analyse comparée des romans The Waves (1931) de Virginia Woolf et Les Fous de Bassan (1982) d’Anne Hébert dans le but d’établir une possible relation de filiation littéraire entre les deux écrivaines. Avec l’idée que Woolf et Hébert ont en commun plus qu’une aptitude à la prose poétique, chacune ayant le désir de rendre, par l’écriture, une réalité qui les dépasse en tant qu’auteures, j’examine le fonctionnement de leurs romans à partir de deux points de convergence. Le premier : des allusions et mentions intertextuelles communes, formant un réseau de significations communicantes entre les textes des auteures, avec des références aux écrits de William Shakespeare et à la figure de Perceval, le chevalier en quête du Graal chez Chrétien de Troyes. Le second : la pluralité des voix narratives en rapport avec le caractère évanescent des personnages, la polyphonie servant la quête de Woolf et d’Hébert pour mieux rendre le caractère mouvant et multiple des points de vue sur la vie. Je m’emploie à vérifier l’hypothèse que ces romans sont la tentative la plus aboutie de se rapprocher de l’idéal d’une écriture qui va au plus près de la vie, qui sait plonger dans la conscience pour en révéler les contenus sensibles et perceptifs.

Since long before her death, and up to our present day, critics, scholars and readers have considered the body of work by Virginia Woolf in the reflection of a gloomy light. This wide opinion, if not directly caused, is at least enhanced by her numerous negative and even traumatic life experiences. Very little attention has been paid, or focus put, even by the most thorough and astute Woolf scholars, on another aspect of Woolf’s life and of her work. This thesis reveals another side of Woolf not only as a funny and entertaining woman, but as a sufficiently masterful manipulator of her craft to have used her fiction writing talent as an enhancement of her nonfiction works, and which included humor in the process.

Thesis advisor: Kevin Ohi / Thesis advisor: Kayla Walczyk / Fiction, in that it need not position itself at a safe distance from melancholia in order to point at with a theoretical probe, presents a more accurate vision of the melancholic structure. Instead of simply describing and defining melancholia, fiction can inhabit the space of the pathology. In this way, it can perform the consuming and debilitating suffering that ensues after the experience of an inexpressible loss. In doing so, it can force the reader to experience in the act of reading what it would be like to meet melancholia in all its disturbing allure and destructive capacities. Certain fictional representations of loss, in the way they pull their readers into a melancholic vortex, profoundly enact the difficulties that result in this encounter. The capacity of fiction to render the melancholic structure in all its complexity is evident in Marguerite Duras’ The Ravishing of Lol Stein and in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. In the way these texts perform the dynamics of the melancholic structure, they push beyond the precipice of where scientific language is forced to stop. This reading of The Ravishing of Lol Stein and To the Lighthouse is not an attempt to psychoanalyze fictional characters or the authors who created them; such a study is highly speculative and relatively unproductive. It is an attempt to recognize how melancholy seems to be functioning in and performed by these texts, and in this interpretive schema, recognizing how fiction can do what theory cannot. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: English.

Thesis advisor: Mary J. Hughes / Based on the current sociological views of gender, this paper will examine the various constructs of femininities and masculinities as observed in stream of consciousness fiction. Using Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, one can view the interactions of pressures which establish characters' resistance or acceptance of gender roles. Because of their narrative styles, both Woolf and Faulkner provide perspectives which would normally be concealed. The characters will be organized and analyzed based upon their generations and genders, concluding with aspects of both novels which do not fit into this schema. These "complications" also bear heavily on the implications of gender in both novels, highlighting the authors' individual intentions in writing. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

This thesis explores a psychoanalytic understanding of depression from the perspective of Fairbairn’s object relations theory, something Fairbairn did not himself undertake. Highlighting the historical and political contexts of the development of psychoanalysis in Fairbairn’s time, I underline the marginalization of Fairbairn’s theory, which I attribute primarily to his lifelong endeavour to challenge the orthodoxy of the time: instinct theory. I chart a theoretical trajectory from the instinct theory (Freud, Klein) to object relations theory (Fairbairn), to contextualise my argument for the potential of Fairbairn’s theory. My argument aligns with Rubens’ (1994, 1998) view that an extension of Fairbairn’s theory beyond what Fairbairn himself originally proposed on the subject of depression is not only advantageous but also necessary. The Fairbairnian understanding of depression at the heart of this inquiry is illustrated through my personal engagement with psychoanalytic theory and framed by my subjective experiences and interpretations. Contending that theory requires personal voices to make sense and be relevant, I engage creatively and personally using the method of letter-writing to an imaginary companion - Virginia Woolf. The Virginia Woolf I construct and with whom I engaged in the research process is based on factual information about Virginia Woolf along with her published texts. In this process I blur the boundary between the real Woolf and my imaginary Woolf. Troubling the edge of reality and fantasy, I use the Woolf of my imagination to stage a process of getting to know Woolf personally, working to develop a trusting relationship and engaging her in a conversation about theory. My letters to Virginia Woolf trace an unfolding dialogue in which we tell and hear each other’s most intimate stories, once unthinkable and unsayable. The letters trace the transformation of my own understanding of the nature of depression, and through them I seek to establish a line of theoretical argument about depression running through the claims of Freud and Klein before turning to the Fairbairnian version of object relations theory. In so doing this thesis complicates psychoanalytic knowledge of the nature of depression, and argues that, framed in Fairbairn’s system, depression can be understood as an actively organised psychic manoeuvre to defend against changes to the endopsychic structure. In other words, and as elaborated through the letters constructed in this thesis, I argue that depression can be understood as a defence against the disintegration of a particular sense of self sponsored by internal object relationships.

Modernism is a popular topic for diverse kinds of scholarship and theories, yet the possibilities of its contribution to education have been neglected. This thesis is an attempt to illustrate modernism's utility in forming a theory of education through examining the thoughts of two prominent modernists, Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster. In reviewing both their fiction and nonfiction, we not only gain valuable insight into and contextualization of modernism, we are also introduced to possible (theoretical) solutions to problems that continue to plague our classrooms. By evaluating modernist themes of form, narration, becoming a reader and a critic, and time, I hope to illustrate modernism's capacity to contribute to the educational conversation in unique and valuable ways. As we channel the values Woolf and Forster lived by and demonstrated in their writing into an adaptable educational theory, we will be able to produce generations of better readers, better thinkers, better learners, and ultimately better individuals.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Also available in print.

<p>This essay focuses on the character of Lily Briscoe in Virginia Woolf's <em>To the Lighthouse. </em>From a gender perspective it discusses Lily's striving to exceed her socially constructed position as a woman by attempting to be an artist. At the beginning of the twentieth century women were supposed to be housewives rather than artists. This ideology of femininity held women back from achieving anything outside the home, and forced women to attempt to escape their femininity in order to pursue their dreams. This essay discusses Lily's efforts to escape her femininity by attempting to transcend her body and by striving to achieve an androgynous mind.</p>

<p>This essay focuses on female identity formation in patriarchal society in Virginia Woolf’s <em>To The Lighthouse </em>and Sylvia Plath’s <em>The Bell Jar</em>. Both authors portray female characters who struggle with the normative gender identity. As the novels represent different eras and locations, the two characters examined in this essay, Woolf’s Lily Briscoe and Plath’s Esther Greenwood, have very little in common on the surface. However, both authors deliver similar feminist social criticism concerning the negative impact of patriarchal norms on female identity formation. This study analyzes some of these external constraints, or norms, and aims to prove that the two female characters’ ideas of womanhood and identity collide in a similar manner with those norms. Schachter’s study on identity constraints in identity formation and Sanchez and Crocker’s research on gender ideals work as the theoretical background in the study. The negative influence on Lily’s and Esther’s identity formation is similar since both characters live under a symbolical bell jar, unable to form their identity according to their own preferences. Patriarchal conventions remain a constant constraint and the two women keep struggling to find a balance between their own ideas and those of their societies. Both Lily and Esther grow to understand their own traits, desires and abilities in their respective stories, but fail to reach their preferred identity. Their resistance to adapt to gender conventions helps them to form a stronger identity, but it is an identity that remains profoundly and negatively influenced by the patriarchal norms of their societies.</p>

This essay focuses on female identity formation in patriarchal society in Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Both authors portray female characters who struggle with the normative gender identity. As the novels represent different eras and locations, the two characters examined in this essay, Woolf’s Lily Briscoe and Plath’s Esther Greenwood, have very little in common on the surface. However, both authors deliver similar feminist social criticism concerning the negative impact of patriarchal norms on female identity formation. This study analyzes some of these external constraints, or norms, and aims to prove that the two female characters’ ideas of womanhood and identity collide in a similar manner with those norms. Schachter’s study on identity constraints in identity formation and Sanchez and Crocker’s research on gender ideals work as the theoretical background in the study. The negative influence on Lily’s and Esther’s identity formation is similar since both characters live under a symbolical bell jar, unable to form their identity according to their own preferences. Patriarchal conventions remain a constant constraint and the two women keep struggling to find a balance between their own ideas and those of their societies. Both Lily and Esther grow to understand their own traits, desires and abilities in their respective stories, but fail to reach their preferred identity. Their resistance to adapt to gender conventions helps them to form a stronger identity, but it is an identity that remains profoundly and negatively influenced by the patriarchal norms of their societies.