Jennifer Aroche
Sophia Behnke
Kathyraine Coghill
Bailey Pape
Jacob Rivera
Natalia Villegas
In modern times, aesthetics are often thought of as some sort of aura of the person, a theme of a room. However, in Virginia Woolf’s writings, aesthetics is something that encompasses the entire novel and the characters within them. She has taken inspiration from both writers and painters, using their physical ways of depicting a scene and translating it to the ink and page. Aesthetics in Virginia Woolf’s writing are entwined with the interplay between space, perception, and artistic form. Dorothy Brewster observes in Mrs. Dalloway that Woolf renders London not just as a setting but as an active, shaping force, where the city's landmarks mirror the fluid consciousness of its characters. Likewise, Lingxiang Ke highlights Woolf’s statuesque method in Jacob’s Room, where Renaissance artistic principles inform the sculptural construction of Jacob’s fragmented identity. Across her works, Woolf’s aesthetic vision resists fixed representation, presenting fluidity in both character and narrative form. Roger Fry had a large impact on Virginia Woolf and how it shaped her views and aesthetics within her writing; including “an abstract, painterly-like effect” (Sawyer 5). Woolf brings Shakespeare back to life with a contemporary vision using a “somewhat traditional plot” and a “modernist” way of writing (Sawyer). Woolf is influenced by personal feelings and opinions as well as the impressionist movement (Guedes). Through the uses of negative diction, absence, silence, and the unresolved, Woolf’s writing emphasizes the constraints of language and memory (Rubenstein).