Original scientific paper
Playing Roles (A Reading of Virginia Wooľf's Novel To the Lighthouse)
Estella Petrić-Bajlo
Abstract
Reading Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse in the light of the generally known understanding of art as subjective reflection of objective reality, we might conclude that this novel interrogates not
only the subjectivity of that reflection but the objectivity of reality as well. A prevailing sense of seemingness stems especially from Lily Briscoe°s doing a painting which metonymically corresponds to the narrating of the story (Grgas 1988). The closing sentence of the
novel, »I have had my vision«, Lily's comment upon her just completed portrait of Mrs Ramsay, signals a strong sense of fictiousness, which echoes the Woolfran fiction with gender and masquerade. Readers feel almost encouraged to use postmodernist lenses while reading this modernist text. If the modernist text foregrounds uncertainty about our perception of the world (interrogation of subjectivity) and the postmodemist text foregrounds uncertainty about the »reality« status of the world (interrogation of objectivity), an epistemological notion has been suggested by this novel, namely that we construct the reality we inhabit. Language plays a Crucial role in this cognitive process, reflecting a semiotic inerplay which emerges out of power-relations, revealing the ideology
of gender.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
120305
URI
Publication date:
15.9.1997.
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