Letters in Virginia Woolf's novels

The paper deals with the pervading presence of letters as. physical objects in the novels of Virginia Woolf (especially the first three novels), but it also tries to encompass their non-physical aspects and connotations (e.g. characters, graphemes). Close reading of the passages dealing with letters and letter writing is the approach most used in the article, taking into account a feminist viewpoint and a structuralist narrative analysis. This analysis tries to explain why there are various letters quoted in the novels, a number of times and in a variety of ways. The Voyage Out and Night and Day, Woolf's earliest novels, use letters as a narrative prop reminiscent of the epistolary novel in way of form, and as a social marker of (upper- middle) class in way of content. Jacob's Room, often seen as a turning point towards modernism in Woolf's career, starts with a letter and contains numerous references to letter-writing. This trait is dropped in the later novels, both as a subject and as an intertextual. technique, in favor of more modernist techniques such as 'tunneling'. However, although the later novels do not contain prominent epistolary references, letter-writing remains a strong motif, particularly through the reoccurrence of the unsent (or unreceived) letter, or through the usage of letters as a way of denouncing patriarchal society (also in the essay Three Guineas). The article concludes with noting that an extensive analysis of the usage of letters by the writers of the modernist period might yield interesting results concerning modernist narrative techniques and the subsequent links with post-modernism.