Virginia Woolf changed the way novels were written. Her unique style and advocacy for women made her one of the greatest writers in history. She was able to accomplish great success because she incorporated many famous literary theories into her literature. Virginia’s style of writing can be derived from Terry Eagleton’s theory in his essay, What is Literature? Virginia also incorporated Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory on truth into her writing and themes of her works, including Jacob’s Room. Her transcendentalist style can be depicted from Emerson’s theory on nature. Furthermore, she developed the chaos theory in her literature and implemented throughout both Jacob’s Room and A Room of One’s Own. Therefore, she successfully incorporated and utilized
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Emerson’s essay Nature puts forth his theories on man and the world around mankind. He believed that through nature we can learn all the knowledge and truths that have been told to us, for ourselves. Instead of just hearing something and believing it to be true, Emerson believed we had to experience these truths for ourselves. Furthermore, Emerson was a transcendentalist and he believed nature gave us all the desired beauty we needed to form a relationship with it and the importance in that relationship. Essentially he believed nature lead people to construct our society the way it is. Emerson is evident in Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room because of Jacob’s constant desire with Ancient Greece and their literature compared to modern times. Jacob moves through many relationships with various types of women, and he is never bothered by the people he has to leave behind to achieve his goal for ideal beauty in women and in life. Instead of going through life and experiencing these women in the moment, Jacob looks in comparison to the Greeks and is never satisfied with the women he meets. His quest to Greece is essentially Emerson travelling into nature to find happiness and peace. However, unlike Emerson he realizes that he cannot escape the time period he is in and the chaos in it. The narrator says in Jacob’s Room, “This gloom, this surrender to the dark waters which lap us about, is a modern invention.” (Internet Woolf Jacob 91)The modern world is too influential to Jacob for him to escape, which forces him to move back to England, and shows how he could not attain in Greece what Emerson attained in
Emerson’s essay Nature puts forth his theories on man and the world around mankind. He believed that through nature we can learn all the knowledge and truths that have been told to us, for ourselves. Instead of just hearing something and believing it to be true, Emerson believed we had to experience these truths for ourselves. Furthermore, Emerson was a transcendentalist and he believed nature gave us all the desired beauty we needed to form a relationship with it and the importance in that relationship. Essentially he believed nature lead people to construct our society the way it is. Emerson is evident in Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room because of Jacob’s constant desire with Ancient Greece and their literature compared to modern times. Jacob moves through many relationships with various types of women, and he is never bothered by the people he has to leave behind to achieve his goal for ideal beauty in women and in life. Instead of going through life and experiencing these women in the moment, Jacob looks in comparison to the Greeks and is never satisfied with the women he meets. His quest to Greece is essentially Emerson travelling into nature to find happiness and peace. However, unlike Emerson he realizes that he cannot escape the time period he is in and the chaos in it. The narrator says in Jacob’s Room, “This gloom, this surrender to the dark waters which lap us about, is a modern invention.” (Internet Woolf Jacob 91)The modern world is too influential to Jacob for him to escape, which forces him to move back to England, and shows how he could not attain in Greece what Emerson attained in