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The Dark Places Of Psychology: Consciousness In Virginia Woolf's Major Novels, Linda Martin

Honors Projects

In a 1919 essay, Virginia Woolf wrote that “[f]or the moderns ‘that,’ the point of interest, lies very likely in the dark places of psychology.” For Woolf, this assertion represented a career-long interest in the mind and consciousness; she made a project of describing and explaining the mystery of subjective experience in her fiction. In my paper, I argue that specific, turn-of-the-century psychologists’ and scholars’ theories of consciousness influenced and inspired Woolf to integrate their ideas into her fiction. Further, through an in-depth exploration of Woolf’s middle fiction (Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves), I demonstrate …