kew garden analysis
Write an essay on Woolf’s narrative art in ‘Kew Gardens.’
For years, Virginia Woolf is remembered for her contribution in short stories. She is one of the famous feminist and prolific writers who write in such a way that gives the impression of instantaneous linking between the inner and outer world, the past and the present and speech and silence. Kew Gardens is one of her major work. Since, a garden is a common place for common people to meet; Woolf has chosen this particular place to paint the reality, whereby she wants to convey the message that though people are with each other or in groups, still they face loneliness and alienation, which in fact are the major themes in Kew Gardens. She uses the fusion technique of stream of consciousness into the third person narrative and the past tense. There is no actual action and traditional plot in the story.
The story starts with a vivid description of the garden in a very descriptive language “OVAL-SHAPED flower-bed, red or blue or yellow petals, the summer breeze, the heart-shaped and the tongue-shaped leaves, the shell of a snail with its brown.” It creates the atmosphere of the story. Here only, the writer introduces the timeframe which is “the summer breeze, in July”. It creates the mood of the story. Further, the story is narrated through an omniscient third person point of view, who knows everything about all the characters either in their physical aspects or inner thoughts.
The story develops in line with firstly the young married couple. The man, Simon goes in flashback “fifteen years ago” to remember his first love Lily (associated to flowers) whom he mainly memorizes “her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe” and he relates his sentiments to the dragonfly “And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly” which however did not settle “But the dragonfly went round and round.” It then develops in a dialogical interaction between the man and his wife. The wife, Eleanor, who goes in flashback “twenty
For years, Virginia Woolf is remembered for her contribution in short stories. She is one of the famous feminist and prolific writers who write in such a way that gives the impression of instantaneous linking between the inner and outer world, the past and the present and speech and silence. Kew Gardens is one of her major work. Since, a garden is a common place for common people to meet; Woolf has chosen this particular place to paint the reality, whereby she wants to convey the message that though people are with each other or in groups, still they face loneliness and alienation, which in fact are the major themes in Kew Gardens. She uses the fusion technique of stream of consciousness into the third person narrative and the past tense. There is no actual action and traditional plot in the story.
The story starts with a vivid description of the garden in a very descriptive language “OVAL-SHAPED flower-bed, red or blue or yellow petals, the summer breeze, the heart-shaped and the tongue-shaped leaves, the shell of a snail with its brown.” It creates the atmosphere of the story. Here only, the writer introduces the timeframe which is “the summer breeze, in July”. It creates the mood of the story. Further, the story is narrated through an omniscient third person point of view, who knows everything about all the characters either in their physical aspects or inner thoughts.
The story develops in line with firstly the young married couple. The man, Simon goes in flashback “fifteen years ago” to remember his first love Lily (associated to flowers) whom he mainly memorizes “her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe” and he relates his sentiments to the dragonfly “And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly” which however did not settle “But the dragonfly went round and round.” It then develops in a dialogical interaction between the man and his wife. The wife, Eleanor, who goes in flashback “twenty