Street Haunting

Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
Philosophische Fakultät
Seminar für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Proseminar: “Really I must buy a Pencil” – London and the Works of Virginia Woolf
Dozentin: M.A. Rebecca Hahn
Sommersemester 14
Session: 17 May 14
Isil Senel, Anna Schäfer

Virginia Woolf: Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown

Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown is an essay by Virginia Woolf, which were published in 1924 at the Hogarth Press Tavistock Square London.

about the characters in novels deals with the reality of the character and why young novelists fail to create (real) characters essay is a critique of Mr. Arnold Bennett:
 Edwardian writer: “the foundation of a good fiction is character-creating and nothing else. […] If the characters are real the novel will have a chance; if they are not, oblivion will be its portion” (Page 3)
Edwardians (1901-1914): Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Glasworthy vs. Georgians (1910-1930): Mr. Forest, Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Joyce, Mr. Eliot
December 1910 human character change  shift in human relations  break of old traditional novel writing
Story of Mrs. Brown show how Woolf creates character: observes two strangers and a story comes up to her mind - describes the two people and gives them names ”The important thing was to realise her character, to steep oneself in her atmosphere” (Page 9)
Novels deal with characters: everyone sees different things in a character, ‘how a character is shown’ is influenced by age, country and writers temperament
Real character: they have to be seemed to you so real. Make the reader think of it itself
Bennett says, that there are no great novelists of Georgian writers because they cannot create real, true and convincing characters
 Woolf disagrees: before 1910 no English novelist could teach the writers how to create a character the Edwardians also cannot teach how to create a character because they are not interested in the character in itself instead they describe more the outside/ surrounding  that is the reason that Woolf thinks the books are incomplete and not self- contained
Woolf shows the failure of creating a real character in Bennett’s novel Hilda Lessways: describes only the surrounding (e.g.: view from the window, houses..) in order to make the reader belief that if there is a house (which he describes in detail) there must be a person living in there.
 Edwardians deal with nature but not with human nature
Literature needs a bridge between reader and writer: “The writer must get into touch with his reader putting before him something which he recognises, which therefore stimulates his imagination, and makes him willing to co-operate in the far more difficult business of intimacy” (Page 17)
Bennett makes use of common grounds to reach his readers intimacy (House property)
 this is not longer useful for modern writers: “novels are in the first place about people, and only in the second about the houses they live in, that is the wrong way to set about it” (Page 19)

Discussion:
1. Do you agree with the Woolf’s critique of the Edwardians?
2. When do you have the feeling that a character in a novel is “real”?