Century Anglo-American Literature until WWII

At the beginning of 20

the Commonwealth had become mostly industrial, and in the second decade of the

century nearly 70% of 25 million people in the whole Britain lived in cities. Village way of life had almost
disappeared. These were years known as the years of change. WWI (1914-1918) changed for many people their view
of the world. Millions of men, including very young soldiers, were killed during the war, so the loss of so many lives
was a horror that the country had not experienced before. And for many people there seemed to be no purpose to
the war. During the WWI, basic religious sand political beliefs were questioned by more people.

In the arts, a clear change was that artists fell they had to express their ideas very differently, especially in

new forms, which were difficult for everyone to understand at the time. On the other hand, some arts felt a duty to
communicate simply and in popular forms to a better educated audience. They wanted to be far from traditional
forms of writing. They thought only wider educated audience could read their poetry.

Novel

(Traditional novel: voluminous, with a lot of description and narration) Experimentation novel: experimentation in
form, writing without an exact story and description, short, with a lot of dialog and internal monologue. The novel of
the 20

century has more personal, individual themes, but as the novel examines the problems of the individual it

also becomes the examination of the whole world.

England is no longer the main scene for literature, as during the last century. Many writers use the wider

world, outside England as their setting. England is often seen in the contrast with the other countries described.
Writers began to use different points of view, rather than seeing the world through only one character’s eyes.

Three Virginia Woolf’s novels with the stream of consciousness technique are The Waves, To the Lighthouse,

and Mrs Dalloway.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

and

Ulysses

are James Joyce’s predecessors of stream of

consciousness. The many points of view, the range of settings and quick moves from scene to scene became part of
modern writing. Also did a psychological approach. This approach meant going deeply into the thoughts of
characters (psychoanalysis).

The stream of consciousness technique named by an American psychologist William James became an

important part of novelist’s technique in the early 20

century. William James’ brother, Henry James, though born in

America, became a British citizen. His novels move from America to Europe in search for fixed cultural and social
values. From his early novels in 1870s and 1880s, such as

Roderick Hudson

and

Washington Square

, James moved on

to write three of his masterpieces in England, in the early years of 20

century. These were:

The Wings of the Dove

(1902),

The Ambassadors

(1903),

and The Golden Bowl

(1904). All three are international in their subject, contrasting

the American culture and character with the European. Like most of James’ writing, the language and the form are
very complex. He belongs to the traditional writing with his story, description, and other elements.

Joseph Conrad

(His novel

Heart of Darkness

has elements of stream of consciousness technique)

Joseph Conrad was born in Ukraine of Polish parents. He became a British citizen in the 1880s and travelled the
world as a sailor. This gave him ideas for many of his works. His first novel

Lord Jim

and

Nostromo

are two of his

most typical novels. They both tell a story of the sea and they explore the dangers, the question of honour and the
moral conflict of man’s struggle at the sea. This conflict provokes stream of consciousness in

Heart of Darkness

Marlow and Kurtz are two sides of one person (good and bad).

Nostromo

is about weakness and corruption in which

characters succumb, and a voyage of self discovery. The novel is set in an imaginary country in South America during
the revolution and its main character, Nostromo, becomes obsessed by silver. This obsession eventually destroys his
relationships with others and makes him lose his moral responsibilities. In

Lord Jim

the hero dies at the end of the

novel, but he has reached honour even after making the terrible mistake of leaving his ship because of fear. One of
Conrad’s most famous works is a short novel

Heart of Darkness

, which goes deep into Africa to explore the mysteries

of the human behaviour. As a central character there is Mr Kurtz, a successful colonial trader in Africa, who has a
mysterious power over the local people. Kurtz lives and works in the very central part of Africa (a symbol) and the
journey to find him is like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world. The words of Mr Kurtz at the
moment of his death have become a kind of refrain for the whole 20

century, especially after T.S. Eliot used them

to preface his poem

The Hollow Men

(1925). His words may be words of the fear, wisdom, maybe simple

understanding, but they also echo during the whole 20

century, and these are: “the horror, the horror.”

Heart of

Darkness

is not an experimental novel, except its briefness. It is full of symbols.

Both Henry James and Joseph Conrad were named as part of the great tradition by a critic F.R. Leavis in

1950, along with such early writers as Jane Austen and George Eliot. This judgement has been wildly discussed as
one of the most important features of the novelist work is moral authority, as in James’ and Conrad’s novels. Both of
them were certainly trying to define moral codes of the 20

century.

Edward Morgan Forster

(

A Passage to India -

a cultural conflict.) Although an Englishman of the middle class, Forster was also an

outsider as a homosexual. His view of society therefore could show some conflicts, especially class conflicts, which
were part of England at the turn of the century. His novel

Howard’s End

(1910) shows the tensions between classes

and their values. This was soon to change. In his novel

A Room with a View

(1908) Forster had already shown these

tensions in the setting of English tourists in Italy. His words from

Howard’s End

“only connect” represent a need to

communicate, and this is also the theme of his final novel

A Passage to India

(1924). In this novel there are tensions

between the cultures of east and west: the British colonial way of life and the local culture of India. This novel has a
story centred on an English woman, Adela, who has gone to India to marry a colonial official, but who quickly makes
friends with local people. She believes she is sexually attacked by one Indian in Marabar Caves, but she later changes
her mind and no longer accuses  the man, so  her  actions and attitudes  show differences  in  beliefs. His  most
homosexual novel is

Maurice

(1913).

David Herbert Lawrence

Lawrence was the first important writer to come from the working class after the so-called Education Act

(1870) which brought the education to all classes. His early works are about his own background. He comes from a
mining family of the East Midlands, with a strong mother and a father whom he hardly knew.

Sons and Lovers

(1913)

is an autobiographical novel, as well as the best-known of his works, with the same setting and also one of the most
successful psychological novels of the century. He was an innovator by content, not by form. Lawrence was always
an outsider, first because of his class (working class), then at the time of WWI because he was married to a German.
After 1919 Lawrence spent most of his life outside England, travelling all over the world and writing about the
countries he visited (Australia, Italy, Ceylon – Sri Lanka, Mexico). His novels, the first one –

The Rainbow

(1915), and

Women in Love

(1920) caused some scandal, as their subjects were men’s and women’s roles in sexual relationship.

For many years Lawrence’s reputation was of a writer on sexual themes, especially after

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

(1928). It was banned in UK until 1960. However, Lawrence’s themes were much wider. He examines all aspects of
human relationship (human psychology), as well as the relationship between man and nature and between the spirit
of man and the spirit of industrialism, which can deny the true nature of humanity. His novels were traditional in
form, yet he included psychoanalysis in them. Lawrence produced a great many works. He wrote poetry, essays,
plays, short stories, travel writings and criticism. His interests include psychology (very important for his work),
primitive religions and the nature of spiritual existence. Among his more important writings is

Psychoanalysis and

the Unconscious

(1921). Lawrence was interested in the journey of the human soul to truth and knowledge through

nature and contact with the deepest forces of spirituality. For J. Joyce and V. Woolf his kind of journey was through
the mind of their characters. So the term s

tream of consciousness

is connected with these writers, but should not

limit them. So, both Joyce and Woolf are writers of great range. The technique of following characters’ thoughts in a
very free way is only one of many ways in which both writers go inside their characters’ minds and feelings to find a
deeper inner truth.

The Stream of Consciousness Technique

(vežbe)

In his essay

The Art of Fiction

(1884) Henry James wrote next lines: “

If experience consists of impressions, it

may be said that impressions are experience, just as they are, the very air we breath. Experience is never limited, and
it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in
the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the
mind; and when the mind is imaginative — much more when it happens to be that of a man of genius — it takes to
itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations.”

Henry James is the real establisher of the modern psychological novel. His theory is the theory of

central

intelligence

. He develops his famous theory of aspect, according to which, in a novel, as well as in reality, a life

should be seen from one point of view, through the eyes of one single person, as long as that person is not the
writer himself, but a character in the novel. That character, therefore, is to be chosen very carefully, and should be

Joyce uses a wide range of references, as T. S. Eliot in

The Waste Land

or E. Pound in his

Cantos,

as well as

using the styles of many works of literature, such as Homer’s on whom the structure of

Ulysses

was based, through

Chaucer’s, to those of the moderns. Joyce wanted to write a novel that was the climax of traditions of Irish literature,
and after

Ulysses

he went further with his novel

Finnegans Wake

(1939). Joyce took language and the novel to new

limits. It is a highly experimental novel, and very surprising to read. The main is theme told around Dublin settings
and the novel uses dreams, play in words, invented words and jokes to make a unique text.

Virginia Woolf

Further developments are put in The Bloomsbury Group, whose leader was V. Woolf. She came from a

literary family and her home in Bloomsbury became the centre of artistic interest among the intellectuals and artists
of the period, so The Bloomsbury Group was to last for many years since 1905 and was at its peak in 1920s. V.
Woolf’s first novel was

The Voyage Out

(1915). It was followed by

Night and Day

(1919). In the great literary year of

1922 she published a novel named

Jacob’s Room.

It was set during WWI and tells the story very close to the death of

the author’s brother Thoby. It was the first of her novels with impressionistic technique, which was to make her
famous. She wanted to leave realism and move into a new kind of expression, which would allow an eternal
exploration of the events and feelings described. She continued this in her following novels,

Mrs Dalloway

(1925),

and

To the Lighthouse

(1927). In her third novel

The Waves

(1931), known as her most experimental novel, she

shows six different characters, all at different points in their lives, and explores how they are each affected by a
death of someone well-known to all of them. Her next novel

Orlando

(1928) was a literary fantasy which takes its

main character from the period of Queen Elizabeth I to modern times and through a change of sex as he or she
meets all sorts of literary and historic figures. It is in

Orlando

that V. Woolf uses phrases

“time on the clock”

and

“time in the mind”

, which show the concern of the early 20

century novelist with time and the nature of memory,

emotions and actions. V. Woolf uses stream of consciousness technique, but she is also original in many other ways.
She spoke out for women, particularly in her novel

A Room of One’s Own

(1929). She also published a lot of criticism,

such as

Modern Fiction

The Common Reader

, and her final works

The Years

(1937) and

Between the Acts

(1941).

These works continued her experiments and proved her to be one of the most original novelists of 20

century. She

committed suicide in 1941.

Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy

Among more traditional writers of the early 20

century many have begun writing towards the end of 19

century. Both Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy published their first novels in 1898 and went on to write many
more. They both wrote in traditional style. Bennett wrote about provincial life. Many of his novels were set in
Staffordshire, in the Midlands, where he was born. His first novel

Anna of the Five Towns

(1902) began a series of

realistic novels, including

The Old Wives’ Tale

(1908),

Clayhanger

(1910). In his novels he described the life of

ordinary and obscure characters in very realistic details. Because of that, V. Woolf criticised the work of
traditionalists in her essay

Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown

(1923), where she attacked Bennett’s realism and spoke for

the kind of impressionism she herself was writing.

Galsworthy’s novels describe a higher social class than most of Bennett’s. His collection of novels

The Forsyte

Saga

, completed in 1921, is similar to Trollope’s novels in some ways. It follows the lives of a successful family –

Forsytes. Galsworthy intended the saga to be ironic examining of greed of the family. There are three novels in the
collection, plus some short stories, beginning with

The Man of Property

(1906). Several more novels, continuing the

family’s story, were written later in 1920s, but are not a part of the saga. Galsworthy wrote several plays on social
themes, but it is the upper-middle-class family of the Forsytes, again, for which he is remembered, rather than his
more socially concerned works.

Herbert George Wells

Herbert George Wells was no traditionalist, according to V. Woolf. He already became famous for his science

fiction fantasies in 1890s, and in the new century his range grew. He wrote several novels about working-class
characters, trying to improve their lives.

Love and Mr Lewisham



/ (1899) is about a teacher.

Kipps

(1905) is

about a shop assistant.

The History of Mr. Polly

(1910) is about a shopkeeper who runs away from his

responsibilities.

Ann Veronica

(1909) is a novel with feminist theme.

Tono-Bungay

(1909) is one of the most

interesting of Wells’ early-20

century novels. It is a state-of-the-nation novel examining English society in a different

way than E. M. Forster, and with a political intention. Wells continued to write many novels until his death in 1946.
He was very popular during his life, unlike V. Woolf. Popularity and intellectual success did not go together. A

separation between experimental intellectual writing and popular writing never happened in the 19

century.

Charles Dickens and George Eliot reached wide audience with most of their books. After WWI critical fashions set by
Bloomsbury books made great distinction between high and low culture, or serious and popular literature. Popular
literature can also be serious in some cases, such as that of Aldous /



/Huxley during 1930s. He wrote comic

novels about young people of the jazz age and their attitudes to life. His works show a new kind of satirical upper-
class humour, again probably a reaction to the WWI shock and the writers of the period deliberately challenged the
serious intellectual attitudes of some readers. Huxley’s novel

Crome Yellow

(1921) was his first success. Another of

his was

Antic Hay

(1923), but he was best known for

Brave New World

(1932) – his vision of a society controlled by

scientific progress.

William Somerset Maugham

W. S. Maugham was one of the most popular authors in his time, well known for his short stories and hugely

successful as a playwright. He also wrote several novels. His first novel

Liza of Lambeth

(1897) is a realistic novel of

London life, but Maugham’s later novels have a wide range of settings. His novel

Of Human Bondage

(1915) is almost

autobiographical, a kind of novel very popular in the period. The novel describes the life of Philip Carey, beginning
with his lonely boyhood in a seaside town in Kent, southern England. He has a deformed foot, and suffers in the
society. He also had a speech impediment.

The Moon and Sixpence

(1919) is set in Tahiti.

Cakes and Ale

(1930) is a

comedy,

The Razor’s Edge

(1944) is set in India.

A new technique came into the novel in 1930s, when Christopher Isherwood used his distant, objective,

photographic kind of narration in his two novels about Berlin. The first was

Mr Norris Changes Trains

(1935), and the

second was

Goodbye to Berlin

(1939). These gave impressions of the Germany during 1930s and the rise of Nazis.

Wystan Hugh Auden left Europe in 1939 and spent the rest of his life in America.

Graham Greene

Graham Greene is also one of the best-known European novelists of the century. He wrote “shockers” –

adventures and spy stories, such as

Stamboul Train

(1932), and

The Confidential Agent

(1939). Apart from stories, he

also wrote serious novels with a background of Catholic doubt.

Brighton Rock

(1939) is the best known of these. The

hero of this one, Pinkie, causes with his violence the novel’s tragedy. The set is in Brighton – southern coast of
Britain. Seventeen-years-old Pinkie wants to run the most powerful gang in the town. In order to have this ambition
fulfilled he murders journalist Hale, but then has to marry a sixteen-year-old girl, Rose, in order to stop her from
telling everything in court. Both of them are Roman Catholics. He is corrupted and she is innocent, so the novel
compares their states of mind. Pinkie continues to commit crime, but is led to his death by Ida, a friend of Hale.

The

Quiet American

(1955) is perhaps the most famous of his novels.

Female writers

Katherine Mansfield

was born in New Zealand but was educated in London. She became known after her

three collections of short stories published during her lifetime:

In a German Pension

(1911),

Bliss and Other Stories

(1920),

The Garden Party and Other Stories

(1922). Two more collections were published in 1923, after her death.

She was an original experimental writer. She used short clear description of character and place, as well as longer
impressionistic stories of family.

Dorothy Richardson

was the first to use stream of consciousness technique. She wrote a long collection of

novels called

Pilgrimage

(1915-1938). Virginia Woolf said that Richardson invented the psychological sentence of the

female gender, that is, that she found the style expressing the thoughts of women.

May Sinclair

was very involved in feminism. Her books include

The Three Sisters

(1914) and the stream of

consciousness novel

Mary Olivier: a Life