Virginia Woolf’s second novel, Night and Day (1919), portrays the gradual changes in a society,
the patterns and conventions of which are slowly disintegrating; where the
representatives of the younger generation struggle to forge their own way, for ‘...
life has to be faced: to be rejected; then accepted on new terms with rapture’. Woolf begins to experiment with the novel
form while demonstrating her affection for the literature of the past.
Jacob’s Room (1922),Woolf’s third novel,marks the bold affirmation
of her own voice and search for a new form to express her view that ‘the human
soul … orientates itself afresh every
now & then. It is doing so now. No one can see it whole therefore.’ Jacob’s life is presented in subtle, delicate
and tantalising glimpses, the novel’s gaps and silences are as replete with
meaning as the wicker armchair creaking in the empty room.
