Mapping the modern mind

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In this study, the author closely examines Virginia Woolf’s first experimental novel, Jacob’s Room (1922), positing that it serves as an exploration of fictional form rather than a presentation of preconceived ideas. As a modernist text, it is marked by extensive genre-mixing characteristic of early 20th-century fiction. The author analyzes how the novel transgresses the boundaries of its genre, particularly at the intersection of the novel with forms intrinsic to Woolf’s sensibility, such as the journalistic essay, biography, and impressionist painting. This dual-level reading reveals that on the narrative surface, Woolf depicts the tragic life of Jacob Flanders, a promising young Englishman who perishes in World War I. Concurrently, on a metafictional level, the garrulous narrator critiques and evaluates the characters’ actions, experimenting with various perspectives to define Jacob’s character. His ‘room’ symbolizes a mental space mapping the modern writer’s mind, where the central aesthetic debate revolves around the art of modern fiction and character representation. Woolf probes the essence of modern man and questions how the ‘soul’ can be depicted in fiction. The author employs this generic approach to structure her analysis, discussing the socio-political context of modernism, the impact of World War I on writing, and key aspects of Woolf’s narrative strategy, including her humor, recurring metaphors, the narrator’s r