Virginia Woolf Made an Original Contribution to the Form of the Novel

Reading Passage Question

Virginia Woolf made an original contribution to the form of the novel, but was also a distinguished essayist, a critic for The Times Literary Supplement, and a central figure of the Bloomsbury group. Dialogic in style and continually questioning what may be the reader‘s opinion (her rejection of an authoritative voice links her to the tradition of Montaigne), her critical essays, when examined carefully, reveal a thematic and technical complexity that rivals her novels.

Some of her most rigorous essays suggest that the personality of the author can be fixed if sufficient evidence can be amassed and if its logical implications are followed. In ―The Novels of Turgenev,‖ Woolf pursues the problem of interpretation on the part of the reader by providing a detailed report of her own response to Turgenev. She does this in order to make possible the question that leaps the gap between reader and text. That question—―what principles guided Turgenev?‖—focuses on the fictional strategies that must have been in operation in order to have produced Woolf's experience. Thus Woolf accounts for this by reconstructing Turgenev‘s method. But she pushes farther insofar as she asserts that the method must be a sign of a deeper informing power, the mind of Turgenev itself. This distance can be traversed by interpretation, Woolf argues, because writers like Turgenev achieve a level of personality beneath the surface distinctions among individuals. Her greatest examples of this impersonal power in the English language are Jane Austen and Shakespeare. According to Woolf, these authors write with a ―clarity of heart and spirit‖ that allows their potential for genius to express itself ―whole an entire.‖ Unencumbered by impediments that would be erected by such feelings on their part as fear, hatred, or dependency, we are allowed by their art to make contact with what is most deeply personal, and therefore most widely human, in them.

But one of the riches of Woolf‘s essays is that they critique this very same possibility of closing the gap that exists between author and audience. This is evinced in Woolf‘s awareness of the contemporary artist‘s self-consciousness: the enemy of human contact and knowing. There seem to be so many barriers on the road to the deepest level of self that the journey there is impossible, but it is this level of self through which the gap must be closed. In fact, Woolf asserts that the journey is impossible for the modern writer. In ―How It Strikes a Contemporary,‖ Woolf contrasts writers of the past—Chaucer is her most powerful example—who believed wholeheartedly in an atemporal order verified by the entire culture, with modern writers who have lost this advantage. Woolf suggests that, if, for writer and reader, no way to a shared, universal level of experience is available, the very ground of the interpretive enterprise is removed.

“Virginia Woolf made an original contribution to the form of the novel”- is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates need a strong knowledge of English GMAT reading comprehension.

This GMAT Reading Comprehension consists of 3 comprehension questions. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions are designed for the purpose of testing candidates’ abilities in understanding, analyzing, and applying information or concepts. Candidates can actively prepare with the help of GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solution and Explanation

1. Which of the following would most weaken Woolf‘s assertion that the distance between reader and writer can be traversed by interpretation?

1. Contemporary writers are unable to construct a deep meaning for each reader because they focus primarily on personal distinctions rather than similarities.
2. Every reader reacts differently to the same text and yet each constructs for himself/herself a similar idea of the author‘s personality and presence.
3. Past writers were governed by a strong sense of individualism, which made it impossible for them to appeal to human commonalities.
4. Authorial intent or perspective remains an abstract idea unless the writer is able to confirm or deny the reader‘s interpretation.
5. Most readers are not learned enough to be able to understand the deeper meaning that is implied by the author

2. According to the points elucidated by the author within the passage, all of the following are characteristic of Woolf‘s essays EXCEPT that:

1. they focus primarily on examining whether or not a reader‘s experience of a text can reveal the original authorial presence.
2. they are written in a more technically and thematically complex manner than are her fictional works.
3. they betray Woolf‘s skepticism about the very idea she is attempting to demonstrate and justify.
4. they frequently utilize examples from other writers in order to illustrate and support her conclusions.
5. they are as complex as her other works

3. The passage implies that, in her essay ―The Novels of Turgenev,‖ Woolf assumes that:

1. stable and defining qualities of an author‘s personality are discernible in his or her fiction.
2. interpretation involves a compromise between the reader‘s perspective and the perspective of the author.
3. a reader‘s experience of a novel‘s text is determined by a standard set of fictional principles.
4. making contact with an author‘s mind requires the use of critical reasoning more than intuition.
5. an author‘s literary work must reflect the various facets of the author‘s personality

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