VIRGINIA WOOLF

THE COMMON READER, 1925

The text I'm going to analyse is an extract from The Common Reader, collection of essays written By Virginia Woolf.

Virginia Woolf's aim is to suggest a new way of writing. The present essay is written for a common reader. The extract is an argumentative text and it is composed by two sequences. The first sequence has the function to explain to the reader the reason why traditional novels are no longer suitable: they do not give the essence of life and they do not return to the reader what life is really like. The sequence is also important because it anticipates the following sequence.

Right from the start of the second sequence the novelist provides the intelligent reader a definition of life and compares it to novels. In the sequence Virginia Woolf is inviting the intelligent reader to think about the working of a common mind. Ordinary minds receive lots of impressions every day and only a part of them sticks to our memories. The modernist novelist wants the novel to tell life. But novelists continue to focus their attention on conventions and their novels are not based upon their own feelings.

Virginia Woolf does not explain what the sense of life is, but she speaks about what life is like and how life is represented in the traditional novels and according to her it is not credible.

Virginia Woolf expresses his idea about novels using a poetic language, rich of metaphors and similes.  She also uses the anaphoric syntax in order to stick to the mind of readers. To conclude the language used is suitable for the common readers of early nineties but too complex and elaborate for the common reader of

 21^st century.