Botanically-infused prose: An examination of nature forms in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931), and Between the Acts (1941)

Abstract

The thesis examines how Virginia Woolf’s nature writing in Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves and Between the Acts illustrates her, and her characters’, engagements with nature. With a focus on Woolf’s creative relationship with nature, the thesis looks at the naturalistic and nature writing context, autobiographical material, forms of nature, naturalistic horticulture, the natural sciences and the natural environment. The thesis considers how Woolf’s own horticultural knowledge, and her observations of garden techniques used by family and friends, had a powerful impact on her establishment of naturalistic scenes. The thesis explores how Woolf’s physical engagement with and her appreciation of the tangibility of nature contribute to an investigation into the significance of being aware of the interconnectedness of ecosystems that support both human and non-human beings. The research therefore draws on the works of Woolfian critics who capture Woolf’s horticultural and environmental lines of thought and enters into dialogue with existing eco-criticism on Woolf and her work. The thesis argues that Woolf, by observing and interacting with the ecological web of life, goes so far as to map out this human and non-human relationship as a foundational pattern of nature forms in the above-mentioned selection of works. The close reading of the choice of four novels is conducted with an emphasis placed on Woolf’s use of the four nature form types: formal design, naturalistic gardens, rurality, and estate grounds. The thesis contributes to existing and current research, in the combined fields, by adopting a scale of planting styles which is drawn from horticultural and landscape design terminology. This range of styles that stretches from the inner domesticity of formal design to the outer extension into the ‘wild’ is then used as a structural method for discussing and evaluating Woolf’s expression of environmentalism and her exploration into how energy is exchanged between the beings and phenomena that exist as part of these habitat ecosystems.