British literature

Virginia Woolf and first part of 20th century in British literature:
Georg Bernard Shaw
-  is the most famous personality in drama of 20th century. He attacked the whole society. In his plays he criticises the false morals of the society. Beside his famous Candida, You Can Never Tell, The Man of Destiny etc. is most famous Pygmalion. On this Shaw’s masterpiece is also based a musical My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn in leading role.

Pygmalion
 The main character of this play is a poor girl Eliza Doolitle (who sold flowers and she is from the lowest society of  London) and Mr. Pickering, a specialist of English language, who made a bet with his colleague, he would learn Eliza to speak clear English like a Queen and the best specialist of English couldn’t notice it. And the best opportunity to that would be at the ball, so Eliza is great and everyone believes that she belongs to high society. Than Mr. Higgins wants her to stay with him, but Eliza´s choosing Freddy, because she wants respect, sympathy and respect.

Virginia Woolf ( 1882 – 1941 )
She was born on January 25th 1882 in London. She was educated by her father. Her mother died, when she was young. Virginia´s older step-sister Stella took responsibility of her, but she died after 2years. Virginia hadn´t happy childhood and because of this she had psychic problems.
She began writing in 1905. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf a writer. But Virginia loved a woman, too, she had many relationships with them, but the best known is her relationship with Madge Vaughn, who was inspiration for the character of Mrs. Dalloway. At the end of 1940 Virginia suffered severe attacks of mental ilnesses. She felt she was unable to recover. On March 28th 1941 she filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the river Ouse, near her house in Rodmell. She is the one of the biggest novelist of 20th century, she wrote about woman – wimin and their problems and she was member of Bloomsbury group.
Woolf is considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. In her works she experimented with stream-of-mind, and with emotional motives of characters, and the various possibilities of fractured narrative and chronology. Her literary achievements and creativity are influential even today.
Woolf's reputation declined sharply after World War II, but her eminence was re-established with the surge of Feminist criticism in the 1970s.

The Bloomsbury Group was an English collectivity of loving friends and relatives who lived in or near London during the first half of the 20th century. Their work deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality. Its best known members were Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, and Lytton Strachey.

Mrs. Dalloway
A story describing one day in Clarissa Dalloway life. She arranges a party in her house in the evening and the story starting in the morning, when she is in the florist and buys a flowers for party. She´s about 50 years old woman, who has husband Richard, who works at ministry and young daughter Elizabeth. They belong in high society in London after 1st WW. Clasrissa isn´t beauty or clever, but she is exceptional, maybe for her relation with her friends Sally Seton and Peter Walsh a man who was her boyfriend before she met Richard. Peter was a long time in India, they haven´t seen for ages, but now he´s in her house,  he´s back from India and wants to see her and tells her he falls in love with young woman from India. I think Clarissa still loves him, but she loves her husband too and there´s problem. She invites Peter at the evening party. Their appointment was very short and special. After appointment Clarissa sends him a letter. It was special letter for him and he maybe falls in love with Clarissa for second time.
At the evening party Clarissa gets to know that some man commited suicide and she goes in her room and there she´s thinking about death and life while her friends Peter and Sally waiting for her in the living room.... That´s the end of the story.
It´s unusual story, there´s no plot. And there are only ideas and remembers from Clarissa life. But I think it´s very interesting book.

Another books:

To the Lighthouse
Jacobs Room
The Waves
Three Guineas