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Night and Day by Virginia Woolf5/25/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() With its structured plot, conventional ending, rounded characters and setting in pre-war London, Night and Day sits oddly with modernist writings of the time (such as Mansfield's own work). It thus seems to undo the progress made by Woolf's contemporaries and immediate precursors, from the so-called ‘New Woman’ novels to the radical sexual agenda of D. In the midst of our admiration it makes us feel old and chill: we had never thought to look upon its like again!’ As a courtship drama, which reaches a comic conclusion in the engagement of two couples, the novel can be read as conservative not only for following an age-old narrative pattern but also for appearing to endorse the conservative social imperative of marriage. Katherine Mansfield criticised Night and Day for being old-fashioned on its first publication in 1919, describing it as ‘a novel in the tradition of the English novel. Woolf, ‘Modern Novels’ ( Times Literary Supplement, 10 April 1919) We do not come to write better all that we can be said to do is to keep moving, now a little in this direction, now in that, but with a circular tendency should the whole course of the track be viewed from a sufficiently lofty pinnacle. It is doubtful whether in the course of the centuries, though we have learnt much about making machines, we have learned anything about making literature. ![]()
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