Variation Form in Virginia Woolf's Fiction and Nonfiction

Abstract

If Woolf’s comment in 1940 to a musical friend of hers, Elizabeth Trevelyan, that ‘I always think of my books as music before I write them’ (L6: 425) holds any weight, a collection on music and modern literature would not be complete without a chapter on her texts. In this contribution, I propose that Woolf utilizes a literary version of the musical structure of theme and variation in several of her works. Moreover, there is a connection between musical structure and life writing for her, either fictional or nonfictional (boundaries that are decidedly malleable throughout her oeuvre). Although I would suggest that all the novels engage thematic repetition and variation to some extent (especially The Waves), Orlando (1928), The Years (1937), and Roger Fry (1940), reveal a discernible effort on Woolf’s part to organize the ‘mass of detail’ (L6: 425) accumulated when writing a life by employing techniques and methods one hears in the musical form.