Modernist literature known for its interesting break with traditional writing, it contents as well as narrative techniques, remains relevant. The topics and narrative techniques and the way the modernists saw, or wanted us as readers to see, the world is still very much the subject of study at universities around the world today. We learn about the emergency experienced in a changing society and about the way the modernists wanted to illustrate the truth through the use of fragmentation, symbolism and metaphors. Students and other readers may be forgiven for wondering if scholars of today, and decades past, perhaps read too much into certain literature in their readiness to reach beyond the words and, hopefully, find a hidden, obscured meaning. Virginia Woolf was aware of the enormous changes of the period, as she connects physical and economic changes with shifts in cultural and social relations. In her essay “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown she mentions: “in or about December, 1910, human character changed. . . All human relations have shifted- those between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and children. And when human relations change there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics and literature” …show more content…
Woolf’s experimentation has much to do with the time in which she lived the turn of the century was marked by bold scientific developments. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution undermined an unquestioned faith in God that was, until that point, nearly universal, while the rise of psychoanalysis, a movement led by Sigmund Freud, introduced the idea of an unconscious mind. Such innovation in ways of scientific thinking had great influence on the styles and concerns of contemporary artists and writers like those in the Bloomsbury