Woolf delves into people's inner self

I think you probably were quite puzzled after your first reading of Virginia Woolf's short story Solid Objects. It does not follow the normal pattern of a story. There does not seem to be a plot which follows the usual path of some sort of problem or event which is resolved by follow-up action in the story. Neither do the characters behave in what we would consider a normal, rational way. What do we make of a story like this?

Woolf (1881-1941) lived among a group of artists who liked to experiment. They enjoyed breaking out of known conventions and trying out new ways of extending existing art forms - whether in painting, music or literature. We call them Modernists. They were taking the forms of art that had stood the test of time throughout the Victorian age and were trying to make them more modern, more appropriate for the way the world was changing in the first part of the 20th century.

One of the characteristics of Modernist art is its awareness of the impact of the unconsciousness. The great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud created a huge impact by suggesting that we are motivated in our actions as much by our unconscious mind as by what we are consciously aware of. Artists like Woolf liked to explore this idea of unconscious motivation, which means that characters in her world can behave in ways that seem very odd and random.

That is exactly what happens to John. He rejects the world of society and politics. He rejects all the rational, conscious motivations that we have in the world: the desire to socialise with our friends and to be successful in our chosen profession. Instead, he follows the passionate calling of some inner, unconscious impulse; in his case, the desire to collect odd, cast-off objects. Woolf's fascination is in seeing where this leads him.

The opening seems to suggest that this will be a story that follows a conventional pattern of setting and plot. It starts with two figures on a beach. They are having a walk and are in the middle of a passionate argument about politics. There is nothing unusual

about that, and Woolf describes their behaviour in a way that is psychologically convincing and consistent. Following a pause in the argument, they both become engrossed in another activity, one with skimming pebbles on the sea, the other with idly digging a hole in the sand.

It is interesting that Woolf does