In or about December 1910, human character changed.” The date in Virginia Woolf’s famous declaration refers specifically to the first exhibit of Post-Impressionist art in London, but it also points to changes occurring in society and culture that were altering how individuals understood themselves and the world in which they lived, changes often associated with Einstein, Marx, and Freud.

For Woolf, “human character” is distinct from “human nature,” which, she assumes, is a given. What differs “from one age of English literature to another,” she argues, are the novelists who try to convey it, whose perspectives, and hence the characters they create, are rooted in the period in which they live.

In this course we will read works by five of the greatest British novelists of the period that illustrate the challenge of portraying character in the modern world, including the writers’ experiments with new forms of presentation and narrative. We will start with Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, an exploration of human nature that highlights many of the theories current at the time. After that we will read James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room. Both are coming-of-age novels, and both signal turning points in the fictional presentation of character. We will end with two first novels by writers who helped define the evolving nature of character in the later part of the period: Jean Rhys’ Quartet and Samuel Beckett’s Murphy.