'Modernism was a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from large-scale transformations and far-reaching'. It was a predominantly English genre of fiction, popular from roughly the 1910s to the 1960s. Modernist literature arose due to increasing industrialization and globalization. New technology and the terrifying events of both world wars led people to question the future of humanity: what was the world becoming? Instead of progress, the modernist writer saw a decline in civilization. Instead of new technology, the modernist writer saw cold machinery and a capitalist economy, which alienated the individual and led to detachment and loneliness. Writers have responded to this question by addressing these feelings. The romantic period focused on nature and being was over. Modernist fiction spoke of the inner self and consciousness. Writers experimented with forms rather than confirming traditionalist realism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayVirginia Woolf, considered a pioneer of modern aesthetics, criticized contemporary concepts of what constitutes art and what is the appropriate content of literature and called for changes in style, subject matter, and values, according to Woolf, "the The real material of fiction is a little different from what custom would have us believe." Woolf wrote many novels, short stories, essays, biographies and reviews. Here, two of his famous short stories, "The Mark on the Wall" and "Kew Gardens" are considered. These stories contain modernist and experimental influences. "The Mark on the Wall" is one of the Monday or Tuesday stories and Kew Garden was republished in the same collection. The sign on the wall is mostly introspective and has been called “a manifesto of modernism”. And Kew Gardens is set in London's Royal Botanic Gardens. Woolf decides to use a third-person narrator as she delves into the psyches of her characters. Using the memories, perceptions, stream of consciousness, and dialogue of said characters, he effectively paints a vivid picture of the scenes the reader is exposed to. The first story begins with the main character – most likely Woolf herself – remembering when she first saw the mark on the wall. This is when a series of seemingly unrelated reflections begin. Consider several possible identities of the sign, starting with a hole made by a nail - this leads to thoughts about, ending with how quickly life disappears and what might await us next. Then follows another possibility of what the sign might be: a small rose leaf or From Shakespeare. Next, he sees the mark on the wall as something protruding from it. This reminds her of the South Downs and the mystery of their true origin. Nature and fantasies about trees make her forget reality and civilization, but towards the end they lead her directly back to them. Furthermore, the reference to war is given by a male speaker who interrupts his reflections. He mentions the war, then asks why there is a snail on the wall, abruptly interrupting his musings and leaving the reader with an unsatisfactory feeling when he concludes the story with: “Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail." In Kew Gardens, Woolf details brief interactions between four different groups of people, as well as a snail's slow journey through the garden. The first of its themes – perspective – is immediately made evident through the juxtaposition of contrasting scenes. A married couple whoappreciates the silence between them contrasts two young lovers who fill their every moment with superficial conversations. A son walking with his senile father sees him as a man in need of care and patience, while two bourgeois women see the same old man from afar and use him as a brief subject of curiosity. All these people together, capable of quietly browsing in the garden, contrast the snail which struggles among the many small obstacles that cross its path. Virginia Woolf also uses her story as a commentary on the uncertainty of life and the progression of time, where she probably emphasizes that we must not let the contemplation of these infinite possibilities delay us for long because time continues to progress despite everything. The old man, caught in his imaginary memories of decades ago, is unable to grasp the beauty of the present and appears forever lost in his mental degradation. The married man, unable to let go of his past love, unconsciously stays away from his family and misses the current joys of spending the afternoon with his wife and children. Overall, the progression of time is characterized by the final movement of all characters. Virginia Woolf, following her modernist aesthetic, experimented with how episodes are organized, how time is reflected in modernism, external events are minimized and introspection. is made the principal. It eliminates the traditional focus on characters and their dialogue with far fewer characters and replaces dialogue with long, uninterrupted lines of thought known as streams of consciousness. Woolf uses stream of consciousness in both of her stories. It is "a method of storytelling that describes events through this flow in a character's mind." It differs from free indirect speech in that the entire story is written from the first-person perspective and takes place in the present. It is an internal monologue of thought, not a representation of someone else's mind. In "The Sign on the Wall" the reader is first presented with a sign, then through a long stream of thoughts and visions, with different interpretations of the sign leading to different ideas, we end up with the character not remembering what he was thinking. In Kew Gardens, readers get to know the inner thoughts of many characters. The effect Kew Gardens has on thoughts is demonstrated by Woolf; focuses on the inner self, using language to represent a stream of consciousness, as if the reader is directly reading the character's thoughts despite them being written in the third person. With an emphasis on the description of the flowerbed, the people passing by are described and Woolf weaves in and out of their minds. The first character introduced is Simon, a married man who thinks about a time in the past when he visited Kew Gardens: another perspective comes from his wife Eleanor. He remembers painting by the lake and notes that the water lilies were "the first red water lilies" he had ever seen. However, few critics believe that Woolf chose a "sense of duality" instead of a stream of consciousness, in this case, the duality of fact and vision and mind and body in the stream of consciousness. She combines two themes, namely the fact that there is a sign on the wall and the visions that this sign evokes in her, with different interpretations of the sign leading to different ideas. He compares trees to life, human thoughts to fish swimming in water, and tablecloths to reality. Throughout the story there are different definitions of the brand, from nails to rose leaves, until at the very end of the story the true identity of the brand is made known: it is a snail. This abruptly puts an end to all the ideas he had when he did not yet know reality, which confirms that reality oppresses fantasy. Thefact wins over vision, the body wins over the mind Even the sign on the wall falls into this scheme: from a hole made by a nail contemplate the possibility that it is a rose leaf, a protuberance on the wall, an old nail, a crack in the wood , until he realizes that it is, in fact, a snail. Perhaps reality is not controlled by man, but by nature and its life cycle. Human beings are part of nature, they are not above it, eWoolf doesn't want the reader to forget this. Impressionism can also be seen in Woolf's work. Impressionism is the rejection of the conventional tendency to document the precise details of a moment in time and instead seeks to capture its overall essence, or pervasive emotion. A significant aspect of 'Kew Gardens' is the way Woolf describes the setting to us. There is a strong focus on color and texture within the story. From the oval-shaped flowerbed rose perhaps a hundred stems and extended into heart-shaped visual images, the use of, in particular, is neither simple nor direct but the full spectrum of psychological interference which imposes itself in the empty space between our perception of color and its expression in words, together forming the flow of consciousness. Furthermore, this is not just impressionism, Woolf cleverly uses the plot to represent Kew Gardens as a portrait with colors appearing in different "spots", which can be linked to post-impressionism. Furthermore, in both of these stories, Woolf looks not only at nature itself but at how it fits into the modern world. This is another feature that underlines the modernist quality of his work. Virginia Woolf tried to break away from realism. Realism is often thought to be a particular trend in Victorian fiction. In Woolf's view, detailed descriptions of external reality are employed by realistic novelists to provide their characters with "an air of probability". The other reality that Woolf intends to bring to the foreground in the narrative is a different treatment of narrative time and a layered use of language, but also a less falsifying conception of characters. What is perceived from the outside is only the "shell" of the subject and this necessarily falsifies the complex and multi-level nature of internal life. In this sense, Woolf still insists on the importance of writers focusing on consciousness and leaving "the description of reality increasingly out of their stories". To attempt to break away from realist or romantic writers, Woolf experimented with her own writing style. Woolf used poetic descriptions in various instances, all particularly evident in Kew Gardens, which seems to be more like a poem than a work of prose fiction. Furthermore, "Kew Gardens" can be read, from a very objective, detached, abstract point of view, as a physics experiment: a hidden microphone (the snail) is randomly positioned inside a public garden, and which records fragments of conversations of various characters as they approach and pass by, their voices emerging from the noise to make sense, only to fade back into the noise. For Woolf, her stories prove to be an ideal terrain for perceptive experimentation, in which reality is not only represented in its complex and inexplicable aspects but even radically questioned. Furthermore, looking at Kew Gardens with the psychoanalytic approach, the snail is the only character in this story that moves with a purpose. He seems to have awareness. There's a problem, though. The snail has obstacles in its path which critics argue Woolf is trying to illustrate the insidious nature of depression. Psychoanalysis was relatively new in Woolf's time. From the point of.