Materiality and Architecture in the Novels of Virginia Woolf

This thesis addresses the influence of built structures on our interpretation of the world. This project concerns architecture and the built environment in the novels of Virginia Woolf. The aim of the research is to investigate the architectural settings and spaces evoked through description in the narrative. I study the places Virginia Woolf writes about and show how the narrative is evoked through the built environment, as well as objects contained therein. In this project, I assert that architecture and narrative reinforce one another. From this premise, I ask wider questions concerning the relationship between Woolf’s literary encounters with the built environment. I examine the theorisation of architecture and endeavour to contextualise it via Woolf’s architectural areas, street structures, non-domestic and domestic buildings.