The Janus Face of War

Virginia Woolf, like Bernard Shaw, frequently wrote about writers. Her characters who write often penned their own works about topics that deeply concerned Woolf—vital issues of her day, including gender equality, in particular education for women, war, censorship, and preservation of the natural world. This chapter explores two of Woolf’s interior authors: Jacobs Flanders in Jacob’s Room and Septimus Smith in Mrs. Dalloway. Forged by censorship and Woolf’s desire to improve her own art form, these novels and her interior authors showcase Woolf’s highly praised modernist feminist style.