logo

31 pages 1 hour read

Virginia Woolf

Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown

Virginia WoolfNonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1929

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Essay Analysis

Analysis: “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”

“Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” is an essay about generational conflict and how the writing and reading of literary fiction change in response to social transformations. Woolf’s argument concerns the depiction of “character” in fiction. Character was the element of novel writing that Bennett identified as deficient in younger novelists. Bennett’s essay used Woolf’s novel Jacob’s Room (1922) as an example of a wider trend of novelists emphasizing “originality” and “cleverness” over the development of “real” characters. Woolf starts by agreeing with Bennett that character is fundamental to fiction. She writes that character creates the impetus and “seduct[ion]” to write fiction at all (3). Where she differs from Bennett is in the definitions of “character” and “reality.” Her argument reflects the Modernist position that traditions should be handled critically and with conscious care, and that inherited conventions should not be unthinkingly duplicated. It also demonstrates a Modernist—or “Georgian”—skepticism of the assumption that “reality” can be captured objectively (expressed by Bennett and characteristic of realist literature of the Edwardian era).