In her novel Jacob's Room, Virginia Woolf challenged the literature of her day with new methods and techniques. How successful was she? Critics are divided in two groups. Some see her series of Impressionistic/Post-Impressionistic scenes as a fresh innovation ; others regard them as fuzzy, disunified fragments. Such critics as Robert Kiely and David Bowling compare Jacob to the apple in Cezanne's pictures of still-life, since they follow Roger Fry's theory of aesthetics. This idea needs modification because Woolf emphasizes the absence of Jacob, while Cezanne creates a new aesthetic value in depicting the existence of the apple. We must realize the novel's title ; it is not Jacob himself, but his room. Actually it seems that van Gogh's art is much closer to Woolf's intention. He paints ordinary things of everyday life, such as shoes, chairs and a bedroom. What he depicts emphasizes the absence of the possessor of these objects. Even though both artists, van Gogh from the Netherlands and Cezanne from Provence, are classified as Post-Impressionists, they try contrary approaches to their subject matter. In Jacob's Room also, there are elements referring to both north and south Europe. Owing to this, we become aware of an underlying two-part structure in the novel. In whatever fuzzy Impressionistic way he may be described, it is effective to make Jacob appear to be an everyman figure. All the more for his absence, he remains in our mind against the background of historical monuments and landscapes, which, losing their dignity, have been transformed into familiar objects.
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