Virginia Woolf’s second novel, Night and Day (1919), portrays the gradual changes in a society,

the patterns and conventions of which are slowly disintegrating; where the

representatives of the younger generation struggle to forge their own way, for ‘...

life has to be faced: to be rejected; then accepted on new terms with rapture’.  Woolf begins to experiment with the novel

form while demonstrating her affection for the literature of the past.

 Jacob’s Room (1922), Woolf’s third novel, marks the bold affirmation

of her own voice and search for a new form to express her view that ‘the human

soul …  orientates itself afresh every

now & then. It is doing so now. No one can see it whole therefore.’  Jacob’s life is presented in subtle, delicate

and tantalising glimpses, the novel’s gaps and silences are as replete with

meaning as the wicker armchair creaking in the empty room.