The mezzanine as Virginia Woolf's fiction
In class we talked about Woolf's essays from the early 20th century on what she thinks fiction should be and, we read the Mezzanine which is a book of fiction from the late 20th century. The mezzanine has many aspects mentioned by Woolf some it follows very well and some points are changed and modified slightly which is reflected in the differences between Ms. Dalloway and the Mezzanine. One key concept of Woolf's essays is that the character is far more important than the plot or setting in novels and that novels should be focused on the characters and make them seem human. In Ms. Dalloway this is achieved by staying in characters heads the whole book and almost never describing the facts but only how they are seen and interpreted by the character. In the Mezzanine there is even less plot than in Ms. Dalloway but the entire novel is told by a single character who is aware of the readers. To me this makes the character of Howie more relatable...