Kew Gardens was written by Virginia. Virginia Woolf, who is against living Victorian style, also writes this in her works. According to the period she lived, her literature trend is modernism. She uses the style of stream of consciousness. Firstly, the title is itself important. Kew Garden is showed as a reference to The Royal Botanic Gardens in southwest London. She prefers to draw attention to the whole scene rather focus especially on theme, character, or any event in the novel. We can see some techniques of modernism like materialism, structuralism, binary opposition and intertextuality, so we can analyse the novel in terms of symbol, theme or character.
In modernism, “Make it New” is significant motto. In terms of narration, alienation, they try to use non- chronological narration, fragmented narration. In Kew Gardens, there is no chronological order or narration because there is no clear beginning and no clear ending. It means that in any novel it must be exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution, yet it was not used. Characters live both past and present while they are walking in the garden that impresses them, so we can observe that symbolic archetypes are portrayed.
We can comment or analyse this novel with the concept of materialism. Simon and Eleanor thought the existence of spirits and ghost. Materialism rejects them and they couldn’t communicate each other in the deep level. For example, Eleanor says “Why should I mind, Simon? Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees…one's happiness, one's reality?" (Woolf, 1921). The other example is that he talks about spirits with older man walking past the flowerbed. "Heaven was known to the ancients as Thessaly, William, and now, with this war, the spirit matter is rolling between the hills like thunder." (Woolf, 1921). We can understand that these examples are related to materialistic concept. We can observe that the man, Simon, is mad because of his ideas and thoughts about spiritual things. We can add these examples that his speech about Uruguay.
The other technique used in the novel is logocentric mentality. It is about languages and is related to signified and signifier. The signifier is an action or object while the signified is the symbolism, character, or image. The author mentions the garden, leaves, colours, and lights. For instance, the garden portrays us beauty, peace, nature, comfort, and silence. Maybe, lights can describe us something positive like hope, goodness, insight, and ultimate reality. Other important words that will catch our attention when we analyse the novel can be snail and dragonfly.
While Simon was wandering, he remembered that he came with Lilly to that garden. Dragonfly symbolizes and recalls his proper, passion, love, and desire towards Lilly. It never stops to fly it continues to fly round and round. It shows us his emotions, wishes, and feelings toward her because he wants to marry her in the past. However, all his thoughts are about the past and he is now with his family. We can understand his thoughts with this quote; " But the dragonfly went round and round: it never settled anywhere–of course not, happily not, or I shouldn't be walking here with Eleanor and the children–Tell me, Eleanor. D'you ever think of the past?"(Woolf, 1921). Snail has a purpose and tries every method to achieve his purpose. Meanwhile, with the help of his antennae, it watches what is happening around and what people do. His antennae are like a camera because people are followed or watched by drones or phones today. In addition, the other important technique is binary opposition. We can see its examples in the novel. For example, in the second paragraph we can see that the words of purposely and unconsciously. The other words are close and open, backward and forward, and men and women.
Furthermore, we can analyse its themes. Kew Garden is a reference to machinery, isolation, and industrialization because the characters actually try to escape the area, yet the truth is different. They cannot escape. For example, While Simon was wandering, he thought about his past. He alienated himself from the garden. And when he looked at his round, he realizes the existence of some animals and they recall him the past. In addition, femininity and women is other significant main idea. The novel presents us the place or role of women. It seems as if the societal roles could be broken by gardens, but women are restricted. Therefore, the garden is far away from the beauty and freedom because of gender roles. Moreover, memory and the past are the other central idea. Particularly, the older character tries to remember the memories of their youth.
As a conclusion, Virginia Woolf’s language is hard because of his period she lived. Therefore, we can encounter with descriptions or portraits in her novels. And we can understand that how a character feels, how a character receives an event or an action, what character thinks about the topic, all these can be explored with modernist novels. Although we have omnipotent narrator who knows everything about character, what we know is the mind of the character. Furthermore, we can observe that the perception of the reality changes while subjective reality is adopted.
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