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