Diction In Virginia Woolf's Two Meals
The work of Virginia Woolf, “Two Meals”, is about a woman who goes and experiences two very separate and distinct colleges. The first college is a boys college, and the second, a girls college. Throughout the work you notice two different settings, the first being a charming dinner with many exquisite meals prepared. The second meal, bland and boring. Woolf uses different forms of syntax that help the reader more fully understand her perception of these two places. She uses very forward diction with long and drawn out sentences in the first passage. The second passage, the diction is more harsh and the sentences more choppy. Woolf also uses imagery to help describe the meals and settings that she is seeing. The structure of the work as a whole
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Its also important to note that while you read, to take in consideration about the time period that “Two Meals” was written in. The beginning of the first paragraph has words describing the first meal: “salmon and ducklings... glass of wine… whitest cream... and foliated as rosebuds.” These words describe a decadent feast. The diction and imagery is very vivid and heavy, this helps the reader imagine the tone and setting and also helps elaborate on the author's thoughts. The sentence structure is long and drawn out: “It is part of the novelists convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance whatsoever, as if nobody ever smoked a cigar or drank a glass of wine.” (line 6), and “The partridges and and various, came with all their retinue of sauces and salads, the sharp and sweet, each in its order, their potatoes, thin as coins but not so hard; their sprouts, foliated as rosebuds but more succulent.” (line 18). Woolf used this method because it helps the reader slow down and process their thoughts, and it is also a way of drawing out the author's main points. Jumping back to the point about the time period, the last couple of sentences talk about life of the men at their college: “How good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial the grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the
Its also important to note that while you read, to take in consideration about the time period that “Two Meals” was written in. The beginning of the first paragraph has words describing the first meal: “salmon and ducklings... glass of wine… whitest cream... and foliated as rosebuds.” These words describe a decadent feast. The diction and imagery is very vivid and heavy, this helps the reader imagine the tone and setting and also helps elaborate on the author's thoughts. The sentence structure is long and drawn out: “It is part of the novelists convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance whatsoever, as if nobody ever smoked a cigar or drank a glass of wine.” (line 6), and “The partridges and and various, came with all their retinue of sauces and salads, the sharp and sweet, each in its order, their potatoes, thin as coins but not so hard; their sprouts, foliated as rosebuds but more succulent.” (line 18). Woolf used this method because it helps the reader slow down and process their thoughts, and it is also a way of drawing out the author's main points. Jumping back to the point about the time period, the last couple of sentences talk about life of the men at their college: “How good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial the grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the