1. “An Incessant Shower of Innumerable
Atoms”:
Woolf’s Scientific View of the World
by Jadwiga Sarbinowska
Virginia Woolf
1888-1941

2. Narey, Wayne. “Virginia Woolf’s The Mark on
the Wall: An Einsteinian View of Art.”
Studies in Short Fiction 29.1 (1992): 35-42.
Short Story Criticism: Criticism of the Works of
Short Fiction Writers. Vol. 79: 184-188.
Farmington Hills: Thomson Gale, 2005. Print.

3. • “Woolf gives particular emphasis to the
relationship between time and perspective,
when motion is always relative to the viewer
much as Einstein’s scientific theories focused
on the concept of relativity”
(Narey, 185)

4. • “Relativity is the
understanding of the world
not as events but as
relations”
(Jacob Bronowski 254 quoted in Narey 185)

5. • In my mini-dissertation, I contend that Woolf’s
unique style uses the elements of the theory of
relativity to show the mutual relations and the unity
of the world. What is more, I am going to explore
some of Woolf’s novels and short stories to show
where Woolf echoes Einstein’s theories and his
philosophy of life. My paper explores Woolf’s novels:
To the Lighthouse, The Waves, Mrs. Dalloway and
short stories from A Mark on the Wall . I will also use
some support from A Room of One’s Own.

6. The mathematician James Jeans and the
astrophysicist “had a tremendous cultural
impact in the 1930s, in part through their
radio broadcasts, which distilled the new
physics for a popular audience (Gillian Beers
qtd in Pridmore-Brown, 410).

7. “The mind receives a myriad impressions-trivial,
fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the
sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an
incessant shower of innumerable atoms; …Let us
record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the
order in which they fall . Let us trace the pattern,
however disconnected and incoherent in
appearance, which each sight or incident scores
upon the consciousness”
Modern Fiction, 2150-2151

8. Einstein’s View of
the World
”A human being is a part of
the whole, called by us
‘Universe’; a part limited in
time and space. He
experiences himself, his
thoughts and feelings as
something separated from
the rest - a kind of optical
delusion of his
consciousness”
(Albert Einstein - qtd in
Louise Westling, 855).

9. “Everything's moving,
falling, slipping,
vanishing.... There is a
vast upheaval of
matter”
(The Mark on the Wall, 64)
Image courtesy of the Library
of Congress, Washington,
DC.

10. • “Thought - to call it by a prouder name than it
deserved – had let its line down into the stream. It
swayed minute after minute, hither and thither
among the reflections and the weeds, letting the
water lift it and sink it until – you know the little tug
– the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of
one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and
the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass
how small, how insignificant this thought of mine
looked;”
(A Room of One’s Own, 6).

11. “How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new
object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a
blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave
it…
(The Mark on the Wall, 3).
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately
curious”. (Einstein, The World As I See it)

12. “there is no harm in putting
a full stop to one’s
disagreeable thoughts”
(The Mark on the Wall,
9).
Image courtesy of the Library of
Congress, Washington, DC.

13. The World As I See It
“Without the sense of
kinship with men of like
mind, without the
occupation with the
objective world, the
eternally unattainable in
the field of art and scientific
endeavors, life would have
seemed empty to me.”
(The World As I See It)

14. The Relativity of Time
 In his paper On the
Electrodynamics of
Moving Bodies (1905),
Einstein analyzes the
relativity of time.
• "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an
hour, it seems like a minute. But let him
sit on a hot stove for a minute - and it's
longer than any hour. That's relativity."
• --quote from Journal of Exothermic
Science and Technology (JEST, Vol. 1, No.
9; 1938).

15. The Relativity of Time in To the Lighthouse
“This going to the Lighthouse was a
passion of his, she saw, and then,
as if her husband had not said
enough, with his caustic saying
that it would not be fine
tomorrow, this odious little man
went and rubbed it in all over
again”.
• “Perhaps it will be fine
tomorrow,” she said, smoothing
his hair.” (To the Lighthouse, 16)

16. How did Woolf See Nature?
• “The sun had not yet risen. The sea
was indistinguishable from the sky,
except that the sea was slightly
creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it”
(The Waves, 3).
• Now the sun had sunk. Sky and sea
were indistinguishable.
(The Waves, 134).

17. Was Einstein Interested in Nature?
• "What I see in Nature is
a magnificent structure
that we can
comprehend only very
imperfectly, and that
must fill a thinking
person with a feeling of
humility” (The World As
I See It).
• Image courtesy of the Library of
Congress, Washington, DC.

18. • Brown, Paul Tolliver. “Relativity, Quantum
Physics, and Consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s
To the Lighthouse.” Journal of Modern
Literature. 32.3 (2009): 39-62. Project Muse.
Web. 27 April 2012.

19. • Westling, Louise. “Virginia Woolf and the
Flash of the World.” New Literary History. 30.4
Case Studies (1999):855-875. The John
Hopkins UP. Web. 15 May 2012.
• Pridmore-Brown, Michele. “1939-40: Of
Virginia Woolf, Gramophones, and Fascism”
PMLA, 113.3 (May, 1998): 408-421. JSTORE.
Web. 9 May 2012.

20. • Einstein, Albert. The World As I See It. An
Essay By Einstein. The Centre for History of
Physics. 1996-2012. American Institute of
Physics. Web. 19 May 2012.
• Bernstein, Jeremy. Einstein. Penguin Books.
Harmondsworth, UK: Viking Press.1973. Print.
• Photos by TBCL, The Book Collector's
Library, also known online worldwide as:
tbclrarebooks