Jacob's Room

Jacob’s Room frequently obscures its protagonist through narrative fragmentation and shifting perspectives. How does Woolf’s experimental narrative technique challenge common understandings of identity and interiority?

Woolf’s portrayal of Jacob Flanders resists the conventions of the bildungsroman even though it is a coming-of-age story. In what ways does the novel conform to, and subvert, common tropes and techniques of the genre?

The novel opens and closes with Betty Flanders in mourning. How does maternal grief shape the novel’s emotional and narrative structure? What other forms of loss appear in the text?