Virginia Woolf Jacob's Room Author:Virginia Woolf "Jacob's Room," an impressionistic novel by Virginia Woolf, was first published in 1922. Experimental in form, "Jacob's Room" centers on the character of Jacob Flanders, a lonely young man unable to synthesize his love of classical culture with the chaotic reality of contemporary society and turbulence of World War I. In "Jacob's Room," Virginia... more » Woolf examines character development and the meaning of a life by means of a series of brief impressions and conversations, stream of consciousness, internal monologue, and Jacob's letters to his mother. The story is told mainly through the perspectives of the women in Jacob's life, including the repressed upper-middle-class Clara Durrant and the uninhibited young art student Florinda, with whom he has an affair. In zealous pursuit of classicism, Jacob studies the ancients at Cambridge and travels to Greece. Jacob's time in London forms a large part of the story, though towards the end of the novel he travels to Italy, then Greece. He either idealizes or ignores the women who admire him. Jacob eventually dies in the war and fittingly, at the end of the novel all that remains of Jacob's life are scattered objects in an abandoned room.« less