JACOB’S ROOM, Virginia Woolf’s third novel, marks her first foray into Modernist experimentation. The narrative traces Jacob’s childhood in Cornwall and his education at Cambridge, culminating in an evocative portrait of his adult life in London and abroad. Jacob is romantically torn between the artistic Florinda, the upper-middle-class Clara Durrant and the beautiful, but married, Sandra Wentworth Williams. This tissue of romance, though, is torn apart by the cataclysmic events of the First World War. Woolf poignantly depicts the life of Jacob through a sequence of alternating perspectives that combine letters, fragments of dialogue and the ephemeral impressions of those nearest to him. Jacob’s voice becomes the absent centre of one of Modernism’s first great novels.


《雅各的房間》是維吉尼亞．吳爾芙 (Virginia Woolf) 的第三部小說，也是她嘗試撰寫現代主義小說的開端。故事描述雅各在康沃爾的童年，以及他在劍橋接受教育的經歷，最後以回憶他成年後在倫敦與海外的生活畫下句點。雅各徘徊於三個女人之間，其中一位是充滿藝術氣質的佛羅琳達，還有生活在中上階級的克拉拉．達蘭特以及美豔動人但已婚的珊卓拉．溫特沃斯。然而，這一連串的浪漫故事也因殘酷的第一次世界大戰而中止。吳爾芙透過不斷轉換的觀點深刻描繪出雅各的生活樣貌，有時經由書信、對話的片段，有時則利用身旁角色臉上閃現的表情來表達。雅各的聲音消失在故事之中，故事主人翁的形象被淡化，是這本現代主義經典小說的獨特之處。