This original, illuminating study of Virginia Woolf's fiction reveals a process whereby feelings of hope and transcendence, discernible in the earlier novels, are transformed into visions of fragmentation and apocalypse in her later works.The transformation is seen through the images of glass (windows, mirrors, broken segments) and sound (noises, silence, echoes) omnipresent in Virginia Woolf's work. The -breakdown- of the images reflects the fragmentation and disintegration in the modern world."