CULTURE SHOCK AND CROSS-CULTURAL ADAPTATION IN MAGGIE GEE’S VIRGINIA WOOLF IN MANHATTAN

Abstract

Maggie Gee’s Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (2014) depicts the resurrection of Virginia Woolf in contemporary New York. Having been encultured into the norms of Victorian period and the early twentieth century, Virginia is overwhelmed by an initial sense of estrangement in the modern, multicultural world, whose façade has been shaped by advanced scientific and technological developments and the changes in traditional socio-economic and cultural relationships. When Virginia decides to be deculturated from Victorian culture, she starts to adjust herself to the new world, in which she has a chance to develop herself in a more liberated woman. This study refers to theories on culture shock and cross-cultural adaptation to show that Gee’s Virginia, who moves from the early twentieth-century society dominated by conservative Victorian norms, achieves cross-cultural adaptation into a foreign community by adjusting herself to the rules and values of the global and multicultural twenty-first century world.