Virginia Woolf was one of the first authors to utilize the stream of consciousness narrative during its emergence in the early twentieth century. This literary device attempts to capture the realistic thought processes of the human mind in order to create a more true-to-life fiction, compared to the traditional plot and narrative. In her 1927 novel, “To the Lighthouse”, Virginia Woolf uses the stream of consciousness narrative in order to create a more intimate and relatable experience between her readers and the characters in her book.
The stream of consciousness narrative emerged out of writers’ frustration with the “cookie-cutter” plot and narrative that had become so prevalent in modern society. Virginia Woolf’s illustrates this grievance in her essay, “Modern Fiction”:
Admitting the vagueness which afflicts all criticism of novels, let us hazard the opinion that for us at this moment the form of fiction most in vogue more often misses than secures the thing we seek. Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to be contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we provide.” (Modern 2431).
With this in mind, Woolf and other writers began to emulate the raw, uncensored, and unorganized thought processes of an ordinary person in their writing. This new narrative style allowed writers to focus on character development and less on plot points. This is evident in the three parts of To the Lighthouse. The first and the third part do not appear to contain major plot points, but rather, they showcase the characters’ maturation and their dynamic relationships through the stream of consciousness narrative. The second part, Time Passes, is unique because it...
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...experience in which she feels one with the sea, “ And as she lost consciousness of outer things, … her mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings, and memories, and ideas, like a fountain…” (Lighthouse 159). The experience that Lily is thinking about is perfectly mirroring one of the few experiences that we have as humans that is hard to put into words. One cannot express these feelings of wonder in a few simple words, or as a far off narrator. But when the reader is put inside the character’s head through the stream of consciousness narrative, the reader knows exactly the sensation the character is experiencing.
Works Cited
The Norton Anthology of English
Literature: The Major Authors. Ed. E. Donaldson, Hallet Smith, Robert Adams,
Samuel Monk, George Ford, David Daiches. New York: Norton & Company, 2006.
2411-2412. Print.
...’ (21). These rhetoric questions force readers to stand on her side and to ponder in her direction. She compares the contents of the twentieth-century chapters in current books to ‘a modern-art museum’ (22), which ironically and humorously criticizes the fancy design of the current books. She also directly quotes the original texts to show the changes of current books such as a paragraph from Sellers’ book ‘As It Happened’.
I frankly confess that I have, as a general thing, but little enjoyment of it, and that it has never seemed to me to be, as it were, a first-rate literary form. . . . But it is apt to spoil two good things – a story and a moral, a meaning and a form; and the taste for it is responsible for a large part of the forcible-feeding writing that has been inflicted upon the world. The only cases in whi...
Virginia Woolf recognized that in Post-war England old social hierarchies had broken down, and that literature must rediscover itself in a new and altogether more fluid world; the realist novel must be superseded by one in which objective reality is replaced by the impressions of subjectiv conciousness. A new way of writing appeared, it was the famous "stream of Conciousness": It was developed a method in order to get the character through its conscience's states; the character is understood by the way it moves, talks, eats, looks, and everything it does.
McMillan, Eric. “Monstrously bad novel strikes a chord.” Greatest Literature of All Time: The Works. Editor Eric. 1999-2013. Web. 6 March 2014.
Written stories differ in numerous ways, but most of them have one thing in common; they all have a narrator that, on either rare occasions or more regularly, help to tell the story. Sometimes, the narrator is a vital part of the story since without him or her, it would not be possible to tell the story in the same way, and sometimes, the narrator has a very small role in the story. However, he or she is always there, and to compare how different authors use, and do not use, this outside perspective writing tool, a comparison between Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, Henry James’ Daisy Miller, and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly will be done.
Kennedy, X J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Sixth ed. New York: Harper Collins College Publishers, 1995. Print.
At the thrust of Virginia Woolf's writing was the creation of reality. “The center or meeting place for experience was, to Virginia Woolf, the moment—a cross-section of consciousness in which perception and feelings conv...
“This passage describes the narrator’s spiritual nadir, and may be said to represent her transition from conscious struggle against the daylight world to her immersion in the nocturnal world of unconscious-or, in other terms, from idle fancy to empowering imagination” (Johnson 525). Which was supported when Jane attempted to fight the urge to engage in her unconscious state. “And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder – I begin to think- I wish John would take me away from here!” (Gilman 92). This exhibits the struggle Jane was facing while trying to maintain her conscious state of mind. However, John felt that if she was taken out of her environment she would go crazy, which ironically led to her slow decline into the unconscious mind. “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (Gilman 89). It was here that Jane began giving human characteristics to inanimate objects. As Gilman’s story continues, Jane gradually becomes more entranced by her imagination. “There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes” (Gilman 94). Displaying the idea that Jane was immersed in her unconscious world, validating the Johnson’s argument that Jane progressively develops into her unconscious mind throughout the
Stillinger, Jack, Deidre Lynch, Stephen Greenblatt, and M H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume D. New York, N.Y: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print.
Virginia Woolf begins her memoir Moments of Being with a conscious attempt to write for her readers. While writing her life story, however, she begins to turn inwards and she becomes enmeshed in her writing. By focusing on her thoughts surrounding the incidents in her life instead of the incidents themselves, she unconsciously loses sight of her outward perspective and writes for herself. Her memoir becomes a loose series of declarations of her beliefs connected only by her wandering train of thought. Although Moments of Being deals largely with her conjectures, she is not trying to convince the reader of these beliefs' validity since she is so absorbed in the act of writing. What begins as an outwardly focused memoir evolves into Virginia Woolf's exploration of her thoughts and feelings.
Abrams, M.H. and Greenblatt, Stephen eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Seventh Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001.
In some of his more difficult passages, Faulkner is using the technique called "stream-of-consciousness." Pioneered by the Irish writer James Joyce, the most extreme versions of this device give the reader direct access to the full contents of the characters' minds, however confused, fragmented, and even contradictory those contents may be.
Novels for Students. Presenting Analysis, Context and Criticism on Commonly Studied Novels. Detroit, MI: Gale Group, 1999. Print.
In A Room of One's Own the narrator begins an exploration of women in literature. She attempts to answer many questions regarding women. The first being why is literature about women written by men. She also critiques the scholarship of the great men of literature.
A lighthouse is a structure that warns and navigates ships at night as they near land, creating specific signals for guidance. In Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, the Lighthouse stands a monument to motivation for completion of long-term goals. Every character’s goals guides him or her through life, and the way that each person sees the world depends on goals they make. Some characters’ goals relate directly to the Lighthouse, others indirectly. Some goals abstractly relate to the Lighthouse. The omnipresent structure pours its guiding light over every character and every action.