“An Analysis of Stream of consciousness Technique in ‘To the Lighthouse’ ”

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Name: - Kubavat Kishan B.

Semester: - 3

Roll no: - 11

Enrolment No: - Pg14101021

Year: - 2015-16

Paper No: - 09

Paper Name: - The Modernist Literature

Topic: - “An Analysis of Stream of consciousness Technique in ‘To the Lighthouse’ ”

Email ID:- kishan.kubavat@gmail.com

Submitted to: - Department of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

v Introduction

Ø Biography:-

Virginia Woolf was a popular British author born on January 25, 1882 and died on March 28, 1941. She is considered to be one of the primary figures of both Modernism and Feminism in the twentieth century. Woolf is considered one of the most psychological of all the Modernists; Many of her later novels take place entirely within her characters' heads, focusing solely on the literary technique, stream of consciousness.

Virginia Woolf, one of the prominent representatives of modernist novelist in England, has contributed significantly to the development of modern novel in both theory and practice. She abandoned traditional fictional devices and formulated her own distinctive techniques. The novels of Woolf tend to be less concerned with outward reality than with the inner life. She also takes the readers to the high glory of perception thinking. The sense of liveliness her is depicted in this novel that how the thinking and our root of observation is defers. Her masterpiece, To the Lighthouse, serves as an excellent sample in analyzing Woolf’s literary theory and her experimental techniques. There is a mythical pattern in this novel and how it is shown here and it is symbolize that makes a kind of reading of this novel. This paper is to attempt every aspect and depict to her novel “To the Lighthouse” and to deal with her idea about stream of consciousness literary techniques: indirect interior monologue and free association. And also it is good to see how Language, Subject, Self: Reading the Style of the novel.

Keywords: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, Stream of Consciousness technique,Mythical pattern, ( An Analysis of Stream of consciousness Technique in To the Lighthouse)

It does not present objective narration, but attempts to replicate the thoughts.Which shape the character's mind. She wrote a novel called “To the Lighthouse” that explored the minds of the characters using the stream of consciousness technique. This made the characters thoughts and feelings mix into one another while the outer actions and dialogue come second to the inner emotions and cogitations.To the Lighthouse,have generated the most critical attention and are the most widely studied of Woolf's novels.

Ø What is Stream of Consciousness ?

In literature, stream of consciousness writing is a literary device which seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in Connection to his or her sensory reactions to external occurrences. Stream of consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement. Its introduction in the literary context, transferred from psychology.

•      Stream of Consciousness is a literary technique which was pioneered by Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.

•      ‘Stream of consciousness’ is characterized by a flow of thoughts and images, which may not always appear to have a coherent structure or cohesion. The plot line may weave in and out of time and place, carrying the reader through the life span of a character or further along a timeline to incorporate the lives (and thoughts) of characters from other time periods.

Ø ‘ Interior Monologue’

•      The related phrase ‘Interior Monologue’ is used to describe in inner movement of Consciousness in a character’s mind. A stylized way of thinking out loud.Unlike stream-of-consciousness, an interior monologue can be integrated into a third-person narrative. The points of view of character’s thoughts are woven into authorial description, using their own language. This is the essential difference between interior monologue and straight  narrative  :

Two types of interior monologues

a.     Indirect Interior Monologue

b.     Direct Interior Monologue

Stream of Consciousness Narrative technique in ‘To the Lighthouse’

ü  Characters, Presented Through their Own and through other’s Consciousness ü  Rejection of Traditional Technique ü  The Role of The Central Intelligence ü  Suspense and Curiosity ü  The Pattern : Conversation and Reaction ü  Sources of Unity ü  Third Person Narration ü  The Completion of The Circle     ( Dhara Bhatt)

Virginia Woolf saws us a particular person in this novel not only through the Consciousness of the other persons. The Conventional novel did not express life adequately. She was of the opinion that life was a shower of ever failing atoms of experience, and not a narrative line. Life, she said, was a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of Consciousness to end.

She tried to experiment with the same technique in her novel, ’To the Lighthouse’. In which the character reveal them very much in the same way. However, her method differs from that of Joyce in certain important respects.

Virginia Woolf does not put us directly into the minds of her people all the time. She does depict character through the inner Consciousness of the Person’swhom we meet in this novel. But she herself remains the controlling intelligence, speaking in the third person. While she very seldom slips in Comments ofher own, she remains the narrator, telling us what is going on in the various minds.

Virginia Woolf Shows us a particular person in this novel not only through the Consciousness of that person himself or herself, but also through the Consciousness of the other persons. We are given the interior monologues of the various characters in this novel, and it is largely through the twin devices of Stream of Consciousness and the interior monologue that we come to know the various characters.

Thus, we see Mrs. Ramsay not only through her own Consciousness but through the Consciousness of Mr. Ramsey, the child James, Lily Briscoe, Mr. Tinsley,and Mr. Bankes. Similarly we come to know Mr.Ramsay not only through his own Consciousness but also through the Consciousness of Mrs.Ramsay, the young James, Lily Briscoe, and Mr. Bankes. In fact, every character in the novel is presented to us through his own Consciousness and also through the Consciousness of the other characters. At the same time, the characters are occasionally presented to us directly by the all-knowing author of the novel, and also sometimes bits of conversation or dialogue between the characters.

Ø Rejection of Traditional Technique

Modernist writer start the new style of writing and reject the old style of writing and also we can say that the writer of the novel ‘TotheLighthouse’ by Virginia Woolf’s start the new way of writing. Mrs. Woolf’s Concern in writing novels was not merely to narrate a story as the older novelists did, but to discover and record life as the people feel who live it. Hence it is she rejected the conventional technique of narration and adopted a new technique more suited to her purposes. It is for this reason that in ‘To The Lighthouse’ she not told a story, in the sense of a Series of events, and has Concentrated on a small number of Characters, whose nature and feelings are represented to us largely through their interior monologues. In order to capture the inner reality, the truth about life, she has tried to represent the moving current of life and the individual’s Consciousness of the fleeting movement, and secondly, also to select from this current and organize it so that the novel may penetrate beneath the surface reality and may give to the reader a sense of understanding and completeness. The interior monologues of the different characters are, no doubt, given, but the novelist, the central intelligence, is also constantly busy, organizing the material and illuminating it by frequent Comments.

Mrs. Woolf’s technique of narration is quite different from that of the “Stream of Consciousness” novelists. Writers, James Hefley. “Far from being a stream of Consciousness novel, ’To the Lighthouse’ is theobjective account of a central intelligence thatapproaches and assumes the characters. Consciousness, but does not become completely identified with any one Consciousness. This central intelligence is thus free to Comment upon the whole in what seems a completely impersonal manner, as this short passage shows:‘It is a triumph’ said Mr. Bankes, laying his knife down for a moment. He had eaten attentively. It was rich; It was tender. It was perfectly cooked. How did she manage these things in the depths of the country? He asked her. She was a wonderful woman. All his love, all his reverence, had returned; And she knew it.” “It is a French recipe of my grandmother’s said Mrs. Ramsay, Speaking with a ring of great pleasure in her voice. Of course it was French. What passes for cookery in England is an abominations; It is pulling cabbages in water. It is roasting meat until it is like leather. It is cutting off the delicious skins ofvegetables. ’In which’, said Mr. Bankes, “All the virtue of vegetables is contained.” Here the central intelligence is reporting a part of the dinner Conversation.

‘To the Lighthouse’ may not have a logical unity, a logical sequence of Cause and effect, it is have a unity of a higher and stronger kind i.e. emotional unity. Jean Guiget has considered the point in detail, and we may be excused for quoting from him at length;

“Lily Briscoe, painting on the lawn, fromtime to time costs a glance towards the bay to watchthe boat on which Mr. Ramsay, James and Cam aresailing. But this link is purely eternal; The real unity ofthe sections lies in the Coincidence of Project andthought me the Completion of Lily’s Canvas, thefulfillment of James’ plan. It is not so very importantthat Lily sees the sails fall and Flap; What common istheir common immobility: “Life stands still here, and“The boat made no motion at all.”

Ø Third Person Narration

The Third person narration is a very Common novel device Virginia Woolf is, however, very careful to mock her direction of the narrative as little noticed as possible. Her use of direct speech for the interior monologues of her characters makes it easy for her to work into these mental soliloquies a number of statements and ideas which are outside the range of knowledge of character she is dealing with. When, for example, at the beginning, she describes the feelings of James about his father, she moves from what the child is thinking to what Mrs.Ramsay habitually did and said, through impersonal sentences:

“Had there been an ate handy, apoker, or any weapon that would have gashed a holein his father’s breast and killed him, there and thenJames would have seized it. Such were the extremesof emotion that Mr. Ramsay excited in his children’sbreasts by his mere presence: Standing: disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife, who was tenthousand times better in every way than he was(James thought), but also with some secret conceit athis own accuracy of judgment. What he said was true.It was always true. He was incapable of untruth; Nevertampered with a fact; Never altered a disagreeableword to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortalbeing, least of all of his own children, who sprung fromhis loins, should be aware from childhood that life isdifficult…….”

The statements in the midge here clearly develop from James is thinking, but we seem to move away from the child himself into a general comment, which, in turn, merges into the description of Mr. Ramsay’s attitude towards life. Yet we hardly notice the shift because of the uniformity of style; The two currents of thoughts seem to flow together. Just as this third person narration makes it possible for Virginia Woolf to move smoothly from one character to another, so in the novel as a whole it is a unifying Principle.

    Conclusion:-

Thus, The lighthouse Stream of consciousness is used as unifying factor in the novel. The action moves on normal Constructional lines from scene to scene andfrom the mind of one person to that of another. There is very little Complication. These shifts from one consciousness to another and these movements aremade further easy by allowing every incident to take place in a close knit homogenous world. ’To The Lighthouse’ is a masterpiece of Construction. It is anorganic whole. It is a great work of art which fully deserves the Praises that have been lavished on it.

 Woolf has cleverly avoided the drawbacks of the stream of Consciousness novel, and given form and coherence to her material. She is not haphazard and incoherent like the other “Stream of Consciousness” novelists. Indeed through her flexible style she fuses narrative and description of thought, imparts farm and unity, and conveys a sense of the amazing richness and Complexity of life.

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Works Cited

"An Analysis of stream of Consciousness Technique in To The Lighthouse." Yanxia sang (2010).

Bhatt, Dhara. http://dharabhatt061011.blogspot.in/. 23 11 2011. 30 10 2015 <http://dharabhatt061011.blogspot.in/2011/11/stream-of-consciousness-novel-to.html>.