Mrs.dalloway

The ‘Stream of Consciousness’ Technique and the Thought Processes in  Mrs. Dalloway

Stream of consciousness is consciousness is a style of writing which is introduced by some great authors in the early of 20th century. It reflects the flow of characters’ thought and feelings. In literary criticism, stream criticism, stream of consciousness is consciousness  is a literary technique which seeks to portray an individual's  point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes. oreover, this literary technique of writing often connected with the modernist movement by some authors like !ames !oyce and "irginia #oolf herself. $he novel always was, of course, notable for its interiorised rendering of e%perience. $owar $owards ds the turn turn of the century century,, however however,, reali reality ty was increa increasin singly gly locate located d in the privat private, e, sub&ec sub&ectiv tivee conscio consciousn usness ess of indivi individua duall selves selves,, unable unable to commun communica icate te the fullne fullness ss of their  their  e%perience to others. It has been said that the streamofconsciousness novel is the literary e%pression of solipsism, the philosophical doctrine that nothing is certainly real e%cept one's own e%istence( but we could equally well argue that it offers us some relief from that daunting hypothesis by offering us imaginative access to the inner lives of other human beings, even if they are fictions. )ndoubtedly, this kind of novel tends to generate sympathy for the characters whose inner  selves are e%posed to view, however vain, selfish or ignoble their thoughts may occasionally be( or, to put it another way, continuous immersion in the mind of a wholly unsympathetic character  would be intolerable for both writer and reader. Mrs reader. Mrs Dalloway (1923) is a particularly interesting case in point, because its heroine also appeared as a minor character in "irginia #oolf's first novel, The Voyage Out  *++-.   *++-. $here, a more traditional authorial narrative method is used to give a very satir satirical ical and pre&udicial pre&udicial portrait portrait of /larissa /larissa alloway and her husband, as snobbish snobbish and reactionary reactionary members of the 1ritish 1ritish upper class. ere, for instance, instance, rs alloway is in her  earlier incarnation preparing to be introduced to a scholar called 3mbrose and his wife4 "Mrs Dalloway Dalloway with her hea! a little on one si!e !i! her est to recollect #mrose #mrose $ was it a  surname% $ ut faile!& She was ma!e slightly uneasy y what she ha! hear!& She 'new that scholars marr marrie ie! ! anyo anyone ne  girl girlss they they met met in farm farmss on rea! rea!in ing g art artie ies* s* or litt little le suu suur ran an wome women n who who  sai! !isagreealy !isagreealy "Of course + 'now it,s my husan! you want not me& "-ut .elen came in at that oint an! MrsDalloway saw with relief that though slightly eccentric in aearance she was not unti!y hel!  herself well an! her /oice ha! restraint restraint in it which she hel! to e the sign of a la!y&" 

#e are are show shown n what what rs rs all allow oway ay is thin thinki king, ng, but the the styl stylee in whic which h her her thou thought ght are reported puts them and her at an ironic distance, and passes silent &udgment on them. $here is evidence that when "irginia #oolf began writing about this character again, it was originally with the same quasisatirical intention( but by that time she had become committed to the stream ofconsciousness novel, and the method inevitably led her into a much more sympathetic portrait of /larissa alloway. $here are two staple techniques for representing consciousness in prose fiction. 5ne is interi interior or monologue, monologue, to which the grammatical grammatical sub&ect of the discourse discourse is an 6I6, and we, as it were, overhear the character verbali7ing his or her thoughts as they occur. I shall discuss this method in the ne%t section. $he other method, called free indirect style, goes back at least as far  as !ane 3usten, but was employed with everincreasing scope and virtuosity by modern novelists like #oolf. It renders thought as reported speech *in the third person, past tense but keeps to the kind of vocabulary that is appropriate to the character, and deletes some of the tags, like

"she thought" "she won!ere!" "she as'e! herself"   etc. that a more formal narrative style would require. $his gives the illusion of intimate access to a character's mind, but without totally surrendering authorial participation in the discourse. "Mrs Dalloway sai! she woul! uy the flowers herself" is the first sentence of the novel4 the statement of an authorial narrator, but an impersonal and inscrutable one, who does not e%plain who rs alloway is or why she needed to buy flowers. $his abrupt plunging of the reader into the middle of an ongoing life *we gradually piece together the heroine's  biography by a process of inference typifies the presentation of consciousness as a "stream"& $he ne%t sentence, "0or ucy ha! her wor' cut out for her" moves the focus of  the narrative into the character's mind by adopting free indirect style, omitting an intrusive authorial tag, such as "Mrs Dalloway reflecte!"*referring to the maid familiarly by her first name, as rs alloway herself would, not by her function( and using a casual, colloquial e%pression, "cut out for her" , that belongs to rs alloway's own style of speech. $he third sentence has the same form. $he fourth moves back slightly towards an authorial manner to inform us of the heroine's full name, as well as her pleasure in the fine summer morning4 "#n! then thought larissa Dalloway what a morning $ fresh as if issue! to chil!ren on a each& $he e%clamations 8#hat a lark9 #hat a plunge9: that follow look  superficially like interior monologue, but they are not the mature heroine's responses to the morning in #estminster as she goes out to buy flowers. ;he is remembering herself at the age of  eighteen remembering herself as a child. 5r, to put it another way, the image "fresh as if issue! to chil!ren on a each" evoked by the #estminster morning, reminds her of how similar metaphors, of children larking in the sea, would come to mind as she 6plunged6 into the fresh, calm air of a summer morning, 6li'e the fla of a wa/e* the 'iss of a wa/e" at 1ourton *some country house, we presume, where she would meet someone called rench windows and plunged at 1ourton into the open air. ow fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning( like the flap of a wave( the kiss of a wave( chill and sharp and yet *for a girl of eighteen as I then was solemn, feeling as I did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen ...6

$he interior monologue of "irginia #oolf's later novel, $he #aves, suffers from such artificiality, to my mind. !ames !oyce was a more resourceful e%ponent of that way of rendering the stream of consciousness. In conclusion, Mrs& Dalloway is a comple% and compelling modernist novel by "irginia #oolf. It is a wonderful study of its principal characters. $he novel enters into the consciousness of  the people it takes as it sub&ects, creating a powerful, psychologically authentic effect. 3lthough

quite rightly numbered amongst the most famed modernist writers?such as