Virginia Woolf
Stream of
Consciousness
DEFINITION A
NATURE:
The stream of consciousness novel deals with
the pre-speech level of incoherence in human consciousness with a view to analysing human nature Robert Humphrey defines it as,
“a type of
fiction in which the basic emphasis is places an explanation of the pre-speech
levels of consciousness for the purposes primarily of revealing the psyche
being of the character.”
The pioneers
in this kind of fiction are Dorothy Mr. Richardson James Joyce Marcel Proust and
Virginia Woolf. The past according Bergson lives in the present in memory and
in its consciousness and it is in this manner that it shapes the future. The
conscious continues only a fragment of the human psyche or the soul, human action
are more governed by the subconscious and the unconscious.
The word interior monologue has been used by
Diaurdin the famous French novelist, far the stream of consciousness technique.
This interior monologue is a technical device enable the reader to enter the
inner life of a character straight way. The reader is taken into the mind of
the character directly.
E. Bowling
describes stream of Consciousness as, ‘’a direct quotation of the mind not
merely of the language area- but of the whole consciousness.”
All the ‘soc’ novelist are essentially
concerned with presenting individual personality and experience in terms of
artistic sensibility.
TECHNIQUE OF
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
With the ‘Sofc’ technique the reader is
taken straight inside the characters mind. The old barriers of novelists a
mediator a reporter or historian are almost appeared of all the stream of
consciousness novelist have present a consistent and comprehensive treatment of
time.
The chief exponents of this technique are
Dorothy Richrdson, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, of
all these novelists Virginia Woolf seems to have presented the treatment of
time in some different manner. In her Mrs. Dalloway, which is published in
1925, she has not only dealt with a limited time pattern, covering a single day
in the life of Mrs. Dalloway but also shows a clear understanding and
presentation of a character with this technique of stream of consciousness. To
the Light House unlike Mrs Dalloway is limited to the space of ten years.
In simple
words, if we define this technique, one may say that
“The human
psyche which the modern psychological novel aims at rendering faithfully and
realistically, requires a special kind of technique to fulfil its design and
that technique is the stream of consciousness method”
The action in such novel moves back ward and
forward freely in time. Instead of a chronological forward movement we have a
zigzag movement from the past to the present, and from the present to the past.
In Mrs. Dalloway time has been dexterously manipulated by Virginia Woolf. The
clock time is only a single day in the life of the heroine but we are made to
move freely in ‘Time’ and ‘space’ in the
consciousness of Mrs. Dalloway’ which leads
to the building of her credible and rounded personality.
LIFE-LIKE
CHARACTERS:
The stream of consciousness technique is a
way of rendering the psyche or soul of the characters, accurately and
realistically words and deeds of a person are often conventional fear of social
censure represses the inner reality. Hence to know a character really and
trustfully, we must know what is happening inside his mind, we must plunge into
his pre- speech level of consciousness, and see what sensations and impressions
are floating there, uncontrolled and unorganized. Besides this, we must know
the characters not only as they are in the present, but also as they were in
the past. We must see them at crucial moments in their lives, for it is such
moments which shape and influence the present and the future.
CONCLUSION:
The stream
of consciousness novel arose to meet the needs of a new age. Pre-occupation
with time, subjectivity, inwardness, absence of action, plot and catastrophe,
and the delineation of the sub conscious, are some of the more important twits
of the novel.
Some critics think that this type of
novel has only a limited future; because it is Shapeless, and makes exassiue
demands upon the readers. However, the genre has been assimilated into the main
current of English fiction, and serious fiction is never likely to return again
to the older, tradition.
Stream of
consciousness in the character is the life like, like life like means real life
of follow.
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