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

Topic: - “An Analysis of Stream of
consciousness Technique in ‘To the
Lighthouse’
Introduction
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’sbreas
ts 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.