Woolf stream of consciousness technique in To the Light House

Stream of consciousness

1. “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.
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.
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.
‘ 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’
Characters, Presented Through their Own and through
other’s Consciousness
Rejection of Traditional Technique
The Role of The Central Intelligence
Suspense and Curiosity
The Pattern : Conversation and Reaction
Sources of Unity
Third Person Narration
The Completion of The Circle
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

2. 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.
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.”
Third Person Narration
The Third person narration is a very Common novel
device Virginia Woolf is, however, very careful to mock

3. 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.