Stream of consciousness

Stream of Consciousness in

To the Lighthouse

Definition

Features

Origin

Outline

Signs

Examples

Activities

Importance

References

Terms

Differenc

es

Stream of Consciousness is a literary technique which was pioneered by

Dorthy 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.

Definition

*A literary technique that reveals the flow of thoughts and feelings of

characters through long passages of soliloquy.

Reference

William James

The Principles of Psychology

(1890)

Other Terms

The decay of

the

plot

The decay of the

Character

Death of the author

Features

* Focalization on inner thoughts and feelings.

* No first-person but figural narrative mode.

* The flow of thoughts is represented by means of long-winding, interconnected sentences.

* Use of informal, colloquial language .

* The breaking of Grammatical rules.

* Punctuation is neglected.

The difference between the Stream of Consciousness and

Interior Monologue

Interior Monologue A stylized way of thinking out loud. (Technically: thinking ‘on the page’.)

Unlike stream-of-consciousness, an interior monologue can be integrated into a third-person narrative. The point 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 : :

Narrative = the narrator talking ( ‘the narrator’ – that made-up character who sounds like the author.

Interior Monologue = a character talking/thinking, using words ,specific to that character, making assumptions, mistaken judgments, .

Note: If interior monologue is done well, you won’t even notice

Stream of Consciousness

Another stylized way of thinking out loud. The term ‘stream of consciousness’ is very similar to

interior monologue – and used interchangeably by some – but this refers more specifically to a first person narrative which mimics the jumble of thoughts, emotions and memories passing through a character’s mind. (Interior monologue is not necessarily written in first person.)

Stream of consciousness tends to be less ordered than interior monologue. Consciousness has no beginning and no end – thoughts flit quite randomly from one thing to another.

The Window

Chapter

1“Had there been an axe handy, a poker,

or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father’s breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized

it. Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr Ramsay excited in his children’s breasts by his mere presence; standing, as now, lean as a knife, narrow as the

blade of one, grinning sarcastically, not only with the pleasure of disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his

wife, who was ten thousand times better in every way than he was (James

thought)”

Keyword

James thought


“Who was ten thousand times better in every

way than he was (James thought)”“there and then,

James would have seized it.”


“Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father’s

breast and killed him”

The Window

Chapter

1“Yes, he did say disagreeable things,

Mrs. Ramsay admitted; it was odious of him to rub this in, and make

James still more disappointed; but at the same time, she would not let them

laugh at him. ‘The atheist’, theycalled him; ‘the little atheist’, Rose

mocked him; Prue mocked him; Andrew, Jasper, Roger mocked him;

even old Badger without a tooth in his head had ”bit him

Keyword

Mrs. Ramsay admitted


“but at the same time, she would not let them laugh at

him”


‘The atheist’, theycalled him; ‘the little atheist,’

“There’ll be no landing at the Lighthouse tomorrow,” said Charles Tansley, clapping his

hands together as he stood at the window with her husband. Surely, he had said enough. She wished they would both leave her and James alone and go

on talking. She looked at him. He was such a miserable specimen, the children said, all humps

and hollows. He couldn’t play cricket; he poked; he shuffled. He was a sarcastic brute, Andrew said. They knew what he liked best — to be for ever walking up and down, up and down, with Mr

Ramsay, and saying who had won this, who had won that, who was a “first rate man” at Latin

verses, who was “brilliant but I think fundamentally unsound,” who was undoubtedly the “ablest fellow in Balliol,” who had buried his light

temporarily at Bristol or Bedford, but was bound to be heard of later when his Prolegomena, of which Mr Tansley had the first pages in proof with him if Mr Ramsay would like to see them, to some branch of mathematics or philosophy saw the light of day.

That ”was what they talked about.

The Window

Chapter

1

Keyword

She wished


”“leave her

“She looked at him”.

“She wished”


“He was such a miserable specimen, the children said, all humps and hollows.

He couldn’t play cricket; he poked; he

shuffled. He was a sarcastic brute, Andrew said.”

The Window

Chapter

5“And even if it isn’t fine tomorrow,”

said Mrs Ramsay, raising her eyes to glance at William Bankes and Lily Briscoe as they passed, “it will be another day. And now,” she said, thinking that Lily’s charm was her Chinese eyes, aslant in her white,

puckered little face, but it would take a clever man to see it, “and now stand up, and let me measure your leg,” for they might go to the Lighthouse after all, and she must see if the stocking

did not need to be an inch or two ”longer in the leg.

Smiling, for it was an admirable idea, that had flashed upon her this very second — William and Lily should

marry — she took the heather-mixture stocking, with its criss-cross of steel

needles at the mouth of it, and measured it against James’s leg. “My dear, stand still,” she said, for in his

jealousy, not liking to serve as measuring block for the Lighthouse keeper’s little boy,

James fidgeted purposely; and if he did that, how could she see, was it too long,

was it too short? she asked.She looked up — what demon possessed

him, her youngest, her cherished—?

Keywords

ThinkingSmiling, for it was an admirable idea


“she must see”

“her this very second”

“her youngest, her

cherished”?

The Window

Chapter

8“He said nothing. He took opium. The

children said he had stained his beard yellow with it. Perhaps. What was obvious

to her was that the poor man was unhappy, came to them every year as an escape; and yet every year she felt the same thing; he did not trust her. She said, “I am going to the town. Shall I get you stamps, paper, tobacco?” and she felt him wince. He did not trust her. It was his wife’s doing. She

remembered that iniquity of his wife’s towards him, which had made her turn to steel and adamant there, in the horrible

little room in St John’s Wood, when with her own eyes she had seen that odious woman

turn him out of the house ”.

“He was unkempt; he dropped things on his coat; he had the

tiresomeness of an old man with nothing in the world to do; and she turned him out of the room.

She said, in her odious way, “Now, Mrs Ramsay and I want to have a

little talk together”,

The Window

Chapter

8

Keywords

What was obvious to her

She remembered that iniquity

she felt the same thing

In This Quotation

*Mr. Carmichael’s character

*The story behind his character


“Obvious to her”

“He did not trust her”


when with her own eyes she had seen that odious woman turn

him out of the house ”.

The Window

Chapter

12“His arm was almost like a young

man’s arm, Mrs. Ramsay thought, thin and hard, and she thought with

delight how strong he still was, though he was over sixty, and how untamed and optimistic, and how

strange it was that being convinced, as he was, of all sorts of horrors,

seemed not to depress him, but to cheer him. Was it not odd, she

reflected? Indeed he seemed to her sometimes made differently from

other people, born blind, deaf ’,

“and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle’s. His understanding often

astonished her. But did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the view? No. Did he even notice his own daughter’s beauty, or whether there was pudding on his plate or roast beef? He would sit

at table with them like a person in a dream. And his habit of talking aloud,

or saying poetry aloud, was growing on him, she was afraid; for sometimes it

was awkward”

Keyword

Mrs. Ramsay thought


“She thought with delight”


“he seemed to her sometimes made differently from other people, born blind, deaf, and

dumb, to the ordinary things,”

The Window

Chapter

10“In a moment he would ask her,

“Are we going to the Lighthouse?” And she would have to say, “No: not tomorrow; your father says

not.” Happily, Mildred came in to fetch them, and the bustle

distracted them. But he kept looking back over his shoulder as Mildred carried him out, and she was certain that he was thinking,

we are not going to the Lighthouse tomorrow; and she ”thought, he

will remember that all his life.

Keywords

He would ask her

She would have to say

She was certain that he was thinking

She thought


“She was certain”

The Window

Chapter

4“Never was anybody at once so ridiculous

and so alarming. But so long as he kept like that, waving, shouting, she was safe; he

would not stand still and look at her picture. And that was what Lily Briscoe could not have endured. Even while she looked at the mass, at the line, at the

colour, at Mrs Ramsay sitting in the window with James, she kept a feeler on her

surroundings lest some one should creep up, and suddenly she should find her

picture looked at. But now, with all her senses quickened as they were, looking,

straining, till the colour of the wall and the jacmanna beyond burnt into her eyes,”

“She was aware of someone coming out of the house, coming towards

her; but somehow divined, from the footfall, William Bankes, so that

though her brush quivered, she did not, as she would have done had it been Mr Tansley, Paul Rayley, Minta Doyle, or practically anybody else,

turn her canvas upon the grass, but let it stand. William Bankes stood

beside her”.

Keyword

She was aware of


“Her brush”

“Lily Briscoe could not have

endured”

chapter xvii of the window begins with Mrs. Ramsay wondering what she has done with her life, as she directs guests to their

seats and ladles out soup. she sees her husband at the far end of the table, frowning. “what at? she did not know. she did not

mind. she could not understand how she had ever felt any emotion or affection for him” . As she thinks about her

displeasure and disconnectedness with Mr. Ramsay. Mrs. Ramsay notes that she would not speak out loud her inner

feelings. there is a strict difference between her actions and her thoughts:

.

raising her eyebrows at the discrepancy—that was what she was thinking, this was what she was doing—ladling

out soup—she felt, more and more strongly, outside that eddy.

being outside of the eddy is her sense of “being past everything, through everything, out of everything” .

completely out of touch with Mr. Ramsay and everyone else at the table, she instead focuses on how shabby

the room is, how sterile the men are, and how she pities William Bankes. finding meaning and strength again in her pity, she gets past her mental weariness enough to

ask him an innocuous question about his letters

The point of view shifts abruptly to Lily Briscoe, who is watching Mrs. Ramsay

intently and imagining her thoughts. Lily is able to read Mrs. Ramsay pretty clearly:

“How old she looks, how worn she looks, and how remote” (84). She wonders why Mrs.

Ramsay pities William Bankes, and she realizes that “the life in her, her resolve to

live again, had been stirred by pity” (84). Lily does not find Bankes pitiable, but she

recognizes that Mrs. Ramsay is fulfilling some need of her own.

Lily thinks about how Bankes has his work, then her thoughts switch to her own work, and she starts imagining her painting and the adjustments she will make. As if to remind the readers of the setting, Woolf has Lily take up “the salt cellar and put it down again on a flower in pattern in the table-cloth, so as to remind herself to move the tree” (84-85). After all of Lily Briscoe’s thoughts, Mr. Bankes finally responds to Mrs. Ramsay’s inquiry as to whether he has found his letters.

By shifting the point of view from character to character,

Woolf shares each character’s thoughts and feelings, opinions

and reactions to one another. The dynamics between the

characters are expressed more fully by their thoughts than by

their words. Woolf develops her characters through their thoughts, memories, and

reactions to each other

Importance

*How they feel about themselves .

*How they feel about other characters .

* Physical description.

* Different Events ( Past/ Present/ Future)

??

Stream of consciousness

Education

Transcript of Stream of consciousness