Stream of Consciousness

• Name: Jayshree Kunchala• Roll No : 10• Sem :3• Paper :Post-Colonial Literature• Guided By : Prof. &Dr.Dilip Barad• Submitted To : Department Of English,

M.K.Bhavnagar University jayshreekunchala@mail.com

We will learn in this presentation

Stream of consciousness

Interior monologue Parenthesis Free Associations

Stream of consciousness• …….was a phrase used by William James in his

principles of psychology (1890) to describe the unbroken flow of perceptions, thoughts and feelings in the waking mind.

• It has since been adopted to describe a narrative method in modern fiction.

• Long passages of introspection in which the narrator records in detail what passes through a character’s awareness are found in novelists from Semuel Richardson through William James brother Henry James to many novelists of the present era.

Stream of consciousness• ……..is the name applied specifically to

a mode of narration that undertakes to reproduce, without a narrator’s intervention the full spectrum and continuous flow of characters mental process in which sense perception mingle with conscious and half-conscious thoughts, memories, expectations, feelings and random associations.

Interior Monologue• Used interchangeably with stream of

consciousness.• ……is reserved for that species of stream

of consciousness which undertakes to present to the reader the course and rhythm of consciousness precisely as it occurs in a character’s mind.

Interior Monologue• In……the author dose note intervenes

minimally as describer guide or commentator, and dose note tidy the vagaries of the mental process into grammatical sentences or into a logical or coherent order.

• The process of consciousness but because sense perception, mental images, feelings and some aspects or thoughts it self are nonverbal.

Direct interior monologue• It should be emphasized that there is no

auditor assumed that is the character is not speaking to anyone within the fictional scene nor is the character speaking in effect to the reader.

• In short the monologue is represented as being completely can did if there were no reader. This distinction is not easy to grasp but it is a real one.

• Obviously every author is writing finally for an audience.

In direct interior monologue

• ……is then the type of interior monologue in which an omniscient author presents unspoken material as if it were directly from the consciousness of a character and with contemporary and description guides the readers thought it.

• The author intervenes between the character’s psyche and the reader.

In direct interior monologue in To The Lighthouse

• In “To The Lighthouse" Virginia Woolf succeeds in producing a much subtle effect through the use of this technique.

• This novel contains a great deal of straight, conventional narration and description but the interior monologue is used often enough to give the novel its special character of seeming to be always with in the consciousness of the chief characters.

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)”

Use of parenthesis• Parenthesis can be signals of digression

and of simultaneity as this one.• “I respect to you (Lilly addressed

Mr.Bankes; silently) in every atom ;you are not vain; you are entirely impersonal you are finer than Mr.Ramsay; you have neither wife nor child you live for science praise would be an insult to you ; generous, pure hearted heroic man!

(p 16-17)

Explanation• Here the parentheses signal sudden and

momentary switches in perspective. The narrative is thrown backwards and forwards between Lilly’s voice with its intonation mimicked exactly. Lilly’s dwelling on the austerity of Banke’s life indicates not only Banke’s desire for solitude but also her and at the same time shows her resistance to her own loneliness. She wants to at once to extend and to limit to see more of banke’s and less of her self.

Free Association in To The Lighthouse

• The chief technique in controlling the movement of stream of consciousness in fiction has been an application of the principles of psychological free association.

• Levels the writing expresses and make it possible for the writers to deal as much as possible the characters.

The Aesthetic Significance……

• Technique breaks out the traditional narrative structure .

• By the help of this technique the character may think about other upon seeing related things recall old memories at familiar sights and thing on another thing or person upon seeing on the consciousness shift freely among

• Objective time and psychic time inter mingle• Past memories, future expectations and present

consciousness exist alternately• Space ,time and disorder in sequence.

Thank youcompleted By

Jayshree KunchalaDept. of English

M.K.Bhavnagar UniversityGujarat India

jayshreekunchala@gmail.com