There are various psychological as well as literary techniques used by Virginia Woolf in her novels. This post will help to understand them in brief.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The novels based on stream of consciousness are the peculiar product of the 20th century. The rise of this art form on the eve of the World War I marks an epoch in the history of English novel. This particular kind of novel is also called the novel of subjectivity or the psychological novel.
The phrase Stream of Consciousness was first used by William James in his Principles of Psychology 1890 , to denote the chaotic flow impressions and sensations through the human consciousness, Dorothy Richardson in England, James Joyce in Ireland, and Proust in France. The chief architects of the novel of subjectivity, and Virginia Woolf is the novelist who imparted from and discipline to it and thus made it in popularly accepted art – form.
Woolf is not the founder of the stream of consciousness technique, but it is in the novels that this technique has been perfected. She had succeeded in imposing form and order on the chaos inherent in the novel of subjectivity. She rejected the conventional forms of and techniques in fiction and brought an artistic excellence with the help of stream of consciousness technique. She believes that with the help of this technique one can easily read the mental state of human mind and his thoughts.
‘Virginia Woolf uses this technique with ever growing sureness of purpose; her keen mind and artistic whole of sensitive subtle portraiture. Her studies of mood ever impulse are handled with an almost scientific precision and detachment, and yet she has a great gift for lyrical exposition’.
(Yaqub, Saimaz)
“Stream of consciousness is a literary technique that presents the thoughts and feelings of a character as they occur".
(Stream-of-consciousness)
Psychology defines the term stream of consciousness as:
‘The conscious experience of an individual, regarded as a continuous, flowing series of images and running through the mind.’
(Stream-of-consciousness)
“Stream of consciousness is the continuous flow of ideas, thoughts and feelings forming the content of an individual’s consciousness. The term was originated by William James.”
(Stream-of-consciousness)
“Stream of consciousness is a literary technique that reveals the flow of thoughts and feelings of characters through long passages of soliloquy.”
(Stream-of-consciousness)
“Stream of consciousness is a style of writing in which a character’s random thoughts are represented by disregarding logical sequence, normal syntax, or distinctions in the levels of reality”.
(Stream-of-consciousness)
In stream of consciousness technique the narrative replaces the plot. In which the speech is quoted without inverted commas and labels like ‘he said’ and ‘she answered’; and thought flows, incoherently if necessarily, and illogically with the special grammar and the special logic of the unconscious. ‘In place of external action and violent deeds, there is interior monologue and there are the fluid mental state the novelists creates a world of his own, which has its own laws. There is no climax, or a turning point in the stream of consciousness novelists are spiritual, as apposed to the traditional novelists.
‘Interior monologue is defined as the thought you have running through your brain or the things that you silently tell yourself. An example of an interior monologue is when you silently give yourself pep talk, or when you have thoughts running through your brain about how the presentation to go later that day.’
(Interior Monologue)
“A passage of writing presenting characters inner thoughts and emotions in a direct sometimes disjointed or fragmentary manner”.
(Interior Monologue)
“Interior monologue, the written representation of a character’s inner thoughts, impressions, and memories as if directly overhead without the apparent intervention of a summarizing and selecting narrator. The term is often loosely used as a synonym for stream of consciousness. However, some confusion arises about the relationship between these two terms when critics distinguish them : some take stream of consciousness as the large category, embracing all representations of intermingled thoughts and perceptions, within which interior monologue is a special case of ‘direct’ presentation; others take interior monologue as the larger category within which stream of consciousness is a special technique emphasizing continuous ‘flow’ by the abandoning strict logic, syntax, and punctuation…
(Baldick, Chris)
‘Interior monologue is the expression of a character’s thoughts, feelings, and impressions in a narrative. An interior monologue may be either direct or indirect: Direct – In which the author seems not to exist and the interior self of the character is given directly, as though the readers were overhearing an articulation of the stream of thoughts and feeling flowing through the character’s mind; Indirect–In which the author serves as selector, presenter, guide, and commentator.
(Nordquist, Richard)
‘Interior monologue is usually extended representation in monologue of a fictional characters thoughts and feeling’.
(Interior Monologue)
SYMBOLISM
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| "symbolism"(CC BY 2.0) by Steve A Johnson |
“Symbolism, a loosely organized literary and artistic movement that originated with a group of French poets in the 19th centuries spread to painting and the theatre, and influenced the European and American literatures of the 20th century to varying degrees. Symbolist artists sought to express individual emotional experience through the subtle and suggestive use of highly symbolized language.”
(Symbolism)
“Symbolism is a technique used in literature when some things are not to be taken literally. The symbolism can be object, person, situation or actions that have a deeper meaning in context. This technique can enhance writing and give insight to the reader.”
(Examples of Symbolism in Literature)
“Something that represents something else by association, resemblance or conventional especially a material object used to represent something invisible. A printed written sign used to represent an operation, element, quantity, quality, or relation as in mathematics or music. Psychology says symbolism is an object or image that an individual unconsciously uses to represent repressed thoughts, feelings or impulses: a phallic symbol.”
(Symbol)
“Something that represents or stands for something else, usually by convention or association, especially, a material object used to represent something abstract.”
(Symbol)
“The practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing things with symbolic meaning or character”
(Whitehead)
The major function of Symbolism is to give a writer freedom to add double level of meaning to his work: a literal one that is self – evident and the symbolic one whose meaning is for more profound than the literal one. The symbolism, therefore, gives universality to the characters and the themes of a piece of literature. Symbolism in literature creates interest in readers as they find an opportunity to get an insight of the writer’s mind on how he views the world and how he thinks of common objects and actions, having broader implications.
“Symbolism is no more idle fancy or corrupt degeneration; it is inherent in the very texture of human life. Language itself is a symbolism.”
(Nordquist, Richard)
“Pick the rose. It used to symbolize the Virgin Mary and, before her, Venus, the pricking of its barbs being linked to the wounds of love. The association still survives in the common meaning of a bunch of roses (‘I Love You’). Flowers might be delicate and short lived but they have acquired a last range of unpredictable durable meaning, a whole bouquet of significances; affection virtue, chastity, wantonness, religions steadfastness, transience...”
(Nordquist, Richard)
‘The history of symbolism shows that everything can assume symbolic significance natural objects (like stones, plants, animals, men, mountains and valleys, sun and moon, wind, water, and fire), or man made things (the houses, boats or cars) in fact, the whole cosmos is potential symbol.’
(Nordquist, Richard)
ANDROGYNY
Before understanding Woolf’s technique of using Androgynous mind in the characters its essential to know the meaning of the term Androgynous or Androgyny.
“Androgynous means having both male and female characteristics and qualities, suitable for both men and women”.
(Androgynous)
“Androgynous is having the characteristic or nature of both male and female.”
(Androgynous)
“Androgynous is the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics, sexual ambiguity may be found in fashion gender identity, sexual identity or sexual life style. It can also refer to biological intersex physicality, especially with regard to plant and human sexuality.”
(Androgynous)
“Androgynous is partly male and partly female in appearance; of intermediate sex: e.g. –‘a stunning androgynous dance’. He used surgery and cosmetics to make face look pasty, and bizarrely androgynous”.
(Androgynous)
“Uniting both sexes in one, or having the characteristics of both; being in nature male and female; hermaphroditic.”
(Androgynous)
GENDER DIFFERENCE
Gender difference is also one of the major themes in Woolf’s novel like example in a novel called Orlando. Orlando’s sex change is a very important scene for determining the answers to these questions. As Orlando makes up as a woman, she looks at her body in a full length mirror and composedly walks to her bath. She was never disconcerted by her change in gender because she always feels that there is no difference as she did before or Orlando’s sexuality seems to play no role in her life at all. In fact, she acts no differently either when she lives in the gypsy camp in the hills of Turkey, away from society and civilization. But when she travels on board the English ship, in women’s clothes, she immediately begins to feel the difference the skirts that she is wearing and the way that people react to her make her feel and act different.
‘Different though the sexes are, they intermix in every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male and female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what is above of the complication and confusions which thus result every one has had experience; but here we leave the general question and note only the odd effect it had in the particular case of Orlando herself.
(Woolf, Virginia)
The above passage also shows the concept of gender difference. The narrator draws a general statement from the particular situation of Orlando. She suggests and believed that gender identify is no fixed, but can change throughout life independently of biological make up. The novel explores many permutations of this idea, Woolf believes that sexes are inter mixed that though an individual may seem a women she really has the qualities of a man, and vice versa.
This idea applies not only to the literal gender of individuals, but more broadly to the gender roles with society. Once Orlando becomes a woman, she realize all the opportunities and rights that are now closed to her though she does not feel any difference, society treats her differently because of the clothes she wears. Encouraging the equality of gender roles is a point that Woolf makes in many of her novels.
There are some definitions which will help to understand the term gender difference.
“Gender differences are based on the concept of gender, which refer to socially defined differences between men and women. By contrast, sexual differences can only be attributed solely to biological differences between males and females”.
(Gender Differences)
‘The distinction between sex and gender differentiates sex, the biological makeup an individuals reproductive anatomy secondary sex characteristics, from gender an individual’s lifestyle (often culturally learned) or personal identification of one’s own gender (gender identity). This distinction is not universal. In ordinary speech, sex and gender are often used interchangeably. Some dictionaries and academic disciplines give them different definitions while others do not’.
(Gender Differences)
THEORY OF THANATOS (fear of death)
Virginia Woolf’s renowned novel called Mrs. Dalloway is the most studied novel in which Woolf has chosen a very new concept of death drive or theory of Thanatos, which was put forward by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. In this novel readers can feel the irresistible Thanatos of the hero, Septimus and the heroine, Mrs. Dalloway.
The conclusion or the denouement of the novel is Septimus’s suicidal and Mrs. Dalloway’s party. In fact, Septimus is not only Mrs. Dalloway’s double. It can be seen that Virginia transplanted her own thanatos into the novel, examining the extreme impulse-death instinct. This novel has a sharp insight into another instinct. In people’s subconscious it is the best illustration of Freud’s theory of Thanatos.
“Sigmund Freud was a leading figure in psychology in the early 20th century. He worked a great deal with psychoanalysis. He is remembered for his work and studies on the human mind, conscious and unconscious. A piece of his work on the mind includes human instincts and drive, such as the death drive.”
(Desai, Vidhi)
“Thanatos is the Greek word for death, the word death instinct, death drive and thanatos can be used interchangeably. The death drive controls aggression, risky behaviors and death. It can be said that it has a ‘born to die’ approach. It often makes humans engage in activities that bring closer to death example in the situation of war and murder.”
(Desai, Vidhi)
“Initially described in his book ‘Beyond the pleasure principle, Freud proposed that the goal of the life is death” (1920). He noted that after people experiences a traumatic event (such as war), they often reenact the experience. He concluded that people hold an unconscious desire to die, but that this wish is largely tempered by the life instinct.”
(Cherry, Kendra)
Freud believes that self-destructive behavior is an expression of the energy created by the death instincts. When this energy is directed outward onto others, it is expressed as aggression and violence.
“Thanatos (The death drive/instinct; mortido, aggression) appears in opposition and balance to Eros and pushes a person towards extinction and an inanimate state. Freud saw drives as moving towards earlier states, including non-existence. The aim of all life is death. Inanimate things existed before wining ones.”
(Life and Death Drives)
“Thanatos is associated with negative emotions such as fear, hate and anger, which leads to anti-social acts from bullying to murder Perhaps as projection of the death drive.”
(Life and Death Drives)
Woolf uses autobiographical content in most of her novels sometimes directly sometimes indirectly. Like in the novel called To the Lighthouse readers can easily see that it is based on her personal life, on the other hand indirectly in Jacob’s Room, in which she has mentioned everything based on the autobiography of her brother ‘Thoby'. Orlando is also a good example of autobiographical content in which Woolf is discussing and describing about her androgynous mind and lesbian relationship with her friend Vita Sack Ville West. It has been found that the whole novel she has dedicated and written for her girl friend Vita.
'Autobiography is a history of a person’s life written or told by that person'.
(Autobiography)
'Autobiography is an account of a person written or otherwise recorded by that person'.
(Autobiography)
‘A literacy work about the writer’s own life the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Isak Dinesen’s out of Africa are autobiographical'.
(Autobiography)
'Autobiography is marked by or dealing with one’s own experiences or life history of or in the manner of an autobiography: autobiographical material; an autobiographical novel'.
IMPRESSIONISTIC TECHNIQUE
The emergence of the stream of consciousness novel generated much controversy and diverse theories have been put forward to the understanding of its scope and techniques. The technique has been analyzed by a few critics in terms of impressionistic painting and referred to as the post- impressionistic novel. The problem of the twentieth century novelists, says J. Isaacs, was the same as that of the twentieth century painter. But it can be seen that the same as that the new techniques is not much indebted to the impression in school of painting, because the new techniques was itself a manifestation of the new awareness of reality as time and free will.
The stream of consciousness technique flourished for about twenty five years, from 1915 to 1939. A reaction against this method set in Wyndham Levis (1884-1957). Painter, novelist and critic, reacted against this technique. He was the leader of the Vorticist movement painting, which demanded clear analysis pictorial form. He insisted on the same usual clarity in literature. In the changing socio-economic scenario after the second World War social and economic problems demanded great attention. External action was demanded and admired. So the novel once again became a large picture of society.
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