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Classic literature is often defined in terms of quality, excellence, and timelessness. Timelessness refers to an ageless quality, independent of time that is eternal. In a work of literature, this quality means the work will always be relevant to an audience. Woolf psychoanalytical style of writing focused on the theme of Time and Timelessness. Let’s have some examples of the novels which have a theme of time and timelessness.
James Joyce's Ulysses is a famous novel which is based on the theme of time and timelessness. It has been seen in a novel that time has not been measured by 'clock' in it. Readers can get a window into the character's minds. The time montage between the character's thought and external world is quite different. For example in one episode, a character's dream go on and for what would seem like hours, and yet It has been found that all the external action is taking place in just a few minutes. One of the questions passed by the book is to what extent do we live in time?
Woolf very cleverly uses the idea of 'Time and timelessness' in her novels which blurs the distinction between dream and reality, between the past and the present and this also done with the help of stream-of-consciousness.
TYPES OF TIME
Bernard Blackstone points out, in an experiment with time. He says time may be of three kinds firstly there is a mechanical or clock time, the passing moments or hours, measured by the striking of the clock. Secondly, there is the psychological time, or inner time or what Bergson called 'duree' or inner duration, which may be a voyage from youth to age, from the present to past, and to the future. Thirdly there is a historic time, or time in relation to national-wide and worldwide events.
TIME & TIMELESSNESS IN MRS DALLOWAY
In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia has shown great skill in the manipulation of both Clock-time and psychological time, while there are references to the historic time, to the important events, such as the war which is just over, which forms the social and political background to the novel.
In the novel Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf takes one day from morning to evening, in the life of Clarissa Dalloway and builds her story through the events of this short time. In fact it has been observed that the whole novel is constructed in terms of the two dimensions of time and place. The moment of time at which the particular character is indulging in the reverie, and the place where the two persons are pursuing their separate streams of thought – are important to Virginia’s method of narrating a story.
She used to give emphasis on the locality again and again. It has mentioned in each monologue that ‘she had reached the park gate’ or mentioned sometimes about her daughter Elizabeth's journey back home from the ‘stores’ where she had gone with the friend and the emphasis of time moves from one character to another. It was 11 O'clock when Clarissa came back from the market and set down mending her dress when Peter Walsh called on her. He stays with her for a while and is then afloat on the stream of his consciousness; his old memories having been kindled up by this short meeting with his old love. Clarissa because of these readers came to know about this past. The second, development of the story, when the back firing of a motor car engine, draws our attention to the scene in Bond Street and to Septimus Warren Smith and wife Lucrezia, Although they had been married five years and just now 'Septimus said:
“I will kill myself; an awful thing to say.”
Readers can go back to the last year mentioned in the novel in Lucrazia's mind when they stood. Stood on the embankment wrapped in the same cloak and were happy. The standers and passes by, who are interested and Idly puzzled as to who may be in at. In this way, the sense of wider life that goes on round the principal characters is conveyed. Then all of a sudden Mrs. Coates looks up, everyone looks up, to see an aero-plane making letters in the sky. Amongst those who look up are Lucrezia and Septimus, now sitting on a bench in Regent's Park? The horror of Septimus's madness is presented to readers in a few etched lines, through Lucrezia's terror, through Septimus's own collapsing mind: Dr. Holmes, symbol of something evil. Then readers can pass back by way of Maisie Johnson and Mrs. Dempster, both causal characters watching the aeroplane, to the centre from which it was started. "What are they looking at?" says, Clarissa Dalloway to the maid who opens the door.
“I will kill myself; an awful thing to say.”
(Woolf 20)
Readers can go back to the last year mentioned in the novel in Lucrazia's mind when they stood. Stood on the embankment wrapped in the same cloak and were happy. The standers and passes by, who are interested and Idly puzzled as to who may be in at. In this way, the sense of wider life that goes on round the principal characters is conveyed. Then all of a sudden Mrs. Coates looks up, everyone looks up, to see an aero-plane making letters in the sky. Amongst those who look up are Lucrezia and Septimus, now sitting on a bench in Regent's Park? The horror of Septimus's madness is presented to readers in a few etched lines, through Lucrezia's terror, through Septimus's own collapsing mind: Dr. Holmes, symbol of something evil. Then readers can pass back by way of Maisie Johnson and Mrs. Dempster, both causal characters watching the aeroplane, to the centre from which it was started. "What are they looking at?" says, Clarissa Dalloway to the maid who opens the door.
(Woolf 34)
'The time, Septimus, Rezia repeated, “What is the time?” He was talking, he was staring, and this man must notice him. He was looking at them. I will tell you the time, said Septimus, very slowly, very drowsily, smiling mysteriously. As he sat smiling at the dead man in the grey suit, the quarter struck, the quarter to twelve.
(Woolf 77)
“And that is being young, Peter Walsh, thought as he passed them.”
(Woolf 78)
The striking of the hour marks the transition and taking the readers to Peter Walsh from Septimus Smith. If the readers can concentrate on the consciousness of each character, then they can easily understand that why they are and the situations are moving from one to another because that impinge in time, and the impingement is symbolized by the striking of the clock. Almost every fifteen minutes is indicated by a clock chiming or in some other way, throughout the book. The readers can easily estimate the time by moving from one page to another by knowing and reading one character to another.
TIME & TIMELESSNESS IN TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
Time plays an important role in all the Woolf's novels whether it’s Mrs. Dalloway or To the Lighthouse. As she never follows the conventional method and style of writing, she usually follows time and timelessness in most of her novels. Like example: - In the novel called To the Lighthouse she does not follow the same proportion of time in each three sections i.e. 'The Window', 'Time passes' and the last but not the least 'The Lighthouse'.
'Time Passes' is the shortest of the three sections that make up to the lighthouse, and yet it covers the longest period of time is approximately ten years.
Virginia has manipulated time in forward horizontal movement and backward vertical movement resulting in a deeper and deeper probing into the consciousness of the chief characters in To the Lighthouse. In whole novel there is an insignificant exterior occurrence releases ideas and chains of ideas which cut loose from the present of the exterior occurrence and range feely through the depths of time. The ideas arising in consciousness are not tied to the present of the exterior occurrence which releases them Part I of the novel that is ‘The Window’ is a good example of this montage of time and timelessness in which Mrs. Ramsay knitting a stocking, consist in the fact that exterior objective reality of the momentary present which the author directly reports and which appears as an established facts – In the novel-measuring of stocking is nothing but an occasion. here the stress is placed entirely on what the occasion releases, things which are not seen directly but by reflection, which are not tied to the present of a framing occurrence which releases them thus there is a double time movement: one horizontal as in the conventional novel, and the other vertical with the novelist ranging once events widely separated in time and place. The present moment is seen in relationship with the past and the past is constantly woven with the present in the mind of the characters.
Whereas the inner time in 'Time Window' is running in its own way, the clock time are only a few hours, the time between six o'clock and the dinner to which the action leads up. But as Mrs. Ramsay sits knitting her stocking by the window with her son who was cutting pictures, ordinary, even trivial, incidents set her musing. Here the readers are placed within her mind and the novelist gives in her stream-of-consciousness consequently in a way 'clock time' or 'exterior time' stands still, the inner or psychological time flows on with great rapidity and ranges once long period of time and space.
She measures the length of the stocking again and again, sometimes when she feels that the furniture is seeming shabby and should be changed, she looks sad and begins to think and used to go in her stream of consciousness. In this way with the help of streams readers set back in present as well as in past. Lily Briscoe, Mr. Bankes, Mrs. Ramsay, Mrs. Ramsay they all used to go in their streams of consciousness and consequently leads to skip the time montage morning sometimes in past on the other hand sometimes in present.
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