Stream of Consciosnes of the Novel Mrs. Dalloway

 Stream of Consciousness of the novel Mrs Dalloway:-  

Stream of consciousness is a style or technique of writing that tries to capture the flow of a character’s extended thoughts proses often by incorporating sensory impressions incomplete ideas, unusual syntax and rough grammar, the stream of consciousness writing is associates with the early 20th century modernist movement. The steam of consciousness is often non-linear in a unusual syntax and grammar, associative leaps, repetition and plot structure.    

Stream of consciousness became widespread as a literary technique during the modernism movement that flourished in the years just before and then often world war,even as modernism gave way to other movements, it remained as a technique and is still used not infrequently today. 

Virginia Woolf is known for using stream of consciousness in her writing. The novel Mrs Dalloway, watches cars driving by:

She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cars, of being out, out far out to sea and alone .she always had the feeling that it was very dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever or much out of the ordinary. How she had got through life on the few things of knowledge fraulein Daniels gave them she could not think.

She knew nothing, no knowledge, no language, no history, she scarily read a book now. Except for memories in bed and yet to her it was absolutely absorbing all this the cabs passing and she would not say to herself, I am this, I am that. 

Woolf does more than simply say “Mrs Dalloway watched the taxies and thought about her life.” Rather, she lets the reader into the character’s thoughts by using a long sentence with semicolons to show the slow drift or ideas and the transitions between thoughts. The reader is able to watch as Mrs. Dalloway’s mind moves from observations about things she is seeing to reflections on her general attitude towards life and then moves onto memories from her childhood. Then back to the taxi, cabs in the street, and finally to Peter, a former romantic interest. This is an excellent example of using association leaps and sensory impressions to recreate a stream of consciousness. Woolf manages to cons not only the content out the structure and process of Mrs.dalloway’s thought, a fact which is all the more impressive because she does so while writing in the third person. 

Moreover, this the novel has a unique narrative style, salient for its shifts in the point of view to occur within one same paragraph, accentuating the psychological and analytical nature of the narrative. To achieve quick transitions, Woolf uses a literary technique called free indirect speech. 

The novel follows no conventional or tragedy or loves interest or catastrophe. For example, sestinas death is casually reported in the party. The emphasis is laid on the manipulation of words and not on the organization of the story. According to the mechanical time of big ben, the action of the novel is limited to a single day. We move in Mrs Dalloway’s mind from London to her girlhood days in burton through the air enveloping her in a fine London morning. On the other side of the coin we’ve got septum’s smith who is attuned to life’s deep meaning and has an intense reaction, like those triggered by the noise of the type, we get to know about his trauma through Lucrezia, who also ends up pointing her society picture that we pity. 

Virginia Woolf has used the stream of consciousness brilliantly in this novel. She has intermingled various thought process of various humans but has intelligently used the big ben and the aeroplane to avoid the chaos which might have been created due to the complex nature of the brain. The characters think and reality is shown through their fluidity almost like a river flowing. Mrs Dalloway is thus one of the best examples of the novel form of writing that uses the technique of stream of consciousness to explore the inner of the characters, expire their follies frustration and complexity.