STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS TECHNIQUE IN Mrs. DALLOWAY by VIRGINIA WOOLF
The phrase stream of consciousness was first used by William James (brother of Henry
James) in his Principles of Psychology (1890) to describe the random flux of conscious and
sub-conscious thoughts and impressions in the human mind. Literature has many examples of
this before the end of the 19th century, notably in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1767).
But it was not until the rise of modernism that stream-of-consciousness became important as a
literary technique. Henry James made some remarkable attempts in his novels, but it is
generally considered that the exponents of this technique are Virginia Woolf, James Joyce,
Marcel Proust and William Faulkner.
Let us take as example the textbook English News and Views from Pathway to English
series, published by Oxford University Press , written by Rada Balan, Miruna Carianopol,
Stefan Colibaba , Cornelia Coser, Veronica Focseneanu, Vanda Stan, Rodica Vulcanescu. It is
meant for the 11th grade students, especially for those who have 3-4 English classes a week.
It has 8 units, each of them divided into 7 lessons, the 6th and the 7th lesson dealing with
culture and civilization problems. These two last lessons of each chapter try to present, by
pictures, questions, all kinds of exercises and texts with information, elements about a specific
period. Most of the times the students do all these exercises but they do not have a clear image
as they pay attention to the correctness of the exercise , not to the information it offers .I will
give an example to show the difference between good intentions of the writers of this
textbook and what students , especially common students, manage to do. My example
is taken from Unit 6-Changing realities, lesson 6 —Crossing the borders, and lesson 7A “Brave New World” , which contains a fragment from Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia
Woolf .
At lesson 6- Crossing the borders- we write this plan on the blackboard:
1) Historical background- The First World War (1914-1918);the aftermath of war changing
patterns of life; postwar currents of thought - Sigmund Freud
2) The Arts- Modem painting- Cubism, Dadaism
3) Literature-The British war poets-Rupert Brooke (1887-1915);Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)-a
“lost generation”
For lesson 7 — A “Brave New World”? we have this plan on the blackboard:
1) Historical background- George V. The aftermath of the First World
War. New ideas in action: Darwin, Marx, Freud
2) The Arts — Cubism, Dadaism
3) Literature — Virginia Woolf — Mrs. Dalloway. Point of view: interior
monologue (stream of consciousness)
On page 139 the first activity of the lesson A “Brave New World?” introduces the students to
the theme of the lesson: the 1920s in Britain. From the ads the students have to understand
that after the war, many officers no longer had an occupation and had to accept any job or had
to beg for loans. Exercise II focuses on what happened to women after the war and this is
helped by the Info box. But when it came to choosing a cover of the book the students said
that neither picture is good as the writer seems to focus on the characters’ psychological life
or they chose the fashion magazine picture but their only reason was that Clarissa was giving
a party. Anyway, all of them agreed that the writer dealt with the inner life of the characters as
there is not much plot.
In activity II, 2 , the students are asked to suggest a chain of associations starting
from Big Ben. The teacher suggested them a way of completing the model :
- London trip ; holidays ; money ; interesting things ...etc
- England .Shakespeare .Romeo and Juliet .love . gap parents- children
- clock ; time ; old age ; grandmother ; childhood ; farm.... etc.
The idea is to prove to students that the mind can connect apparently disparate notions which
would be strange associations if the intermediary steps were not made explicit. This will help
the following activities dealing with the stream of consciousness to be understood more
exactly. This lesson 7 will be dealt with in two classes as the beginning of the former class is
dedicated to the project work, the homework from the previous class. Everything on the next
pages will be left for the next class. The students were asked to get acquainted with the
fragment from Mrs. Dalloway, on page 140.
Big Ben
The next class started with some additional info given by the
teacher so that the students might have a vision about this woman writer. We
underlined the aspects of novelist and critic in her literary activity , as well as the three
influences in forming her attitude towards writing:
1) a sense of dissatisfaction with H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy,
expressed in her famous essay Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown ;
2) the outlook of the Bloomsbury circle, with their strong emphasis on the value of
personal relations and the cultivation of sensibility ;
3) the sense of tragedy in the 19th century Russian writers- Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and
Chekhov. We mentioned that Virginia Woolf is considered as one of the major
innovative novelists of the 20th century and the leading exponent of modernism.
The next step was checking how much the students have understood from the
text. As there are some things which are not explicit in the excerpt but they can be deduced
from the character’s reactions we had to ask students in order to make sure that they
understood that some things happened in the past and Clarissa remembers them ~ the
conversation with Peter Walsh at Bourton, her native place- and the things that she can see or
hear while walking through London, as well as what Scrope Purvis thought about her when he
saw her. We divided the text into three fragments — the first, which makes the transition
between the present and the past, the second, which deals only with the past and the third ,
which deals only with the present .
Most of the students managed to understand the differences
between The Outer World and filled in the blanks correctly with Big Ben strikes and
s he sees the Houses of Parliament ,as well as the group that had to deal with The
Inner World and identified India, but not all of them found the last element peace, not
war. The students were a bit hindered from understanding the text by this quality of
indefiniteness of V. Woolf’ s style in writing and one of the best students compared it
to Hortensia Papadat- Bengescu’s style, as they have already read and studied it
in Concert din muzică de Bach at the Romanian classes. She even said : “ It seems like
thinking in a loud voice but the character’s thoughts are told in the lIIrd person narrative.”
Activity III, 2, c gives them some examples of stylistic devices in
the excerpt: simile- Clarissa is like a “jay” , alliteration- “ the tramp and the trudge ” ,
metaphor- “the leaden circles ” of Big Ben. The students were asked to identify more
figures of speech in order to get to the conclusion that this prose is a poetic one. They
also mentioned the descriptive character of the excerpt , due to the great number of
adjectives and long sentences which give the aspect of orality. They identified other
similes like: the air in the early morning is like “ the flap of a wave ” , “ the kiss of a
wave ”; many questions and exclamations ; enumerations- “ the carriages, motor cars,
omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brassbands; barrel organs.”
The students expressed their curiosity about the two “for” constructions, used
in the beginning of the sentence: “For Lucy had her work cut aut for her .” and “For it was the
middle of June.” The answer was :” You will never stop being amazed while reading the
pages of this novel as it is a real experience both as a different kind of novel and as literary
discourse.”
Activity IV deals with the technique used by the author in her novel. The students
were asked to read the information about the interior monologue and see how much of it can
be found in the excerpt.
1. We overhear Clarissa’s thoughts and are given her reactions to the various stimuli
coming from outside.
2. What is going on in her environment is exactly the Outer World. We know about
this indirectly, through the reactions and thoughts these external events trigger.
3. Clarissa remembers Bourton and her adolescent feelings for Peter Walsh.
4. Free reported speech in the third person.
As for follow-up the students were given this task: the list below explains how the stream-ofconsciousness technique works. Look at the list and match the numbers with the letters:
The STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS presents the mind’s response to stimuli:
l. An element of the environment suggests ideas to Clarissa and she
comes to connect otherwise unconnected objects/people.
2. An element in the environment reminds Clarissa of something
similar in the past; she comes to connect the present with the past.
Examples from the except:
a. “. . .what morning- fresh as if issued to children on a beach. What
a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her when, with a little squeak of
the hinges ,. . .., she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into
the open air....”
b.“ For Heaven only knows why one loves it so,. .. creating it every
moment afresh; but the veriest frumps , the most dejected of miseries sitting on
doorsteps ( drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with,she felt positive, by
Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life.”
If time allows we could use this activity which focuses on language
rather on literature. It is an opportunity to introduce some collocations and also
explains what the phrase “stream of consciousness” means literally. The task is:Work
in groups to:
a. Match column A with column B to make up phrases that use
words connected with “water” . Do you see the connection with the lesson?
b. Give the Romanian equivalent of these phrases. Are they
connected with “water”?
A l.stream of...
2. tide of...
3. a new wave of...
4}. a ripple of...
B
Answers: 1. d. fluxul constiintei
2.b. un val de schimbari
3.a. un nou current de idei
4.c. cateva aplauze
Profesor limba engleza ,
Mariana Gruber
a. ....ideas
b....change
c. ...applause
d. ...consciousness