The Voyage To Order And Harmony

To the Lighthouse is the most widely admired of all Virginia Woolf s novels. It is not only highly praised by critics, but also appreciated by ordinary readers. It has remained one of the readers?favorites in all novels of stream of consciousness. As a writer, Woolf s literary interest mainly lies in people抯 inner life. According to her, life is a 搒emi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end? Therefore it is the writer抯 task to record the numerous impressions as they fall upon a common person抯 mind, no matter how varying, evanescent or complex they may be. However, she also believes that it is possible for the writer to set up order among the chaos of stream of consciousness in literary creation, and turn the evanescent impressions into permanent revelation of the truth of life. Despite the criticism that her work depends too much on her personal sensibility to be a guide for others, Woolf抯 novels often exhibit her concern for the reader. She observes that a great deal of literature抯 success depends on the reader抯 ability and willingness to work with the writer and seek to understand his 損erspective? Therefore it is necessary to have some means of bridging the gulf between the writer and his reader. Thus this thesis will offer a stylistic study of Woolf抯 use of narrative devices in taking control of the stream of consciousness depicted in To the Lighthouse. By using these narrative devices, Woolf successfully guides the reader through the seeming disorder and flux of stream of consciousness to achieve order and harmony in the 46 The Voyage to Order and Harmony narrative. The study will focus on three aspects of the style of fiction: the linguistic mode of thought presentation, the narrative time, the implied author and the implied reader. The first chapter of the thesis will discuss Woolf s use of indirect interior monologue as a basic narrative device in presenting the stream of consciousness. In indirect interior monologue there always exists the authorial intervention which adds the narrator抯 tone to that of the character抯. Woolf makes use of this duplicity to set the reader at an ironic distance from the character so as to invite him to recreate the 搃nner reality?in the author抯 perspective. Meanwhile, by using the narrator抯 tone in the indirect interior monologue, Woolf channels the reader抯 sympathy towards the character or away from him. Furthermore, she applies the comparatively free linguistic form of the indirect interior monologue to put the characters?streams of consciousness in juxtaposition in order to reveal the truth of their relationships. Consequently, in working together with the author to create the inner reality of the characters, the reader never loses the author抯 guidance, nor does he feel too estranged from the characters emotionally. The second chapter analyzes Woolf s use of 揺piphany?as the basic time unit to bring about a solid framework of narrative time in control of the flux of consciousness. Since an epiphany is typically reached when the character is gazing at an object in reality, it brings about a 損ause?in the narrative of story, and the object itself becomes the reader抯 most important clue in understanding the character抯 illumination. Moreover, the epiphany is put on the joints of the interweaving of 揷lock time?and 損sychological time? hence turned into a timeless moment which blends t...