The Voyage Of Consciousness

As an imaginative and innovative modernist, Virginia Woolf has made a great contribution to the exploration both in the subject matter and the form of modern fiction. Her novels are noted for their subjective exploration of character and theme and their poetic prose, while her essays are commended for their perceptive observations on nearly the entire range of English literature, as well as many social and political concerns of the early 20th century.My thesis begins with a brief introduction to Woolf s position as an innovator in the form of the novel. Chapter One focuses on an exploration of the theoretical basis for her literary creation and on an exposition of her contribution in the invention of the lyrical novel. As an innovative modernist novelist, Woolf has developed her own notion about modern fiction in her famous essay "Modern Fiction"(1919), in which she expresses her interest in the inner life and consciousness of the people, and argues it is the task of the novelists to recall the spirit. Under the influence of William James' notion of stream of consciousness and other current thoughts of her time, she has invented her unique style of novel-the lyrical novel.The subject matter of her lyrical novel is the consciousness of the characters in the ordinary life, which certainly draws inspiration from the stream of consciousness ofWilliam James. The stream of consciousness, according to James, is personal, continuous, forward-moving, and in constant change. Woolf and James share about the nature and importance of the stream of consciousness. However, there is a major divergence between Woolf and James. While James assumes that it is impossible to contact between the streams of consciousness which constitute the inner lives of individuals, Woolf believes that the consciousness of different individuals in a group can be shared.The lyrical novel is Woolf s carefully crafted novel form, in which Woof has managed to verbalize and visualize the "inner reality" and the consciousness of the characters in a lyrical language by the indirect interior monologue, and employed symbolism as the means to unify the consciousness of a group of people into one big vision. Having discussed generally the narrative devices in Woolf s lyrical novels in Chapter One, we go on with the detailed study of how indirect interior monologue and symbolism function in To the Lighthouse.To the Lighthouse (1927) is representative of Woolf s lyrical novels, regarded by many as Woolf s most famous and most autobiographical novel. The novel treats the themes of marriage, time, and death, in which Woolf explores the subjective reality of everyday life in the Hebrides for the Ramsay family. Here Woolf reveals the consciousness of the characters in the context of their relationships within the family, between husband and wife, parents and children or within the family circle of friends.Chapter Two focuses on how the consciousness of the characters is revealed by the use of the indirect interior monologue. The narration involves the most subtle processes of thought and feeling, which are often too rapid and too far below the threshold of consciousness for us to be clearly aware of or for us to be able to put them into words. The use of the indirect interior monologue has created an ambiguity between the characters' and the narrator's voices, and the reader very often cannot be sure whether it is the narrator or one of the characters who is responsible for the words in which the thoughts and emotions of the characters are expressed. However, it allows the narrator to reveal the character's flow of thoughts. By this narrative device, Virginia Woolf has successfully represented the consciousness of the characters and raised them to the level of verbal expression, and then the reader is taken into the consciousness of many of the characters in the novel. Mr. Ramsay's male egoism, Mrs. Ramsay's female submissiveness and the personalities of other characters are all carefully and clearly presented. And some of themost common issues...