| Virginia Woolf participated in the revolutionary changes which occurred in the art of fiction early in the twentieth century. A predominant method Woolf chose to create new forms of narrative employed the ellipsis, the literal orthographic ellipsis signified by three spaced periods placed between words. In her texts, the ellipsis mark progressed from its orthodox meaning as a mark of punctuation to its incarnation as a sign, as a morpheme. Woolf sought to bring into a text the reality of feelings and intuitive understanding, elements of human consciousness for which there is often not a name, not a word. Woolf developed the technique of elliptical construction, placing the material dots into the materiel of the text, in order to create a literal space of silence, a silence which also contains meaning.; Woolf's technique was influenced by two re-evaluations: the uncertainty of the new physics and the evolution of gender roles. Woolf's interest in science developed in concert with her experiments in narrative technique. The evolving use of ellipsis correlates in time and principle to the evolving discoveries of physics, specifically the two new prevailing metaphors of science, relativity and the quantum state. In regard to her oft-quoted remark that "on or about December, 1910, everything changed," one must not only consider the Post-Impressionist Art Exhibition, but also Einstein's presentations of his findings (1905-1909) which led to a scientific sea change.; Woolf's technique allowed her to write previously unwriteable novels, to articulate in a text that which no other writer had been able to voice. The technique first appears in her early short fiction and blossoms in Jacob's Room, becomes more refined in Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse; in The Waves and Between the Acts, Woolf succeeds in articulating irreducible elements of human consciousness which defy language.; The English language has thus absorbed a new sign which does what no traditional word could do: it signifies the absence of a sign, the presence of nothing, an absence of a sign but not the absence of the signified. |
