On The Modernistic Time Concept In A Room Of One's Own By Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is one of the most important English novelists of the 20th century.She has been known as the representation of stream of consciousness novel and the forerunner of western feminism.Even after her death,the interest of the intellectual world in her has never faded away.A Room of One's Own,one of the many outstanding creations by Virginia Woolf, features ingenious representation of "stream of consciousness",in which the author applied her literary proposition of subjective realism,whose first object is human consciousness so impressively to uncover the inner world of personal feelings and probe into the nature of human souls.The novel's content and form got mingled together perfectly.In particular, Woolf employed psychological time which is different from traditional physical time to construct the flame of its plots.As the coming of so-called "Modernist Period" in the literary,history,modernistic time concept is applied by most of stream of consciousness novelists,influenced by such psychologist and philosopher as William James and Henri Bergson.Woof applies psychological time to depict her character's inner life.At the same time,the complex consciousness of character and the intersection of psychological time and physical time make her work form a spatial web structure.A Room of One's Own is Woolf's most famous feminist work,so far,most researches about A Room of One's Own centered on its feministic features, and few works center on its unique narrative techniques.This thesis aims to analyze the unique narrative technique of A Room of One's Own from the angle of modernistic time concept.The thesis is divided into five parts.The first part is Introduction;it summarizes the philosophical and psychological basis for modernistic time concept.Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and Psychological Analysis reveal the secret and general law of human beings' mental activity,meanwhile,it promotes the reorganization of human beings' psychology and consciousness to a new level. The development of modernist psychology provides an important theoretical basis for the 20^th century's English and American novel,French modernist philosopher Henri Bergson's Intuitism and psychological time theory also promote the development of stream of consciousness novel,it provides a new concept for time arrangement and structural geography. Woolf endeavors herself to the reform and innovation of literature.She accepts Bergson's anti-rational time concept represented by his "real duration",and forms her own unique understanding of physical time and psychological time.The article also makes brief introduction of Virginia Woolf's life and career,the domestic and abroad research status on Virginia Woolf and demonstrates the purpose of this thesis.Then in Chapter One the paper analyzes the relationship of psychological time and physical time.Firstly,it discusses the intersection of the two kinds of time,while depicting the character's mental activities,psychological time is restricted by physical time.The two kinds of times allow Woolf to follow the character's stream of consciousness ruled by the unrestricted psychological time while keeping track of their superficial activities according to the clock time.The reader can feel character's inner consciousness as well as understand the external world.Secondly,the intersection of psychological time and physical time makes the work form an alternating rhythm of narration which hinges on the theme closely.Chapter Two probes into the techniques in expanding psychological time,which involves free association principle,time and space montage technique.Free association makes the novel form its structure according to the character's psychological movement and her consciousness activity.The psychological time is expanded freely and gives people immeasurable and relaxed feeling.The association is mainly controlled by three factors:first, the memory,which is its basis;second,the senses,which guide it;and third,the imagination, which determines its elasticity.Woolf also uses time and space montage technique,which makes the character's consciousness transcend the limitation of physical time.The psychological time goes back and forward to the past,the present and the future,which demonstrates the multiplicity and stereoscopic feeing.By the two kinds of techniques,the psychological time transcends the physical time,shows the strong kinetic energy and its infinitive fascination.Chapter Three illustrates the spatial web structure created by time manipulation,focuses on "Moments of Bing" mode and aesthetic significance of spatial web."Moments of Bing" as the mode to tap into psychological time is a common as well as unique moment.At the moment,the external objective world meets the internal subjective world,thus causes the character's consciousness.This moment then becomes the nod of the novel's development,it knits a consciousness web by many such nods,and the work casts the traditional linear structure pattern,shows a complex spatial web structure.The spatial web structure has its unique aesthetic significance.The article mainly analyzes its aesthetic significance from the aspects of defamiliarization and the involvement of the reader.Finally the author makes a conclusion on Woolf's time innovation.A Room of One's Own fully displays Woolfs extraordinary artistic skill through its perfect and harmonious form.At the same time,the perfection of A Room of One's Own proves another successful innovation on the problem of time in the novel.By employing the method of the fusion of physical time and psychological time,A Room of One's Own presents a more complicated narration to get the reader involved in it.She provides a new angle to deal with the time problem in modern fiction from which her contemporaries and followers' eyesight is widened and people's notion of time is raised to a new level.