On The Time And Space Forms In To The Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf is one of the most brilliant modernist novelists in the 20th century literature, as well as one of the outstanding representatives of the stream of consciousness writer. The novels of Woolf discard the conventional patterns in the 19th century which deals with the outer world, instead her novels deal with the inner reality of human consciousness, so she has contributed significantly in the development of modern novel. To the Lighthouse is generally considered as Woolf's masterpiece. It represents her mastery of narrative techniques, her creativity and boldness in her artistic experimentation in the novel writing.This paper mainly elaborates Woolf's literary creation of modern novels in both theory and practice by analyzing the time and space forms in To the Lighthouse. It falls into four parts.The first chapter deals with Woolf's treatment of time and space in her novels. The turn of 19th to 20th century witnessed the turbulent change in the society and the development in science and technology. Traditional literary forms, predominantly linear and sequential in design, were no longer adequate to express intricate inner world of modern people, especially the flickering flow of human consciousness. According to Woolf, human beings are the permanent material of fiction and modern novelists should strive to show the reality within the human mind, because life is not a series of gig—lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. As a consequence, in her fiction, Woolf skillfully intermingles physical time with psychological time, and she puts her focus mainly on psychological time in order to record the inner thoughts of her characters. At the same time, as the development of society, there is a spatial tendency in the western world in novel writing. Woolf succeeded in melting the time in the space and bluring the boundaries of time and space. In her novels traditional development of plot is diminished and replaced by a series of feeling, impression, consciousness and reminiscence which endow her novels with a marvelous kind of spatiality.The second chapter deals with the time form in To the Lighthouse from the aspects of physical time and psychological time. Traditional novels mainly follow linear structure because novel is called the art of sequence. Bergson's theory of psychological time offers a new way of thinking to the stream of consciousness novelists in the arrangement of narrative time. In To the Lighthouse, Woolf achieves an ideal combination of physical time and psychological time. Physical time plays as the role of physics coordinate, or a framework, in which the whole story takes place, psychological time is employed to record the stream of consciousness of the characters. In this novel, these two kinds of time find their right places and cooperate with each other to give a sense of wholeness and perfection.The third chapter deals with the space form from the aspects of geographical space and textual space. Traditional novels put focus on time, while modern novels on space, to express time in space form. The space in fiction contains geographical space and textual space. In To the Lighthouse, the summer house and the lighthouse are analyzed as two of the most important geographical space in the paper. These two places serve firstly as the continuum in which the activities of the characters take place, secondly as the witnesses of the ten years'changes. By describing the change of the house, the author cherishes her memory of the good old days and also criticizes the cruelty of the war. The lighthouse, though it is detached from the outer world, functions as a bridge of the characters'understanding of the world. The textual space refers to the one in the novel which is analyzed from the perspectives of juxtaposition, repetition of symbols, multi-points of view and pictorial writing. By using these techniques, Woolf gives the reader a strong sense of spatiality of the novel.The fourth chapter is about the significance of Woolf's treatment of time and space in To the Lighthouse. Woolf lived in an age which is full of great changes in all aspects. Influenced greatly by the age she lived in, Woolf tries to find out new ways to explore the inner reality of her characters. By the special treatment of time and space Woolf shows the chaos and alienation in the modern age on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can also be a manifestation of her seeking for harmony and hope incessantly.By analyzing the time and space forms in To the Lighthouse we find that Woolf offers a unique method to examine the human consciousness and displays the unlimited tension and cohesion of stream of consciousness novels, and thus she contributes a lot to the development of modernism.