According to A Glossary of Literary Terms edited by M. H. Abrams, stream of consciousness "is the name for a special mode of narration that undertakes to reproduce, without a narrator's intervention, the full spectrum and the continuous flow of a character's mental process, in which sense perceptions mingle with conscious and half-consious thoughts, memories, expectations, feelings, and random associations" (202). Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway is a quintessential example of this mode of narration. Listen to this NPR story, in which Woolf's stream-of-consciousness technique was said to anticipate what neuroscientists' study of the human mind and memory. After listening to the story, write down things you feel impressed when you read Mrs. Dalloway, particularly with regard to her keen observation of human mind. Examine any character's interior monologue, observe the flow of their mind, and describe their conflicting feelings, emotions, desires, or fantasies.
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Even though the stream of consciousness technique makes “Mrs. Dalloway” a little bit difficult to read, two things fairly impress me when I read the novel. To begin with, I am impressed by Woolf’s detailed depiction of surroundings. For instance, the simple and ordinary thing─Clarissa walks from Westminster to Bond Street to buy flowers─covers 42 pages. Every route she takes, every incident (the explosion of the tires of the motor car and the airplane making letters in the sky) she encounters, every passerby she meets, and everything she sees are all noted down minutely in the story. Furthermore, I am impressed by the manner Woolf uses to deal with the characters and her keen observation of human kind. As people remark in NPR that “the novel is written not from the outside, but inside of its characters,” we are able to listen into their minds. Take Peter Walsh for example: When we examine his interior monologue, we can sense that he holds a conflicting feeling toward Clarissa. After five years in India, he comes back to London in order to see his lawyer about arranging Daisy’s divorce. In page 59 we can know that he also stops by Clarissa’s place for a chat. Facing the woman with whom he was in love more than 30 years ago, it seems that the memory of those good old days and the affection for Clarissa emerge from his mind again. It mentions in page 61 that Peter thinks “it is delicious to hear Clarissa say that─my dear Peter.” In addition, he confesses in his heart that Daisy would be ordinary beside Clarissa. At the same time, nevertheless, he tells Clarissa that he is in love with an Indian woman. Here, for me, Peter is showing off in some way. To sum up, the stream of consciousness technique enables us to clearly examine characters’ emotions as well as the flow of their minds.
According to the narration from NPR, we grasp that it is a great challenge for neuroscientists to explore “self”. However, artists make us realize how to live with mystery of “self” via their work; Virginia Woolf is a representative. In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf intrude characters’ mental world to utter their internal expression and thoughts. With the depiction of conscious stream, some characters are connected via external events even though they are not acquainted with each other. To comprehend Virginia Woolf’s elaborate work, we could interpret that each character’s interior monologue may be authentic feelings from human nature.
Clarissa Dalloway is a main character in the novel. She wants to hold a party; contradictorily, she feels her life is shallow. She thinks people are alienated. She is in upper-class; however, she is not satisfied with her living. She is unsure about many things in her life. She suffers the conflict of her marriage. She refuses Peter because Richard is more dependable. She selects conventionality rather than confronting her true feelings. Hence, her heart is occupied with “empty” and “unsure”. Oppositely, Peter is unsuccessful because he does not follow conventionality.
Septimus is Clarissa’s double. He is converted by conventionality. Originally, he doesn’t have so much masculinity. He tries to make himself differently; he joins World War I. During the period, he met Evans. After Evans’s death, Septimus married with Rezia. Septimus accepts the superficial conventionality, but he can’t get rid of “self” of his profound interior feelings. Finally, he commits suicide to escape from the conflict of conventionality and “self”.
Kenny 49502019
When I read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, there are a point that impressed me, which is Clarissa and Peter’s observation toward each other. About Clarissa and Peter’s observation toward each other, I could saw that both of them would miss the old time and be gratified at their decision that marry to each other. She thought somehow he still stayed in the childhood, that although they were good friend, he just wanted her to share something even her privacy with him, which the spaces her husband gave respectably. In addition, he still could not remove his bad habit like playing his pocketknife that Clarissa thought it was his childish aspects. Comparatively, Peter thought she had no progress for the duration of them leaving each other after his sudden invite to Clarissa. Even when he gathers his anger toward Clarissa and tells her about his new love, he cannot sustain the anger and ends up weeping. Peter acts as a foil to Richard, who is stable, generous, and rather simple. Unlike calm Richard, Peter is like a storm, thundering and crashing, unpredictable even to himself.Frankly speaking, Virginia Woolf’s skill of stream of consciousness in Mrs. Dalloway sometimes really confused me. In this novel although the protagonist was Clarissa Dalloway, Woolf masterly transferred the narration from one to one, which made me initially misunderstand who the narrator on the instant. However, after reading the whole book, I was finally affected her spectacular skill.
The mystery and marvel of human minds com from their great complexity. Everyday our brains work none stop and countless thoughts are in our minds. The thoughts can jump from one to another and be back in the next second, our minds are unpredictable and fluid. Woolf then created an array of characters and go in and out of each character’s mind in the whole story.
When I first read the work, I was really excited for having the opportunity to check out the unique writing style Woolf innovated. Later I was intrigued by the vivid narration of each character’s thoughts. The personalities of each character are revealed thoroughly for their monologues inside their minds are written down. Furthermore, the unexpected and fast swifts of thoughts are presented in the story.
The reunion of Clarissa and Peter contains interesting and subtle depiction of two people. It must have always been a sort of embarrassed situation to meet an ex-lover, especially for a person like Peter as being the one who was dumped. His uneasiness is shown through his fidgeting with the knife, and they constantly talk back and forth, having a verbal battle for not wanting to seem inferior in front of an ex-lover.
An interesting notion from the NPR podcast is that, it suggests human minds are still too mysterious, complicated and unknown. Everyday countless thoughts pop up in one’s mind. The program also gives an intriguing example of the malfunction of human brains when the connection between the two hemispheres is cut off.
Therefore, I believe what makes this novel a masterpiece is for its innovative writing style and Woolf’s effective and sensitive observation of the human mind and feelings.
Julia 69704010
Virginia Woolf used the stream of consciousness in her fiction “Mrs. Dalloway”, in this article, I would introduce the main character, Mrs. Dalloway, how Woolf described her and her interior mind.
Mrs. Dalloway firstly went to buy some flowers herself. She thought that the morning is fresh as is issued to children. She thought about when she was eighteen, she burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. Then, she thought about Peter Walsh.
Then she thought about how long she had lived in Westminster, the Big Ben strikes. She thought that she loves London, June, and life. From this thought, she shifted to many young men died in the war, and the sorrow of their family.
Next, she bumped into her old friend, Hugh. She thought about Hugh’s wife, and the old days they were in Bourton. She thought about Peter again, and recalled the fight and relationship between them.
Later, she arrived Bond Street. When she saw the shops, she naturally thought about her father, her uncle. She also thought about her daughter, Elizabeth, and the close relationship between her and Miss Kilman. She continued thinking about her comments about Miss Kilman, and entering the florists. When she was choosing the flowers, suddenly a pistol shot outside drew their attention. It was a motor car. People on the street were guessing who was in the car, so was Mrs. Dalloway.
Next, an aeroplane appeared in the sky, and drew everyone’s attention. Then, Mrs. Dalloway arrived home. Lucy told her that her husband was invited to Lady Bruton’s lunch party, Mrs. Dalloway thought about that Lady Bruton didn’t like her. Then she went back to her room, thought about love between her husband and her, Sally and her. These memories recalled her love to Sally before. Later, when she was busy sewing her evening dress, Peter suddenly visited her, and made her surprise. During their meeting, these ex-couple compared their life, and Mrs. Dalloway seemed win in this battle. Then Peter left in a hurry, before he closed the door, Mrs. Dalloway remained him loudly,” Don’t forget my party.”
Stream of consciousness is the name for a special mode of narration with the full spectrum and the continuous flow of a character’s mental process. For me, it is very different form the style I used to study so I was a little confused at the beginning of studying Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.
The book Mrs. Dalloway describes protagonist in “he” or “she” just as third-person narrative; nevertheless, it is different from third-person narrative that we have to guess meanings from protagonist’s behaviors or experiences. We can know the characters’ monologues directly in style stream of consciousness by following the flows of their minds, and their thoughts jump with some unknown connections from one to another. In “Mrs. Dalloway”, we can listen to characters’ minds: all their conflicting feelings, desires or something.
Take the event Peter visited Clarissa for example, we can listen their minds directly. It is embarrassing to meet ex-lovers. So both of them has the feeling of competing to each other that they have something that can make them live happier than the old days they had been love without company of each other. In some level I think they still card each other although they departed for thirty years. Peter still has the ordinary habit of playing his pocketknife when he feels anxious, so he took his pocketknife after he kissed Clarissa’s hands; as a result, Clarissa became aware of something familiar but also depresses her. Clarissa thinks that Peter’s visit upsets her so she summoned things she had such as her favorite things, her husbands and “her Elizabeth”. Of course, Peter also tells Clarissa about his career at Oxford, his marriage and something. Finally, he exclaimed “ Millions of things “ then he said, “ I am in love “ to win in this conversation. Although it seems he is the winner at this moment, he could not help but crying after Clarissa kept asking. Because he knows that he still loves Clarissa, he loses in the game in reality. He thinks Daisy would look ordinary beside Clarissa even if Daisy is such a young woman to Clarissa.
It is fun for me to read in this part, just as NPR shows: There are a hundred billion cells in our brains, and human minds are so complicated and mysterious. I think it can explain why my thoughts could jump form one to another when I chat with my friends; it is always hard to recall what it is the original topic we talked about. In conclusion, Virginia Woolf’s keen observation of human minds completes this masterpiece: the novel “ Mrs. Dalloway”, in the style of stream of consciousness.
What Woolf tried to put effort on when writing Mrs. Dalloway is to recreate the flowing consciousness in human brain for her readers. As the NPR story points out that at Woolf’s time, she could not have known that human brain is divided two parts and there are a hundred billion cells in our brains but there is not a group of them is in charge of our consciousness which causes our mind to change from here to there continuously, nevertheless, she still managed to capture the flowing thoughts and emotions and the contradictions among them which amaze me.
We all know that people are quite fickle and changeable which sometimes create lots of contradictions within one’s mind, and this human nature is particularly obvious on the protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway and her ex-lover Peter Walsh. At the beginning of the story, Clarissa already began to think about Peter in the early morning when she wandered in London to buy flowers. She felt glad that she did not chose to marry Peter because it would be intolerable. However, after just a few hours, when Peter came to visit her from India, she could not help but thinking about how great he looks and wonder how her life would be if she had married him, and she longed to keep the gaiety feeling between them forever. After Peter left Clarissa’s house, he began to experience the unfamiliar London (after leaving for India for five years, London became strange to him) and he found a woman who is particularly attractive and aroused his sexuality so he began to follow her home. However, to his disappointment, nothing happened between them. After this episode happened, Peter’s mind begins to flow from thinking about Clarissa, “the death of the soul”, Sally Seton, Huge Whitbread, Daisy and then he developed an idea that “one doesn’t want people after fifty; one doesn’t want to go on telling women they are pretty”. This idea contradicted to his early behavior of stalking the woman and to the fact that he was about to marry a woman who is a lot younger than him.
Though the stream of consciousness narrative mode is quite a novel material for me to read and I am still trying to catch up with the flowing mind of the characters, Mrs. Dalloway is no doubt like a innovative journey for me which I begin to enjoy a lot!
Every scene shifts from the momentary thoughts of a particular character to the other. It is a special mode of narration of Woolf. From Woolf’s omniscient description, we can see the interior monologue of every character and realize their personalities and thinking, thought it’s hard for me to read.
The most impressive plot in my mind is that Woolf depicts a whole day of Mrs. Dalloway in detail and explicitly, from her flower shopping to the visit of her former suitor and friend, Peter. However, I realize that it is a beginning for Woolf to use stream of consciousness and her mode of thinking in the novel. When Clarissa meets with Peter, the two have always judged each other harshly and they try to boast themselves to make them more superior to the other. Peter asks Clarissa if she is happy with her husband, Richard, but before she can answer, her daughter, Elizabeth, enters the room. And at the time, Clarissa calls Elizabeth loudly in order to show her victory which implies that she has a daughter now. Moreover, their present thinking combines with the past of them when they meet. Woolf writes the day of Clarissa which set a large proportion in the novel which impresses me.
I am attracted with the characteristics of Clarissa. She struggles constantly to balance her internal life with the reality. She seldoms to share her feelings with anyone. She uses a constant stream of convivial activity to keep her soul locked safely away. Besides, Clarissa strives to reconcile herself to life despite her potent memories, such as she fell in love with Sally in the past time. Just like NPR says:” Her mind scattered, barely held together.” The criticism clearly states the different flow of Clarissa’s psyche and her brain. Clarissa continues to doubt the decisions which she made in her life. Different thoughts, different emotions and different affections appear in Clarissa’s mind which forms the different flows of consciousness of Clarissa in the novel.
Because the stream in mind enters in and out momently from persons to persons, it’s difficult for me to understand when reading “Mrs. Dalloway.” First thing I feel impressed when reading “Mrs. Dalloway” is Woolf’s writing ability. How can she depict everything, no matter the people Clarissa sees on the street, the motorcar scene or the skywriting scene, in very detail? She describes almost sentences briefly and clearly. Secondly, not only about people and things but Woolf’s keen observation of human mind which is amazing impresses me. Though the minds are in fragments, they are bound together, flowing like a current from one brain to another.
Besides looking the outside world, we can observe the inside flow of characters’ mind, including their conflicting feelings, emotions, desires, or fantasies. Take Clarissa for instance. Though understanding that life with Peter would be difficult, she doesn’t let go of the doubt about her decision to marry Richard who is reliable instead of Peter Walsh. Peter’s coming back from India to visit her makes her rethink about how great Peter is and how her life would be if she had married him. Rezia’s stream of consciousness reveals her conflicting emotions. Being forced to bear the burden of Septimus’s mental illness alone, and for herself having done nothing wrong, Rezia keeps asking herself, “Why should I suffer? Why not left in Milan? Why tortured? Why?” (98), and wants to get free from her marriage. However, as what she thinks, “To love makes one solitary” (33), she still loves her husband and cannot be without him.
To sum up, from these two characters’ interior monologues, we listen to their voices in mind, and see how stream-of-consciousness technique is used in the novel. As people in NPR say, “There are two separate worlds in our heads…For scientists there is still a mystery…,” and as a science reporter, Jonah Lehrer, writes, I believe that “The mind is not an easy thing to express.”
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is a quintessential example of using the stream of consciousness which is a modern writing technique. Stream of consciousness is not easy to be read or even use it to express human beings’ mind. After listening to the NPR story, we all know that human’s brain is very complicate and our thoughts are often illogical, incoherent, and disconnected. Such a illogical and incoherent human mind, Woolf successfully and discreetly leads the readers into each character’s mind with the stream of consciousness, and it’s very smooth and beautiful.
When I was reading Mrs. Dalloway, though sometimes I had a hard time understanding the story’s plot and got each character’s thought because I was the first time to read novel written in quintessential use of stream of consciousness, I still feel very smooth when I read it because Woolf writes it with beautiful language and fluent sentences. What’s more, Woolf picks a ordinary events to express each character’s thoughts. I think that Woolf observes human beings perceptively. She knows that even an ordinary thing can show the difference of people’s mind, and she know that human’s thoughts are illogical and, most of time, are contradictory. For example, in Mrs. Dalloway, when Clarissa thinks of Peter Waksh, she said that he could be intolerable and impossible, however, adorable to walk in the morning. Clarissa then suddenly come up a thought that if she were with him, how would everything be? But in the next moment she starts to remind of the reason she married Richard instead of Peter. Her thoughts are very similar to ours. It is often contradictory. Like the NPR story had discussed about, our brains are separated into two parts, so we may not only having one mind.
“Mrs. Dalloway” is weaved by numerous people’s monologues, fragmental memories and thoughts. Even though the stream of consciousness flees hither and thither, it is very smooth not disordered, just like we have a omniscient reporter who walks with us and reports every passerby’s thoughts to us and help us know their emotions, backgrounds and memories, we can know their characteristics by their ways of recounting things or the commentaries they give us. Just like that we take a train of stream of consciousness and set out on a journey inside people’s minds and start to travel.
The interactions between Clarissa and Peter are very interesting. They are each other’s first love, and both of them feel regret not getting married with each other. For Clarissa, before meeting Peter, during the time she prepares her party, she memorizes the old days in Bourton, the images of Peter and Hugh are vivid, and the special same sex relationship with Sally, and the question of love. Peter still attracts her. And Peter feels the same way, he feels excited, frightened and exhilarated to see Clarissa. However, they treat each other as their competitor, bandy hasty words to each other wants to fulfill their vanities, Peter uses his new relationship and his job, Mrs. Dalloway uses her family. They still care about each other, but they are unwillingly to admit it. Then Peter memorizes their “queer power of communicating without words,” and the fountain scene, this makes Peter feel frustrated and he wants to reconstruct his manhood by flirting with a lady, but he fails. The hollow soul makes the connection with the outside world, then Peter makes a comment out of personal feelings:” the death of the soul.” Then the stream of consciousness turns into Rezia and Septimus. Woolf precisely describes the feelings of having a jealousy but at the same time you have to make yourself armed and strike back. The slight feelings change of minds can alter your interactions and emotions, all threads neatly tied up and close to our true life, and that is why “Mrs. Dalloway” is so fluent and real.
According to NPR, what Virginia Woolf had written in the book is what everybody does, that is to take all the contradictory things they think in everyday, pull them together in to a story about self. At first, it was so incredible for me that this two-hundred pages book is only about a woman steps out of her Lodon home one beautiful morning, only to buy flowers for a party that she hold. The story seems to be so trivial that it’s like riding the bicycle to class, waiting for a train, or walking on the street, nothing special.
However, Mrs. Dalloway is written not from the out side, but inside. Woolf spends much time in the characters’ head, and by the narration we know what the characters are seeing, hearing, thinking, and feeling about. Therefore, what important is not the plot but what happened in one’s mind. And this is stream of consciousness, the complexity of human’s mind.
Take Rezia as example, we can see her contradictory and ambivalence toward Septimus. At first, Reziae was saying to herself ”It’s wicked; why should I suffer?” She felt that she could no longer stand Septimus. Then, she remembered that she had loved Sptimus; she had been happy; and she had a beautiful home. Again, she kept asking “Why should I be exposed? Why not left in Milan? Why tortured? Why?” However, after a few moments, she said she must go back to Septimus. Here, Rezia falls into dilemma, on one hand, she wants to get rid of Sptimus, on the other hand, nothing could make her happy without him. Septimus is also an example of the conflicting consciousness. When he saw the wedding ring was not on Rezia’s finger, he was angry. Nevertheless, feeling that their marriage was over, he was relief.
I am impressed by this “stream of consciousness” writing style. For one thing, Woolf does not emphasize on the plot, instead, she presents her story by detailed describing people’s mind. For another, the story does not follow chronological time. The time is scattered that the story is divided into fragments. However, it depends on mental time construction that it bounds different characters’ consciousness together. Though it’s not easy to read this kind of story, I still enjoy it. When reading Mrs. Dalloway, it’s as if I were a boat, floating on Dalloway’s stream of consciousness.
Our brains are mystery indeed. There are a hundred billion cells in our brain, it is a very complicated system and therefore, it is hard to study our brains; however, Virginia Woolf can write people’s fluid thoughts down naturally, and it makes her story “Mrs. Dalloway” more difficult to read. Our brains are running and thinking all the time, our thoughts will jump from one to another and sometimes they are illogical, so when I read the story, I can’t really understand and follow those character’s thoughts, cause they are fragments.
However, I’m still impressed by the way Woolf writing the story. She wrote the story in a very detailed way, she describes everything the character sees and every thought the character has to let readers joining their mind. “Mrs. Dalloway” has 296 pages, and the 296 pages long story happens in one day that shows how detailed the story is. In the story, there is many people’s consciousness in it, every consciousness is fragmental, but Woolf has her own way to combine each character’s consciousness together and makes the story fluid.
I think the most impressive character in the story is Septimus, to be more precise, is the way Woolf writes about Septimus’s thoughts. To me, a “crazy” man’s thought is more difficult to understand than the normal people; however, Woolf can convey Septimus’s messages to us through her writing skills. That’s really incredible! Although I haven’t enjoyed this story entirely, it attracts me more and more and I will try to follow the characters’ minds and to join their worlds.
At the beginning of reading Mrs. Dalloway, it is hard to catch this form of narrative which is the stream-of-consciousness. With the remarkable technique, Woolf tried to catch people’s inner activities which are still a mysteries in neuroscience. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf is successful to describe the humankind’s inner activities and make us to get into those characters’ mind and consciousness. With their mind, what happened in their life is more vivid and realistic to us than just the normal description. We can feel what they feel, and think what they think.
The first sentence is “Mrs. Dalloway said she want to buy flowers herself.” then she starts to feel London and we also feel London with her at the same time. when Clarissa met Hugh, she stats to recall their relationship among Peter Walsh, Hugh, and she, and she also recall some scenes in Burton. She remembered how Peter criticized Hugh; meanwhile, she noticed the June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. (p.9) Clarissa’s mind was receiving two things at the same time, or maybe three. In fact, people are easier to be distracted from many things, and the consciousness would be divided as well. However, the next moment, we get into the other’s consciousness, feeling what he feels. When we got into Rezia’s mind who is Septimus’ wife and feel suffering for her husband mental problem. At the same place, and the same time, there is a girl who just arrived in London, Maisie Johnson, was thinking about Septimus and Rezia’s behavior, feeling wired to them. What’s more, a woman, Mrs. Dempster who also thought about Maisie Johnson, and imagined the girl’s future at the same moment. (p.33-p.41) we can understand what they feel and what their inner activities though the depiction of their individual consciousness.
The narration of stream-of-consciousness reflects people’s real life, and after reading again and again, it makes me astonished and amazed because I am becoming a part of those characters and is experiencing their life.
Following the stream of human mind in the story, Mrs. Dalloway, I can barely help but be enslaved at the mercy of the author. Many paragraphs impress me so much. Let me take one in page 33 to page 34 for example:
Having no other choice, Rezia wanted to go for a walk because she could not stand longer. She would rather that he were dead. It seemed that she had hung in there for a long time despite of any negative thoughts and conflicts. Now she could not sit beside him, but she really wanted to enjoy that kind of feeling again. Septimus had made everything so terrible, yet the sky, tree, children, carts, and whistles were once amazing to her. They were like floating joyfully into the air but now falling down to the hell. She could not express how she felt to anyone even though everyone needed someone to confide. All she could do was to palter that Septimus had been exhausted from work.
Normally speaking, love usually brings us warmth and happiness. “To love makes one solitary, she thought.” The love to her had been transmogrified. “It was cowardly for a man to say he would kill himself.” A man that she worshipped at one time was just as a coward now, but she still dressed herself elegantly and gracefully to win his heart and have his attention again. She failed for he never noticed. He had taken anything related to her happiness away. She was only happy when she was with him. She knew that he was happy without her. It is like that he possessed the whole world, but to her, she only had him in her world. He was selfish. Furthermore, he was not ill. It implies that if a man is not selfish, he is ill.
I don’t like the novel at the beginning because the technique of stream of consciousness confused me and complicated the story, but then I found out that just like NPR said, most of the contradictory things are what people think and do. After I read again and again and make a connection with the story, I know that the things Virginia Woolf wrote in Mrs. Dalloway are very exquisite. She wrote down people’s complex thinking in natural way.
The character who impressed me most is Septimus, lots of his thought seemed such unreasonable but rational. For example, when his best friends, Evans, died in the war, he felt nothing instead of sad. People may think it is irrational but from the describe by Virginia Woolf, we can then understand Septimus’ emotion and his reaction.
To me, it’s really difficult to read the stream of consciousness story, for things are fragment and easy to confuse me. I haven’t understood the story well because I have to spend a lot of time to read every paragraph repeatedly to connect things together. However, whenever I realize what the things are about, they surprised me, for by the narration of Virginia Woolf, I can feel the character’s feeling vividly, just like I were them.
In the NPR record, the science tells us that our brain are anatomically divided into two compartments, which are a left and a right brain, and the big fights over each other would cause a person struggle with the conflicting mind. In Mrs. Dalloway’s mind, she thinks marrying Richard is the right choice, but when Peter is here to visit her, a thought comes to her mind that if she had married him, the gaiety would have been hers all day. When Clarissa marries Richard to live a privileged but superficial life, she also gives up the freedom and the intimacy when she is with Peter. The contradiction is there when sometimes she enjoys this kind of material life, and sometimes she desires to be a wild, free young girl. However, as a wife of a Conservative, she dose not lose her sense of joy. She keeps the balance by arranging parties, creating a community to put people together in the modern society.
In this novel, the characters’ interior monologues are written down. These deep thoughts of a person’s memory or fantasy can be triggered by anything and at anytime. In the book I remember Peter’s fantasy is triggered by a girl. After Peter encounters an attractive girl, he finds himself young again. He follows her, imaging that she wants him in a way he always has in mind. She is solemn, charming, and she loves only him. But the girl is blind to him, and just vanishes by the door. He then realizes this kind of joy never exists, it’s a secret that he would never share. I guess every person has thoughts oppressed in mind, things we can’t do or we want to do. When we see something, the thoughts are let free.
Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness technique in Mrs. Dalloway shows that people always live in the past, in the present and in the future at the same time by thinking. Woolf’s characters in Mrs. Dalloway are individual for their interior monologue, the flow of their mind and their conflicting feelings, emotions, desires, or fantasies. What I am impressed when reading Mrs. Dalloway is the flow of characters’ mind and their conflicting feelings. For example, Clarissa is just gratified not to marry Peter for he wants to share everything. However, as soon as Peter from India to visit Clarissa, Clarissa begins to imagine what her life will be if she married Peter. In addition, Peter loves Daisy. But he never thinks of Daisy when he follows another woman. He thinks his love to Daisy has become to change because now Daisy is in love with him. It is weird that he feels relieved as he is alone. Besides, when Septimus thinks his marriage to Rezia is over, he feels relieved. And Rezia complains she is suffering from Septimus’ madness; however, nothing could make her happy without Septimus. We know that all these characters’ conflicting feelings should not be allowed to think in these ways. There seems to be a contradiction between their words and actions. However, it is because of human nature. If we just can choose one choice, we must want to choose the best one. Since no one will tell us what the best one is, we must lose something. Someone will overcome the sense of lost while someone will be trapped by it. Because Woolf observes these tiny changes and contradictions in one’s mind, her works arouses much echo in the hearts of different people.
It’s interesting that the presenting way of the NPR story is somewhat like the narrative mode in Mrs. Dalloway. The voice-overs sometimes bump in and interweave one after one without a specific or neat sequence but structuring some kind of logical relations, just like the stream of consciousness Woolf uses in the novel.
What impress me most by now are the complicated but real emotions of the parts that Clarissa re-encounters with Peter and that Rezia gets along with her husband, Septimus. When the two ex-lovers Clarissa and Peter meet again, the contradictory emotions of nostalgia but competition are presented interestingly but also kind of melancholy by their stream of consciousness. Their memories, emotions, thoughts and desires sometimes intersect together, later separate and then intersect again, interweaving and struggling and missing just like their relationships and life. However, different from Clarissa and Peter’s relationship, Rezia’s painfully unilateral and unachievable love toward Septimus is sorrowful. Besides, I like the part that she connects the singing beg woman and the other characters (e.g. Rezia and Peter). The ancient song without age or sex soothes the passerby’s minds. It’s just so simple, seeming so unrelated, but actually so spontaneously sincere and touching.
I think the situation of the characters’ stream of consciousness is just like the concept and image of Clarissa’s party. Through their thoughts, we see their interactions. Some are competing, and some are just passing by. Sometimes confronting with this one, and next getting released from it but getting involved with another “partner.”(e.g. in Septimus’ consciousness, after he feels relief with Rezia, he falls into the struggling sense of crime when thinking of Evans) No matter which kind, people somehow seem to be related and also unrelated with each other. Although they might not know each other, through the technique of stream of consciousness, they seem to really interact with each by thoughts. Woolf’s words and narrative mode have delicately presented and depicted a subtle but real appearance of the peoples’ minds and relationships. And these complicated but real relationship and ways of presenting are just fresh to me and gradually catch me. It’s beyond judgments, right or fault. We just flow with the characters’ states of mind to experience their changing emotions, to enjoy their fantasies, and to face and accept the most real and sincerest situation of human’s minds.
49502027 蘇羿慈
It always takes more efforts to read stream of consciousness, for the representation of inner mind seems to be pieces of fragments. But still, the readers can collect and assemble these fragments into original features of reality. This process of reconstruction is the most intelligent reading experience of the stream of consciousness.
With the history background in mind, I found that it is helpful to feel the atmosphere in the novel. I was impressed a lot by the echoes between two characters, Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith. Septimus’ craziness is as tempestuous as the last screams from a doomed soul, horrifying but real. Different from the uncontrollable and unhidden lunacy of Septimus, Clarissa is a sophisticated woman who survives well – she got over the influenza, she is a perfect hostess, and she is going to hold a party. But Clarissa does not become a snob, and she still has the sharp introspection of self and the surrounding: “She would not say of anyone in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on.”
There are invisible connections bind them together, that they actually share the same fate. One of them is a schizoid, the other is a woman, who is labeled as “weaker sex,” and what tabooed is that, both of them are homosexual. Septimus triggers Clarissa’s epiphany about life and death, normal and abnormal, majority and minority. But Clarissa chooses to hides and obscures her true self and plays the traditional role which is expected by the society. I am sympathized with Clarissa, for I think to be alive is everything, then it is possible to make any difference to the world.
Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway is a representative work of stream of consciousness. Actually, it’s not easy to understand the story immediately when reading at the first time. The plots of Mrs. Dalloway are linked up by the stream of consciousness of people in the story instead of flat style to narrate. In fact, the story is just about Mrs. Dalloway’s one day. The streams of consciousness from other people make Mrs. Dalloway to be more copious and it will be more pertinent to our minds if we put ourselves into those streams of consciousness.
At the beginning of NPR story, it seems that we are also in the circumstance, seeing Mrs. Dalloway and have the same consciousness with other strangers in the book. On the other hand, it also seems to watch a movie which plays by our imagination to imagine the stream of consciousness of others in our mind. To follow the consciousness of Mrs. Dalloway to walk on the road, and follow the consciousness of strangers to see how beautiful Mrs. Dalloway is are most interesting when reading Mrs. Dalloway..
For me, to understand Mrs. Dalloway is still hard. However, every time, following teacher’s guidance can help me to put myself into the story. I think to understand the work of stream of consciousness is a good way to connect with the author and then, we can find out that there is no distance between authors with us and those consciousness are similar because human’s mind is no distance limit with time.
When I read “Mrs. Dalloway”, I’m impressed by the fast transfer of people’s consciousness and the vivid description of people’s thoughts. To begin with, I’m confused by the transfer of focus from one person to another, especially in the scene that people stare at royal family’s black car and the airplane. For example, Woolf describes the consciousness of Sarah Bletchley, Emily Coates, and Mr. Bowley almost at the same time- “Glaxo,”said Mrs. Coates in a strained, awestricken voice, gazing straight up, and her baby, lying stiff and white in her arms, gazed straight up. “Kreemo,” murmured Mrs. Bletchley, like a sleep-walker. With his hat held out perfectly still in his hand, Mr. Bowley gazed straight up (p.29). The focalizers change too fast; therefore, I sometimes mistake which character is talking or thinking.
Second, Woolf’s keen observation of human minds also impresses me. From characters’ monologues, we can see those characters’ emotions and desires. Take Peter Walsh for example, he has conflicting feelings towards Clarissa. Peter feels inferior to the Dalloways when he faces Clarissa, but he somehow competes with Clarissa in their chat. At the same time, Peter still loves Clarissa very much and feels sad for not getting married with her: Shall I tell her, he thought, or not? He would like to make a clean breast of it all. But she is too cold, he thought; sewing, with her scissors; Daisy would look ordinary beside Clarissa. And she would think me a failure, which I am in their sense, he thought; in the Dalloways’ sense. Oh yes, he had no doubt about that; he was a failure, compared with all this-the inlaid table, the mounted paper-knife…...he was a failure! (p.64)
To sum up, Woolf uses the technique of “stream of consciousness” very excellently and let readers sink into characters’ minds deeply. However, stream of consciousness technique also lets the novel be too hard for reading. Reading this novel really makes me feel dizzy.
In “Mrs. Dalloway,” Woolf depicted characters in this novel with stream-of-consciousness technique to represent their flow of mind. According to the NPR story about stream-of-consciousness, Woolf was “the first one to really identify and frame the mystery” that the contradiction between two separate cerebral hemispheres. Our mind tells a narrative about ourselves to ourselves. The flow of mind is difficult to grasp and descript. But Woolf’s description about these characters really seizes their consciousness.
The most impressed for me is about Peter Walsh’s stream of consciousness. He visits Clarissa and then they talk as a competition. He plays his knife when they talk. After more than 30 years, both of them who were in love with each other are like competitors. Since Clarissa refused his purpose, what she has is her husband. Here Peter seems jealousy. And then he claims that “I am in love” and repeats to Clarissa, “In love … in love with a girl in India.” Peter seems to tell Clarissa that he finds his love so that he wins this competition with her. But when Clarissa knows that the girl is married and says “But what are you going to do,” Peter bursts into tears that Clarissa knows his weakness. Peter cares Clarissa even if she is no longer his lover, after he leaves, he still feels angry about what Clarissa introduces her daughter as “Here is my Elizabeth.” He is in love with Daisy. However, he remembers the memory at Bourton with Clarissa that she left him. And he cried “it was awful … awful, awful!” Peter later finds out that “for hours and days he never thought of Daisy” and he wants nothing so much as to be alone. His affections are contradictory that about Daisy and Clarissa.
Unlike most novels, in “Mrs. Dalloway” Woolf showed the mind of characters. Their emotions and feelings flow on the pages. Although it’s difficult to read, I think that the description of the character’s consciousness truly represents human mind.
Have you ever have experience of wearing earplugs? I always wear earplugs wanting to cut off external noise and make me concentrated, but I found even if you don’t hear any noise outside, I still can not pay attention because of my restless mind. We have countless consciousness to flow our mind every day, but we cannot realize our mind completely. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf expose readers every character’s stream of consciousness. Every character’s consciousness is as fragmental as a piece of puzzle, through different characters’ interior monologue readers scrape all fragments together into reveal the truth.
Take Rezia for example, through Rezia’s stream of consciousness, readers realize that Rezia is a poor and solitary woman from Italy. Rezia can not endure her life , and she thought that “why should I suffer?” In addition, when Septimus find that Rezia does not wear her wedding ring, he felt relief. Septimus’s stream of consciousness shows that Septimus does not love Rezia at all. After that, Woolf describe that Septimus’s love to his first lover, Miss Pole is without heat. Also, Woolf describes how Evans and Septimus get along with as the two dogs playing on a hearth-rug. From these fragmental clues, readers realize much more why Septimus and Rezia’s marriage is a torture that make both feel pain.
Mrs. Dalloway is hard to read, but because of Woolf‘s stream-of-consciousness writing, the novel makes me impression. It is the first time that I read a novel without noticing the plot. Instead, Woolf makes me read every character’s inner world. It seems that I am in every character’s mind.
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