Stream-of-Consciousness
Narrative as found in Joyce's Ulysses and Woolf's To the Lighthouse
Jonathan Clough '93 (English 32, 1990)
Joyce and Woolf both carry the internal emphasis
of modernism one step further than many of their contemporaries, moving
their narrative completely within the thoughts and ideas of their characters.
This modernist technique, known as a stream-of-consciousness narrative,
relies solely on internal descriptions and the reader must deduce external
plot or action from the thoughts of the characters. Both Joyce and Woolf
utilize this narrative technique in different ways. Joyce tends to keep
his narrative within the thoughts of a particular character for a long
period of time. Ulysses is almost completely composed of the internal
thouhgts and realities of its protagonist, Leopold Bloom, only occasionally
turning to the internal realities of another character. On the other hand,
Woolf presents a collage of internal realities, moving rapidly from one
character to the next. Because of this difference, Woolf's reader is allowed
to compare the widely differing versions of reality presented by the different
characters. By using this technique, Joyce and Woolf seem to be exhibiting
that a subjective and internal reality is more importante than any sort
of external or societal forces.
Joyce and Woolf further use the stream-of-consciousness
narrative to achieve an extremely detatched relationship to their writings.
By describing every thought which passes thorugh the minds of their characters,
they never emphasize which thoughts are important and which are not. Such
evaluation is left for the reader to decide. Accordingly, the author's
judgments on specific thoughts, ideas, and themes are often quite subtle
and difficult to discern.
www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/c32/modernism/stream.html