Women and stream of consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s novel: “Mrs. Dalloway” and “To the Lighthouse”

Abstract

Virginia Woolf is best known for her novels, especially “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925) and “To the Lighthouse” (1927), Woolf also wrote pioneering essays on artistic theory, literary history, women’s writing, and the politics of power. Two of Virginia Woolf’s most notable novels, “To the Lighthouse” and “Mrs. Dalloway”, are good examples of the narrative device Stream of Consciousness. At the time, the use of this device was highly experimental. Virginia Woolf applies what is called indirect interior monologue to her writing, which allows her to explore her characters’ stream of consciousness in the third person. For all intents and purposes, this is stream of consciousness as we know and discuss it. Before Woolf, writers had used this stream of consciousness, but their application of it was chaotic and difficult to follow, and it was not very well received by readers. Woolf wrote “Mrs. Dalloway” by exploring the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of her characters, which was very experimental for the time. Woolf’s work exploring the thought, feelings, moods, and expectations of characters in a seamless way changed the structure of writing in a significant way. In this thesis paper, I will discuss and explain the women characterization in these two novel of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” and “To the Lighthouse” and will discuss how the term Stream of Consciousness has been applied in these two novel. This thesis divided into four chapters, where several aspects have been discussed from different perspective. The novel “Mrs. Dalloway” and “To the Lighthouse” is the primary source and I have used different articles and several writers’ thoughts for writing this paper.