Faculty of philology department of english philology viktorija mi

CONCLUSIONS 
 
The twentieth century was marked by remarkable changes in all the spheres of life and art. 
People understood it was impossible to reproduce the complexity of the human mind using 
traditional techniques, and looked for more suitable means of expression. Thus, modernist art often 
explores the concepts of time, memory, and people’s inner consciousness, and is remarkable for its 
humanity and depth of perception. On of the best-known modernist writer Virginia Woolf’s novels, 
however, emphasized patterns of consciousness rather than sequences of events in the external 
world. Influenced by the literary works of French writer Marcel Proust and Irish writer James 
Joyce, among others, Woolf aimed to create a literary form that would convey inner life. 
The purpose of the present paper was to explore a completely new approach to the notions of 
time, temporality, and space within modernist literature, the distinction of the natural, conceptual, 
and fictional time as well as the alterations of time due to the deictic centre. In my research, I aimed 
to ground the statement that Woolf’s To the Lighthouse is a deeply psychological novel that focuses 
on the study of human consciousness.Throughout all her novel, Woolf attempted to express reality, 
as she perceived it. In particular, she was interested in experimenting with new methods of dealing 
with the time medium which shapes all human experience. It seems that Woolf was highly 
interested in time and spared much time and effort for description and analysis of differences 
between external and internal time. She rejected traditional handling of time as it did not reflect the 
real way time influenced human lives and altered their experiences, relationships, and behaviour. 
By means of content analysis, I provided evidence that in To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf 
attempted to structure her novel on the basis of time in the mind rather than time measured by 
clocks.
The theoretical basis for this investigation of the time and space shift in the studied novel was 
based on several overlapping critical theories: Practical Criticism Psychoanalysis, and the Theory of 
Narratology. Adhering to numerous critics’ opinions, I aimed to demonstrate in my research that the 
images Virginia Woolf uses establish her idea of true reality and reject a whole tradition of 
literature. As Meyer Howard Abrams says (1993:118), Woolf, as a “trail-blazing modernist”, 
experiments with the impression that external events make on the characters that experience them. 
In Woolf’s novels the omniscient narrator disappears and the point of view shifts inside the 
characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas, and momentary impressions presented 
as a continuous flux. In Woolf’s best fiction, plot is generated by the inner lives of the characters. 
Psychological effects are achieved through the use of imagery, symbols, and metaphors. Thus, the 
inner lives of human beings and the ordinary events in their lives are made to seem extraordinary.

---

89 
What conclusions can be made? I foregrounded the following ten insights:
1. In my research I proved that the innovative notion of unconscious mind had deeply 
influenced new tendencies in literature, philosophy, and psychology. The deepest problems of 
modern life questioned and analysed by modernists derive from the claim of the individual to 
preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, 
of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. In the research, I aimed to 
compare the peculiarities of the art and treatment of reality in various époques. It became obvious 
that during the periods of Romanticism and Renaissance, people perceived life as a constant 
struggle many years ago, and the same conceptions are valid in the philosophy of Modernism. On 
the other hand, in modern art reality changed its face as modern humans see the entire existing 
world as intangible and full of ambiguities more than ever before. The new concept of fragmented 
and shifted time becomes more and more important as it characterizes the fractured nature of person 
and there is enough evidence to claim that modern reality actually becomes invisible as the art 
mirrors human himself, not the outer world. The main aim of realist fiction was to imitate and 
mimic everyday life, to evoke the impression that the fictional characters really exist and that the 
events narrated are the events of ordinary experience that could happen to every person, while 
modernist literature attempted to move from the norms and standards of realist literature and to 
introduce concepts such as freedom of literary form commonly received as understandings of plot, 
time, and identity. As a result, the most important characteristic of Modernism is the attention to the 
peculiarities of human self-consciousness. It seems clearly that this growing interest in the unknown 
and unexplored fields of human mind resulted in various modernist experiments with form and with 
innovative literary works that draw attention to the processes and materials used to create as much 
abstraction and versatility as possible. 
2. Modernist literature and art were new and powerful creative stimuli increasing people’s 
interest in the psychological and mental power hidden in each human being instead of just scanning 
and mimetically portraying devastated areas of daily life. The reality discovered by Modernism was 
filled with innovations and fragmentations, but the major attention concerned the nature of constant 
human struggle for integration in all aspects of life, namely: one’s identity, origin, values, beliefs, 
and mission. It was important to describe life at the moment it is being lived paying attention to the 
smallest details that a human being perceives: smell and sound, colour and shape, movement and 
stillness. Although modernist characters try to escape from reality and neglect the past, at the same 
time they aim even stronger to stick in the present moment, to perceive some moments of the 
personal experience in their memories. Modernists wanted to reformulate the existing world by 
revealing and contemplating on everything that was painful or meaningless in order to lessen the 

---

90 
misery and to make human mind and soul free from the sense of being guilty, disappointed, and 
exhausted from the experience of reality. Thus, the period of Modernism was marked by the 
impetus to create everything new: new beliefs, norms, traditions, new life, and new future.
3. In the research, I demonstrated that experimenting with language and breaking the 
traditions were typical characteristics of modernist literature. Vision and viewpoint became an 
essential aspect of the modernist novel as well. Modernist writers were supposed to create 
something new and attractive instead of simply employing an objective one-dimensional third-
person narrative and portraying everything from the single perspective. Linguistic deviations, 
violations, breaking of the old cohesive sentence sequences, and rejection of gradual linear realistic 
description actually established a new aim of literature: to reveal the picture of human mind, to 
portray the subconscious, and to depict the natural flow of thoughts in one’s mind which was the 
essence of a modern human being. 
4. I grounded the claim that Virginia Woolf is considered one of the greatest innovators in the 
English language whose novels are strongly influenced by the insights of Psychoanalysis. I 
provided evidence that in her works, she experiments with the stream of consciousness technique 
and the underlying psychological as well as emotional motives of characters. The core of Woolf’s 
fiction is based on her reflection of the human consciousness, inner discourse, or the peculiarities of 
its characters’ mind. Woolf did not intend to analyze real events and those occurring in the mind 
separately, as if dividing the personalities of her characters into purely physical and spiritual 
figures. In her pieces of literature, she aimed to show the psychological underpinnings of human 
behaviour and to reveal specific changes in human psyche influenced by the personal experience 
gained or knowledge achieved. In other words, Woolf provided an innovatory representation of 
modern world perceiving and seizing reality on the basis of mind, not reason and logical judgment, 
and her modernist narrative rejected the mimetic and linear arrangement of events. 
5. The research revealed that in her masterpiece To the Lighthouse, Woolf formulated a 
completely new approach to the treatment of the notion of time and temporality. She believed that 
conventional understanding of time does not reflect the way in which time actually influences and is 
influenced by human lives. The writer believed that the real understanding of the depth of time 
exists only within the individual, they often chose experimental patterns of time for their literary 
works. Without doubt, new theories in the fields of science and psychology century have directed 
modern thought regarding time and have influenced trends in modern fiction. There is enough 
evidence to claim that in Woolf’s fiction, time was no longer considered as an abstract absolute 
entity. According to the writer, the amount of time an event takes is dependent upon the observer’s 

---

91 
frame of reference; in other words, time is relative, a concept which reflects the modern writer’s 
view of time.
6. It is obvious that in the given novel, the notion of time is presented as a rather complicated 
notion that can be divided on the basis of different criteria. Time in To the Lighthouse serves as a 
certain quantitative indicator that helps to measure and to understand the general tendency, or 
message, of the text and to clarify its particular shades of meaning. Indeed, there is a logical 
correlation between the amount of space devoted to a particular element and its centrality, or 
importance in the text. The reader always measures the importance of elements in the text on the 
basis of his subjective intrinsic interest. In the novel, this traditional rule of informativity is 
purposefully violated in order to encourage the reader to think and reflect upon the material being 
read. For instance, the most important moments, or climaxes, in To the Lighthouse are usually not 
described at all, and all the reader learns about is the outcome of the particular event. Although this 
style of presenting events may seem a bit disappointing at the first glance, it gives more freedom for 
the reader’s imagination and strengthens his or her mental abilities such as creating hypotheses or 
making decisions. As a result, the consciously motivated reader may spend more time analyzing 
minor details than studying and calling into question and the most important elements. 
7. In To the Lighthouse, Woolf focuses on the synchronic moments of time, and as a result, 
she frees herself from the limitations of ordinary linear time. She describes important events in 
detail and length, whereas entire years of insignificant experience are simply omitted and not 
mentioned at all, there is no clear distance between the mental images and physical action. Indeed, 
large parts of this Woolf’s novel do not concern themselves with the objects of vision, but rather 
investigate the means of reasoning and perception, attempting to understand people in the act of 
looking. I think that in this particular piece of fiction, the writer uses stream of consciousness 
narration that, unlike traditional linear narration, records thoughts in the order in which they arise 
without bringing them in a rational or chronological context. 
8. In this piece of fiction, time is the kernel component of experience and reality. However, as 
the reader can see, Woolf does not represent time in a conventional easily understandable way. In 
my research, I arrived at the conclusion that in To the Lighthouse, time is conveyed only through 
the consciousness of the various characters, and moments last for pages as the reader is invited into 
the subjective experiences of many different realities. This unsteady temporal rhythm convincingly 
conveys the broader sense of instability and change that the characters strive to comprehend, and it 
captures the fleeting nature of a reality that exists only within and as a collection of the various 
subjective experiences of reality.

---

92 
9. It is impossible to understand the meaning of this interestingly contracted and prolonged 
natural time without discussing the relationship of the dimensions of time and space in the book, 
namely, the layer of story. The whole situation of the novel is representation of reality. Thus, the 
whole temporal scope of the novel may be treated not only as a collection of single moments from 
people’s lives but as a universal symbol of time, namely, of the temporal span of human life. The 
duration of the action covers twenty four hours, from the evening up to the morning of the other 
day. Thus, having analyzed the suggestions made by Stevenson, Lee, and other critics, I adhere to 
the idea that from the temporal perspective, the novel may serve as a depiction of human life. The 
novel consists of three parts each of which centres around a particular semantic core, or idea that the 
whole novel can be treated like a symbolic metaphorical journey through human life and human 
mind. In general, it is possible to claim that in The Window, Woolf describes common daily family 
life; Time Passes convincingly deals with the passing time and its influence on human lives, 
whereas the last chapter, The Lighthouse seems to celebrate the power and meaning of art in life. 
Indeed, throughout the novel, we see the characters leading their lives that have a beginning and an 
end, as if travelling to their destination that is unique and specific for each person in the book. Thus, 
I aimed to formulate the three conceptual metaphors characterizing the message of the novel on the 
basis of the aforementioned ideas, as seen in the figure. The metaphors can be worded as follows: