Faculty of philology department of english philology viktorija mi

2.1. The Language Revolution, Stream of Consciousness, and Free Indirect Discourse 
 
Indeed, innovations of modern literature mainly focus on the radical changes in the nature of 
narrative. The comparison of the traditional and modern narrative distinguishes several significant 
differences. Traditional narrative is based on the chronological order of events; it is interested into 
particular characters, their actions, places, and temporal circumstances. This kind of narrative tends 
to be chronological and linear, and it is easy for the reader to follow the text from the beginning to 
the end. Besides, the essential characteristic of traditional way of writing is marked by the 
simplicity and one-dimensionality of the situations presented. The reader comprises everything 
from the single angle with no vague hypothesis or polysemy of hidden details, such as symbols or 
allusions. In other words, language in traditional works of literature is straight forwarded and the 
reader gets a realistic delineation of the thoughts, words, and actions of literary characters. 

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By comparison, modern narrative rejects the mimetic and linear arrangement of events. 
According to Onega and Landa (1996: 24), language in modern narrative is not simply a tool for the 
objective representation of reality; it is an inseparable part of reality, as every word carries its own 
meaning that manifests itself in the wider linguistic context of a particular literary work. As stated 
by Kathryn VanSpanckeren (1994:62), “vision and viewpoint became an essential aspect of the 
modernist novel as well. […] The way the story was told became as important as the story itself”. 
VanSpanckeren believes that Modernism embodies the notion that a narrator has only a limited 
knowledge; the reader is thus presented with different points of view from the consciousness of the 
characters. In many modernist literary works, it is a challenging task for the reader to decide which 
character‘s subjective impressions are revealed in a particular passage. Sometimes it may even be 
impossible to decide whether a particular passage is told by a particular narrator or simply seen 
through a character’s eyes. Such ambiguous passages are common in the novels of Woolf, Joyce 
and other modernist authors. Besides, according to Stevenson (1977: 57), Woolf is one of the 
prominent writers famous for her time and space philosophy that manifested itself via the stream of 
consciousness technique or interior knowledge of her characters. Stevenson comes to the conclusion 
that in this writer’s novels we are thus presented with a character’s subjective point of view: the 
characters’ ” thoughts are carefully organized, clearly expressed, and show a sophisticated capacity 
to find metaphors for states of mind and the various pangs of contact between consciousness and 
the intractable world around it”. 
Typically, narrative events are narrated only once in a text, and the order in which they are 
presented in the text corresponds to their order of occurrence in the real or fictional world. 
However, Onega and Landa (1996:31) focus on the fact that modernists purposefully violate this 
basic narrative convention: for instance, some events may be described twice or even more times in 
the text, some other events may be unmentioned at all or portrayed by means of very short remarks. 
To prove this, let us consider the following extract from Woolf’s fiction (1996): 
(5) ‘No going to the Lighthouse, James’, he said as he stood by the window, speaking 
awkwardly but trying in deference to Mrs Ramsay to soften his voice into some 
semblance of geniality at least. 
This going to the Lighthouse was a passion of his, she saw, and then as if her husband 
had not said enough with his caustic saying that it would not be fine tomorrow, this 
odious little man went and rubbed it in all over again.  (18) 
As can be seen form the extract above, obviously, the second or third mention of going to the 
Lighthouse is not simply a flashback but gives the reader the possibility to see the same question as 
new from a different perspective. Violations of chronology do not invalidate the notion of a 

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narrative form or prototype. It seems certainly that Woolf wants to provoke the reader and to 
encourage him to make his or her own judgements related to the situation described, instead of 
trying to convince him by objective arguments. Her logic is logic of emotions, dreams, and images, 
rather than of reason. Thus, the result is an overlapping of literary persuasive aims and styles, 
combined with an expressiveness that is due to her unique manner of writing. (VanSpanckeren 
1994:56) Here I intend to show the chronology in the novel and the temporal interrelation of the 
chapters by means of the following diagram:
Figure 2. Temporal Chronology in the Novel To the Lighthouse 
PRESENT 
PAST FUTURE 
Figure 2. Temporal Chronology in the Novel To the Lighthouse 
As can be seen in the suggested figure, the flow of time in the novel is rather unconventional and 
consists of a number of smaller parameters. I would like to claim that the protagonist of the novel, 
Mrs. Ramsay, serves as the major connection between the notions of the past, the present, and the 
future, as all the three temporal dimensions are included in her inner world of thoughts. Her present 
feelings intermingle with memories from the past and projections from the future. The following 
example from To the Lighthouse (1996) can serve as a great piece of evidence explaining the 
essence of the diagram I proposed above: 
(6) she kept looking back over his shoulder as Mildred carried him out, and she was
certain that he was thinking, we are not going to the lighthouse tomorrow; and she 
thought, he will remember that all his life. (57) 
As can be seen from the extract, the reader perceives the flowing time in the way it passes in Mrs. 
Ramsay’s mind. Although her attention is focused on the present events around her (looking at her 
son) , she constantly keeps thinking about the future going to the lighthouse and experiencing the 
MOMENTS 
ACTIVITY 
DREAMS 
PLANS 
VISIONS 
FLASHBACK 

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disappointment her little son is going to face the following day. The present activities such as 
sewing, watering flowers, or reading, serve as the starting point from which a mental journey into 
the world of past visions and memories begins. Besides, the present moments, as the extract 
suggests, become the psychological basis for Mrs. Ramsay’s future dreams, plans, and fears. She 
cannot stop worrying about the influence that the future disappointment will have on her son’s 
personality and even believes that this sorrow can never be forgotten. Thus, as VanSpanckeren says 
(1994:54), it is obvious that in her novel, Woolf depicts time on the basis of human psychology and 
individual subjective treatment of reality.
Stevenson complements VanSpanckeren and claims convincingly (1998:57) that one of the 
great innovations of modernist novels is the stream of consciousness technique, used by the writer 
in order to capture a character’s natural flow of internal thoughts. Free Indirect Speech and Free 
Indirect Discourse involves both a character’s speech and the narrator’s comments or presentation, 
or direct discourse and indirect discourse. Indeed, Free Indirect Discourse (FID) is an effective and 
comprehensive method of representation the literary world because it enables the reader to perceive 
the thoughts of the narrator and the thoughts of a character at the same time and thus, extends the 
reader’s existing knowledge about the situation described. Consequently, in To the Lighthouse, this 
method typically involves the use of the past tense, yet cannot be imitated by traditional 
grammatical rules and norms. 
(The Ultimate Book of Science: Everything You Need to Know 2008: 98) 
Similarly to Stevenson and VanSpanckeren, Genienė explains that in expressing people’s 
minds there are several kinds of discourse forms, namely: direct thought, indirect thought, free 
direct thought and free indirect thought. It is interesting to compare the theorist’s understanding of 
the FID technique with VanSpanckeren and Stevenson’s insights. Genienė believes that in FID, 
pronominal elements play a significant role. Interestingly, according to her, personal pronouns such 
as he, she, and one can be possibly used instead of directly naming characters. The following 
example is one of the actual uses of the pronoun one in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1996): 
(7) But the dead, thought Lily, encountering some obstacle in her design which made 
her pause and ponder, stepping back a foot or so, Oh the dead! she murmured,