Faculty of philology department of english philology viktorija mi

2.3. The Fragmented Time Philosophy in Modernism
Indeed, as can be seen from the evidence provided above, one of the most important 
innovations in modernist literature was a completely new interpretation of the notion of time from 
the angle of its stability and duration. Modernists believed that they lived in the world that was 
fractured or broken into pieces both physically and psychologically. The loss of traditional values 
and denial of norms caused chaos in life. People lost their roots to the past claiming that this was the 
right way of breaking free from gloomy memories and painful experience, however, at the same 
time they lost a part of their own identity. It is not surprising that many modernist fictional 
characters are depicted as rebellious personalities neglecting their family relationships, rejecting the 
value of the historical heritage, and external culture, as this destructive attitude towards the 
surrounding world was the direct reflection of the reality modernist humans faced in their real life. 
As a result, people felt disillusioned and disappointed, as their life seemed to consist of meaningless 
bits and pieces that could have possessed a certain meaning only if they had been collected into one 
entity.
Modernist writers aimed to complain about the absurdity of reality and pointlessness of life in 
their works. In order to show everything that happens in the mind of a modern person who 
conceives large amounts of information but is not always capable of distinguishing between the 
important details and the unimportant ones, modernists introduced the style of discontinuous 
narrative in their books. This style is based on moving the narrative back and forth through time 
paying no attention to logical temporal or spatial boundaries. This particular style, which seems to 

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be a convincing and effective way of representing the concepts of modernist existence, is mainly 
associated with Modernist literature. According to Davis and Jenkins (2000: 56), modernists 
believed that by passing his temporal life man views all things in relation to himself and his life on 
the earth. Nevertheless, it is rather difficult to lead one’s life from birth to death, as man 
permanently organizes his experience into rather relative formulations of interweaving time and 
space. For instance, reality, as viewed by Woolf, includes the whole expanse of space and time, and 
every living form brings its historic and prehistoric past into the ever-flowing stream of life. 
Stevenson says (1998:103) that “Woolf finds associations with the past triggered powerfully yet 
almost arbitrary by events in the present”. In her To the Lighthouse (1927), for example, the 
present moment is never isolated, because it is filled with very preceding moment, and is constantly 
in the process of change. In the novel, while painting her picture, one of the characters Lily recalls 
in her mind a sudden memory of Mrs Ramsay sitting on the beach and asks: 
(11) D’ you remember?... Why, after these years that had survived, ringed round, lit 
up, visible to the last detail, with all before it blank and all after it blank, for miles and 
miles? (194) 
As the quotation alleges, in the novel, time flows as a constant ever-changing stream, having 
neither beginning nor end. Stevenson thinks that in her fiction, Woolf portrayed reality as timeless 
and spaceless, because it is impossible to measure and contains all space and all time, all the 
eternity. Memories carry the characters into the past, while the present moments seem to vanish or 
melt in the flow of time. According to Lorraine Sim (2010:137), Woolf’s treatment of time 
“encompasses various states of feeling, from ecstasy to the absurd”. Sim argues that believing in 
the everlasting processes all over the physical and psychological world, Woolf also demanded a 
revolution in literary technique and subject matter. She reconsidered and reshaped the notions of 
personality, language, plot and structure in a new light. Personality was continuously in the process 
of taking shape and could not be accomplished by external descriptions. Language in her works 
became a means of conveying the emotions and perceptions of different levels of awareness all at 
the same moment, revealing the unconscious as well as the conscious things. Interestingly, 
Stevenson believes (1998:78) that Wolf purposefully denied the conventional understanding of plot 
with an introduction, a linear development, growing suspense, approaching climax, and a logically 
constructed ending. Instead of retelling events and well-known experiences in daily situations, 
Woolf in her novels provided an elaborate study for the nature and changes in human psyche. Filled 
with the significant moments of being and feeling, personal inner life revealed to a person the 
pattern behind the mysterious curtain of existence and through it, connected him to the other people 
and the outer world.

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It seems certainly that for some theorists and philosophers this desire to represent 
consciousness was a debatable issue and became the nucleus of discussion. They believed that 
during the period of Modernism, people faced the cruelty of wars and the meaninglessness of the 
new technological innovations applied for the destruction of humanity, but at the same time it 
seemed wrong to portray this dramatic reality in the works of fiction. Why did modernist writers 
want to show the darkest sides of life in their books? Why did not they attempt to create something 
brighter and more optimistic in order to raise the spirit and to enhance hope of the readers? Indeed, 
it seems that the answer is closely related to the importance of the fragmented time philosophy that 
existed both in life and in fiction. In modernist fiction, “the characters function as faceless labels