Treatment of time in Virginia Woolf's Work

Résumé du document

In her novel 'Orlando: a Biography' published in 1927, Virginia Woolf evokes 'the extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind' (Orlando p.91) and the opposition she expresses between thess two concepts of time is to be found, more or less obviously, in most of her works. In this study, we will analyze the characteristics and meanings of each of these 'times', as well as the reasons Woolf chose to use both of them in her novels. This argument will be based on two of her main works: Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927) because, although written during the same period, they both exemplify really different concepts of time.

To begin with, clock time – which is the most common concept of time as it has been created by human beings themselves – is a rational and precise element constantly present in Woolf's novels, but often construed in different ways.

Extraits

[...] The title Mrs Dalloway only appears on August 15th 1924 (p.65). In A Writer's Diary, Woolf evokes the 'tunnelling process' on October 15th 1923 (p.61). As Susan Dick mentions in her essay Literary realism in Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando and The Waves in The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf (p.53) 'Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself' (p.5) In this first sentence, the tense used is the future. According to The Free Dictionary. www.thefreedictionary.com/impressionism In 'Overview of Literary Modernism' by Suzanne Del Gizzo. [...]

[...] Passing time is thus constantly present in Woolf's work as an inevitable and intrinsic part of life. Nevertheless, in both works it is also essential to notice that Woolf never gives really precise information about clock time. Although clock time is present all along the plot, it is seldom explicitly expressed in the writing. For instance in To the Lighthouse, though lots of events happen in the part 'Time passes', the reader does not know precisely how many years have passed and he learns it only later, in the part ' The Lighthouse', when the narrator almost incidentally says: 'it must have been precisely here that she had stood ten years ago' (To the Lighthouse p.111). [...]

[...] To begin with, clock time which is the most common conception of time as it has being created by human beings themselves is a rational and precise element always present in Woolf's novels, but often considered in different ways. As clock time can be defined as constantly and inexorably passing, it is commonly represented by the image of the ticking clock and thus can be considered as something almost material that can be measured, counted and even divided. In Mrs Dalloway, the sound of Big Ben mechanically and regularly striking the hours is an important element of the story as it seems to constantly but discreetly remind the characters and the readers that time is passing and nothing can stop it. [...]

[...] Indeed according to the definition given in the dictionary, literary impressionism is a 'literary style characterized by the use of details and mental associations to evoke subjective and sensory impressions rather than the re-creation of objective reality'[5] and that is mainly what can be found in her works. By means of stream of consciousness and through the use of inner time that is linked to it, we can then consider Woolf as an impressionist writer. But if she is can be considered as such, it is mostly because the main devices she uses in her writing are first of all modernist devices. Indeed, if we compare Woolf's writing to the devices Suzanne Del Gizzo describes as literary modernism ones[6], we can see that there are noticeable similarities. [...]

[...] Orlando: a Biography. London: Hogarth Press, 1928; 1970. Woolf, Leonard. A Writer's Diary: being extracts from the diary of Virginia Woolf. London: Hogarth Press Guiguet, Jean. Virginia Woolf and her works. London: Hogarth Press Roe, Sue and Sellers Susan. The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf. [...]