Interior Monologue and Stream of Consciousness in Literature
Stream of Consciousness Techniques
The Interior Monologue: Free Direct Discourse
Free direct discourse is the most experimental technique. There is no narrative voice in order to imitate how our mind works. The intention is to give the reader the impression that they are inside the character’s mind; there is no intervention of the narrator. The narrator does not appear; there is no mediation. The first person to use the interior monologue was a French novelist, and British modernist writers adopted this technique. This technique is used differently by different writers; there are different realizations of the internal monologue (Richardson, Woolf, Joyce, etc.).
Free indirect discourse and the interior monologue (free and direct discourse) are stream of consciousness techniques able to represent the individual perception of life and individual consciousness as a stream, as a flow. The definition of consciousness as a stream (metaphorically) comes from William James.
How to Create the Illusion That We Are in the Mind of the Character
- Accumulation of detail: Intense emotions, not in relation to real external perception, but in the way the character perceives reality; the recreation of intense emotions. Therefore, there was a frequent use of detail, but used differently than how the realist or materialist Edwardian writers used it. Perception is depicted in great detail.
- The use of language in a connotative way: Influence of the French Symbolist Movement.
Mallarmé: “Poetry should not inform but suggest and evoke.”
Through these powers of evocation and suggestion, a private use of symbols is necessary. Symbols are used privately in some ways in modernist narrative. Combination between poetry and prose in the same passage. It could multiply the possible meanings.
- Multiply the possible meanings.
- Private use of symbols/conventional symbols
Regarding narratives and particularly the short stories written by modernist women, we find that many of their short stories are very lyrical. There is a kind of combination of poetry and prose in their works. There were descriptions and metaphors that are very poetic in their essays. For example, Virginia Woolf or Katherine Mansfield. The meaning of the symbols multiplies itself. The possible meaning of their symbols, since they are not conventional, is very difficult to interpret. Symbols are used privately in modern narratives. The symbol also had a function as annexes, as a kind of structural element in the whole narrative.
- Association of ideas: Private and incoherent associations. Density and obscurity.
Implications for Time and Space
Space: The settings are the big cities, very typical of modernism. Mrs. Dalloway is set in London, for example. The setting is the city since it is like the mind of the character. We can see that the important thing is the mind of the character, and it is through the mind that we are able to move from the city. So the city is like the mind of the character. The real spaces in which the novel develops is the mind of the character; it takes place inside the mind of the character. This is also linked with the use of time, relating with Freud, time as a continuous flow.