Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Readers’ responses to experimental techniques of speech, thought and consciousness presentation in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway

Grisot, Giulia; Conklin, Kathy; Sotirova, Violeta

Abstract

Woolf’s work has been the object of several studies concerned with her experimental use of techniques of speech, thought and consciousness presentation. These investigated the way in which different perspectives coexist and alternate in her writing, suggesting that the use of such techniques often results in ambiguous perspective shifts. However, there is hardly any empirical evidence as to whether readers experience difficulty while reading her narratives as a result of these narrative techniques. This article examines empirically readers’ responses to extracts from Woolf’s two major novels – To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway – to provide evidence for whether Woolf’s techniques for the presentation of characters’ voices, thoughts and perspectives represent a challenge for readers. To achieve this, a mixed-methods approach that combines a stylistic analysis with a detailed questionnaire has been employed. Selected extracts that were hypothesised to be complex due to the presence of free indirect style and/or interior monologue were modified by substituting these with less ambiguous modes of consciousness presentation, such as direct speech or direct thought. Readers’ responses to the modified and unmodified versions of the same extracts were compared: results show that the presence of free indirect style and/or interior monologue increases the number of perspectives identified by readers, suggesting that this technique increases the texts’ difficulty, laying a more solid ground for future investigations.

Citation

Grisot, G., Conklin, K., & Sotirova, V. (2020). Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Readers’ responses to experimental techniques of speech, thought and consciousness presentation in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway. Language and Literature, 29(2), 103-123. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947020924202

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 15, 2020
• Online Publication Date: May 27, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-05
• Deposit Date: May 27, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: May 27, 2020
• Journal: Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics
• Print ISSN: 0963-9470
• Electronic ISSN: 1461-7293
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 29
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 103-123
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947020924202
• Keywords: Linguistics and Language; Literature and Literary Theory; Language and Linguistics
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4519046
• Publisher URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963947020924202