Stream of Consciousness

Stream of consciousness meaning

The term ‘stream of consciousness’ was popularised by the psychologist William James’s theory of consciousness. In Principles of Psychology (1890), James theorised that our minds work as a continuous flow.

In literature, stream of consciousness refers to the technique used by writers to represent the true nature of our consciousness, depicting the interior worlds of characters as they actually are.

Writing stream of consciousness

Let's take a look at the features of stream of consciousness and how writers use techniques such as fragmentary syntax to reproduce the flow of consciousness.

Features of stream of consciousness

Stream of consciousness is an introspective technique, it is all about looking inward and diving into the individual mind. This means that, depending on whose mind a writer is diving into, stream of consciousness narratives can be fragmentary, random and illogical. This is because the narrative is structured around emotional connections between thoughts, rather than following a logical sequence of plot events.

Free association

The stream of consciousness technique is characterised by the application of principles of free association. We can take free association to mean the mind's ability to draw a myriad of different associations.

Associative thought is often illogical and random, as characters - like real people - may make associative leaps when they think. Authors using this technique to try to capture this randomness in their writing, without imposing logic onto the associative processes of the mind.

Techniques

Let's look at the techniques that are used to create stream of consciousness narration.

Fragmented syntax

Unconventional grammar and syntax can be used to depict free association. Sentences may be left unfinished or words and phrases may be constantly repeated if a particular idea is lingering in a character’s mind.

Punctuation

Punctuation can also be used to depict the flow of consciousness.

Point of view

Stream of consciousness narratives can be told from either an intimate first-person point of view or from a third-person point of view. The Free Indirect Style is one way of presenting streams of consciousness through a third-person narrator.

Free Indirect Style can be used to bounce back and forth between the streams of consciousness of multiple characters. The use of this narrative style is also a way for authors to impose order on the chaos of free association.

Quantity of perspectives

An author can either depict the stream of consciousness of one character without diving into anyone else’s mind, or they depict multiple streams of consciousness by splitting each stream into different chapters or juggling several perspectives simultaneously.

Literary history and theory of stream of consciousness

In the early 20th century, the term ‘stream of consciousness’ was picked up on by literary critics who saw it as a Modernist literary technique. Although it was developed by the modernists, sustained use of the stream of consciousness as a literary technique can be traced back to Edouard Dujardin’s novel, Les lauriers sont soupés (1888).

But the term was first applied to literature by May Sinclair in 1919, in her critique of the first volume of Dorothy Richardson’s novel, Pilgrimage (1915-1935). Pilgrimage is a novel split into several volumes published over two decades.

The Modernist literary giant, James Joyce, having begun writing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) in 1904, also played with the technique of stream of consciousness in this early novel, before pushing it to extremes in Ulysses (1922).

The technique was developed by other Modernists, such as Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway (1923) and To the Lighthouse (1927), and American author William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury (1931).

Modernism and stream of consciousness

Modernism was an experimental artistic movement that took place from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Modernist writers believed traditional modes of literary expression were unsuitable for the modern age. Modernists rebelled against plot-driven Victorian realist novels by foregrounding the rich inner lives of characters instead.

Why did the Modernists gravitate towards the stream of consciousness technique? Well, the Modernists were all about the rich inner lives of individuals, so naturally, some Modernists structured their works around these rich internal worlds by making use of and developing the stream of consciousness technique.

Rather than being structured around a logical sequence of external events (plot), the Modernist novel was instead structured around internal events, following all the perceptions and thoughts the mind takes in the day-to-day. This sentiment was prominent in Woolf's essay, 'Modern Fiction' (1919):

In Woolf's writing, and in other Modernist writing, authors focus on 'atoms' of consciousness; thoughts, feelings, reactions, sensory experiences, and memories.

Examples of stream of consciousness

We will discuss some popular examples of stream of consciousness in Modernist literature.

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

Let's look at two different chapters of the Modernist masterpiece Ulysses, which make use the stream of consciousness technique differently. Ulysses follows the rich interior lives of Leopold Bloom and his friends and wife on June 16th, 1904 in Dublin, Ireland.

In Episode 6, Leopold attends a funeral and the narrative reproduces the flow of his consciousness, as he fixates on the details of a suit:

In this passage, you can trace the connections between the 'atoms' (to use Woolf's terminology) of Leopold's thoughts:

1. Sensory experience: sees a nice suit with a purple tinge on Ned Lambert
2. Memory association: remembers a similar suit he once had
3. Memory: remembers Ned used to have better style and his extravagant habits
4. Reaction: he wants to take his suit to the tailor's
5. Realisation: Ned's suit has a purple tinge because it has been dyed
6. Judgement and memory: he thinks Ned's wife should have fixed his suit, but remembers he doesn't have a wife mid-thought.

In the last line of the passage, Joyce disregards the rules of syntax to depict stream-of-consciousness exactly as it happens, showing lapses in Leopold's memory.

In the final chapter of Ulysses, Molly Bloom is lying in bed, thinking about her day. In this passage, her mind wanders from her husband to her cat and when she remembers her cat stole her dinner, she realises she has a hankering to eat fish:

In the final chapter, Joyce takes the stream of consciousness technique to the extreme, disregarding syntactical rules, and getting rid of punctuation and paragraph breaks to show the fluidity of Molly's mind. In 'Penelope', there are only two full stops and only five paragraph breaks.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)

Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway also takes place over the course of a single day, in London, England.

In Mrs Dalloway, Woolf uses Free Indirect Style to order her characters' streams of consciousness.

In this passage, Woolf's narrative voice uses the Free Indirect Style to dive into Clarissa Dalloway's mind and follow it downstream. Clarissa is reminded of her uncle's death when she sees gloves in a shop window, and repeats 'gloves and shoes', as though she's trying not to dwell on the unpleasant memory of her uncle's death.

The Free Indirect Style represents the inner thoughts and feelings of characters through the voice of the narrator, leading the prose to take on the quality of the characters' thoughts. In this extract, for example, short fragmentary sentences show that Clarissa's flow of consciousness staggers as she remembers her uncle.

As an exercise, why not sit on your bed, close your eyes and type out all your thoughts as they come to you. You might learn something about yourself in the process: are you easily distracted? Are there any thoughts you try to shut out? Does your mind wander freely like Molly Bloom's or do you think in short, splintered bursts like Leopold Bloom?