Parentheticals and the presentation of multipersonal consciousness: A stylistic analysis of Mrs Dalloway

Abstract

The presentation of consciousness in Mrs Dalloway has long been a focus of study, and many scholars have investigated Woolf’s narrative techniques in this regard, especially her use of Free Indirect Style. However, most of the existing studies mainly concentrate on the consciousness presentation of individual characters. Few studies have provided adequate accounts concerning the arrangement of the shifting narrative viewpoints and the linguistic mechanism that facilitates the ‘multipersonal representation of consciousness’ in this novel (Auerbach, 2003 [1953]: 536). This article attempts to fill this research gap by examining the use of parentheticals in Mrs Dalloway. The syntactic independence of a parenthetical gives it a degree of freedom to digress from its host, which makes this construction a convenient device to bring in new sources of consciousness and thus shift the narrative viewpoint from one character to another. The frequent viewpoint shifts subvert the convention of adhering to a single coherent narrative point of view. Meanwhile, using parentheticals allows Woolf to present multiple points of view within a short stretch of text, even within a single sentence. In this way, a sense of simultaneity is created. Distinct sources of consciousness are brought closer to each other; the very boundaries between individual minds seem to be blurred.