Temporal Structure of a Modernist Scene

Auerbach in "The Brown Stocking" addresses Woolf's modernist treatment of the stocking scene in To the Lighthouse, noting in it first of all, the treatment of its temporal structure. Auerbach asserts that there are two temporal "continuities" or lines of thought which occur simultaneously--the exterior measuring of the stocking and Mrs. Ramsay's interior monologue and reminiscing, prompted by her exterior actions. As he puts it, "This entire insignificant occurrence is constantly interspersed with other elements which, although they do not interrupt its progress, take up far more time in the narration than the whole scene can possibly have lasted." (529) He notes that the "time and narration takes is not devoted to the occurrence itself...but to interludes." (537) Indeed, the scene is spaced out not by the exterior action of measuring the stocking, but is planned around the existence of these very interludes of Mrs. Ramsay's. The interludes then catalyse and forward the dramatic action and significance of the scene (if it can be called dramatic) and the mundane is structured around them instead of the opposite. Rather than action framing thoughts, thought frames and controls the action. (We see this when Mrs. Ramsay becomes irritated at a recollection of a Swiss girl praising the scenery of her hometown where her father was dying, and snaps at James.) Or rather, thought and action work symbiotically, as is more like real life.

This technique clearly foregrounds the existence of the consciousness and its interior monologues against the physicality of everyday actions, taking into consideration the amount of time and space dedicated to Mrs. Ramsay's thoughts as opposed to her actions. The opening quote Auerbach includes before his essays (I wonder if anyone else noticed this?) is the opening line to Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress": "Had we but world enough and time..." The poem's speaker (for those who haven't done EN3??? Romanticism!) tries to seduce his lover by convincing her that if a suspension of time were possible, he would spend every moment of eternity worshipping her, but since it is not, he ends with the 'carpe diem' call-to-action of her reciprocating his affections while they are still youthful. This speaks clearly to me of a parallel "freezing of time" in the literary text except with Woolf, it is not impossible but a daily occurrence wherein "the road taken by consciousness is sometimes traversed far more quickly than language is able to render it" (ibid). With exterior time "frozen" while interior time runs its course in the scene, Woolf manages to both divide and link the scene with two different threads of thought/action. To go a little further with this, time has become one of the inconquerable governing concepts which modernists seek to break down and subvert. I suppose this likens modernists with colonialists, by virtue of the fact that both seek to conquer what previously seemed inconquerable.

-- Charlene