I have discussed the use of the stream of consciousness in Chapter Three. In this
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section, I will dwell on the use of this technique in different media, that is, novels and films respectively.
Virginia Woolf belongs to the category of artists who master the technique of stream of consciousness. Dowling indicates that “stream of consciousness” is a term that stemmed from the pioneering psychological work of William James and Henri Bergson in the late 19th century. It is “indirect by the lack of quotation marks, the use of the third person, and the employment of the pluperfect tense” (45-46). As what Dowling notes, such a technique is often used to blur the boundary between the direct and indirect speech. It is prevalent in Woolf’s writing partly because she would make the transitions in the shift of time as accurate as possible seeing that it would correspond to our natural experience more (46).
The author’s voice blending the character’s stream of consciousness and the frequent shift from one to the other are typical techniques Woolf uses in her narration.
In the first sentence of Mrs. Dalloway, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” (Dowling 1), Woolf temporarily reads Mrs. Dalloway’s mind and repeats what she just said. Therefore, we sense that there is certain association between the author and the character. Due to the fact that the author is somewhat involved in her character, we readers can hear the voice that helps us communicate with the character herself. However, to certain extent, we can’t distinguish who really speaks: Virginia Woolf or Clarissa Dalloway.
Apart from that, in the course of the narration, Woolf takes an omniscient point of view. By doing so, she seems to be able to get into her character’s mind without any obstacles. In one moment, she stands quiescently observing the character. In another, she sneaks into her mind, rendering what she thinks and what she recalls in no time (Dowling 12). Hence, she can add personal commentaries and analyses to her character’ s thought. She is compared to a stage manager who appears on stage occasionally. Moreover, Woolf always uses “the compromising pronoun
‘one’ …instead of the pronoun ‘he’ or ‘she’”(12) in the presentation of individual consciousness. She chooses to present someone who takes a moment to think, to
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meditate, and to feel sorry for others as if the understanding of the author about the development of the story were no better than that of readers. Clearly put, she writes
“as if the events being reported were taking place at that very moment, and she never knows in advance the course of her story and how it is going to end” (12). From an omniscient point of view, her presentation of the flows of thoughts seems to directly come from the consciousness of a character. The author’s voice blended with the character’s stream of consciousness and the frequent shift from one to the other are typical techniques Woolf uses in her narration. By dint of stream of consciousness, the author not only “give[s] coherence to her story but at the same time… range[s] at will through time and space of her characters’ disordered, chaotic and fluidic activities”
(15-16).
As Humphrey suggests, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is basically composed of interior dialogue with the superimposition of montage on it. (53) He also points out the cinematic elements of this novel (51-52). Humphrey’s plot summary basically identifies the cinematic elements in Woolf’s novel, especially in her use of the stream of consciousness. Granted that terms such as “close-ups” and “cutting” are widely used in films, the technique of stream of consciousness is rendered differently in the novel and on the screen. To start with, while the films concretize abstract thoughts, they are relatively limited in terms of the presentation of the immediacy of characters’
consciousness. For example, in the novel, Clarissa’s mind may wander to her youth, to a specific day in her life and to a specific, and then return to the present. To join the journey of hers, we readers must read several pages of the novel in order to sufficiently fathom the depth of her thoughts. On the other hand, due to the length and characteristic of the films, directors are likely to avoid packing too many shots in a scene so that the film would not cause confusion. In a typical drama piece like Mrs.
Dalloway, the director is destined to bear this in mind. Therefore, the director has no choice but to “unify” Clarissa’s thoughts in one or two scenes. Pages of Clarissa’s interior dialogue have to be condensed in several minutes to keep the path of the whole film. In addition, to make up for the possible lack of depth in the character’s
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thoughts, the director may use voiceovers to supplement the image. For example, in the beginning of the film Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa is seen in her bedroom with the voiceover reciting Shakespeare’s poem “Fear No More the Heat O’ the Sun,” which actually appears in the novel up to three times. The lines of the poem summarize Clarissa’s fear of being excluded in the film while the same lines works as the talisman to protect both Clarissa and Septimus from being drowned in their despair.
With touch of this kind of voiceover, words can be translated into images more effectively without seeming insipid.
Secondly, although the novel has the advantage of being more in-depth in its own right, the cutting in the film allows scenes to shift more flexibly. The introduction scene to the three leading characters in the film The Hours serves as an excellent example. As mentioned above, the cutting here may create a sense of disorder.
However, such a technique helps to introduce those characters more efficiently, which is virtually impossible for a novel which is divided into three parts. When it comes to the employment of the stream of consciousness, the film may connect the three minds of the three women more tightly than the novel. In the beginning of their “special day” in their life, Cunningham describes their states of mind. He depicts Mrs.
Dalloway’s stream of consciousness as follows,
There are still the flowers to buy. What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run. She, Clarissa Vaughan, an ordinary person (at this age, why bother trying to deny it?), has followers to buy and a party to give. (10)
For Mrs. Woolf he writes,
Virginia awakens. This might be another way to begin, certainly; with Clarissa going on errand on a day in June, instead of soldiers marching
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off to lay the wreath in Whitehall. But is it the right beginning? Is it a little too ordinary? (14)
He also carefully describes Mrs. Brown’s stream of consciousness in the first section of “Mrs. Brown,”
Laura Brown is trying to lose herself. No, that’s not it exactly—she is trying to keep herself by gaining entry into a parallel world. She lays the book face down on her chest. Already her bedroom (no, their bedroom) feels more densely inhabited, more actual, because a character named Mrs. Dalloway is on her way to buy flowers. Laura glances at the clock on the nightstand. It’s well past seven. Why did she buy this clock, the hideous thing, with its square green face in a rectangular black Bakelite sarcophagus—how could she ever have thought it was smart. (34)
In the “Mrs. Dalloway” part, Cunningham does imitate Woolf’s touch with the sentence beginning with “what” whereas in the “Mrs. Woolf” part, he links the day of
“Mrs. Dalloway” with that of “Mrs. Woolf” by purposefully referring to “a day in June.” Then in the “Mrs. Brown” he writes about “a character named Mrs. Dalloway is on her way to buy flowers” which echoes both “Mrs. Dalloway” and “Mrs. Woolf.”
These descriptions appear on page 9, 29, 38 respectively. In the film version, the streams of consciousness of these three women are literally intertwined together through parallel editing. This editing technique can create the same effect as cross-cutting which refers to “the linking-up of two sets of action that are running concurrently and which are interdependent within the narrative” (78). Parallel editing, on the other hand, stresses “the paralleling of two related actions that are occurring at different times” (78). Also, as Susan Hayward says, “montage takes over the spectator’s agency: the choice of images to be juxtaposed encodes a preferred reading.
Meaning and therefore interpretation are imposed by the film-maker.” In conclusion,
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modern technology enhances the use of literary techniques in novels, which demonstrates the fact that the two media are complementary, not necessarily contradictory.
In the past, translation and other forms of adaptations were often compared to a woman and they were both thought of as a “lack.” With the emergence of new technology, such an assertion should be challenged.
Silver says that the original and adaptation do not exist in a hierarchical relationship but a fluid and shifting relationship (212). For Benjamin, translation is a kind of salvation. It continues the life of the original and even compensate for its lack.
As a translation project, The Hours and Mrs. Dalloway bring “Virginia Woolf” to life.
The director follows Woolf’s footsteps and recreates multiple images of her in the cinematic world. The film may not be a unique representation, but it is no less original than the Woolf we know. Last but not least, in the age of mechanical reproduction, the distance between the work of art and the viewer may be shortened, it is likely that the cult value can still be preserved. For example, Nicole Kidman is deglamourized.
However, underneath the heavy makeup, she is still an attractive woman. By being deglamorized, she becomes a spectacle on the screen.
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