The Hours and the Ages, Time in Virginia Woolf

The Hours and the Ages, Time in Virginia Woolf

Starting with Virginia Woolf's narrative style, we propose a reflection on the concept of time. The literary form with which Virginia Woolf approaches time helps us reflect on our own subjective experience.

Introduction

Time, a word of semantic multiplicity in its apparent simplicity. A straight line from the past towards the future, the memories that constitute us, the past stories, the future aspirations, we can approach the concept of time in different ways. Considering literature, the way an author addresses time, both in the narrative and in the characters, is one of the fundamental points for sustaining the plot. Between the classic linear form and experimental techniques, authors create literary forms to express the passage of time and temporality. Among those who masterfully dominated the narrative of time is Virginia Woolf.

In this essay, we highlight how the writer conveys to the reader the temporality of the story, both through narration and the characters in their plots. Linear time is folded, like a sheet of paper folded multiple times, creating an overlap of the present, making the past and future alive. Bringing the literary narrative closer to subjective experience, through her words, Virginia Woolf connects us with our own relationship with time.

The Narrative Flow

Virginia Woolf occupies a prominent place in the pantheon of 20th-century writers. Her unique style uses lyrical narrative to build the story through the protagonists' own experiences. Through the stream of consciousness, she delves into the intimate psychology of the characters, blending a flow of ideas with external impressions in a continuous sequence that breaks the separation between interior and exterior. Environmental descriptions are precise, most of the time, the reader accesses the landscape through the character's point of view. More than just the sun setting on the horizon, the author shows us what someone experiencing the scene is going through.

This narrative relationship with the characters is evident in "The Waves," the author's sixth novel, written in 1931. The text is almost entirely composed of internal monologues. The poetic descriptive style is striking, bringing to life the impression of what is happening around. For instance, when the characters are lying on a lawn near the beach, the sound of the waves and the sensation of the sea breeze on their skin are sensations used to construct the audiovisual scene happening far from the reader's eyes.

The narrative sequence is constructed like a puzzle where each piece has its own temporality, yet together they form the present whole that is conveyed to the reader. Memories and perceptions blend, creating a new time that is present only for a moment. A wave in the middle of the ocean rises, deeper the farther it is from the shore, an uninterrupted movement though unnoticed, only conjectured when it breaks on the sands, its sound crossing the shore, reaching attentive ears that imagine the entire journey made by the wave. Just as the sound of the sea is a distant and constant presence, memories of youth are an affective refrain. The first kiss, the first heartbreak, family relationships, the always remembered and never realized platonic love. Each character develops around scenes and desires that are the center of a spiral towards the future, which is always now.

All the Times of a Life

Certainly, Virginia Woolf's style highlights the multiplicity of what we call time, managing to create a plot through a flow of ideas and scenes. Her literary construction functions as a magnifying glass over the fabric of the real, allowing a close-up view of subjective and social constitution.

There is always a story that precedes the story, and this is as true in literature as it is in life. The newborn already carries the family’s history, the weight of the name, geographical and social cuts. All the lines that weave the body, creating an experience that is at the same time collective and singular for each individual. An interesting example is the novel "Orlando: A Biography." Written in a style that satirizes the language used by historians and biographers, the book employs a technique different from the stream of consciousness normally used by the author. However, the descriptive manner in which the narrator recounts the events portrays Orlando's life as an overlay of experiences lived by the protagonist, simultaneously presenting parallel stories obtained from other sources, testimonies, or documents.

Orlando is a young Englishman, descended from a noble family, who moves to London at the Queen's request. The description of Orlando's life follows a biographical tone, situating the protagonist's lifestyle within the moral system and customs of the era. As years pass, an adult and romantically disappointed Orlando moves to Turkey, where he holds an important position at the embassy. It is at this point that the text changes, and with mastery, Virginia Woolf introduces the narrative flow into the biographical style. One night Orlando falls asleep and sleeps for several days, and when he wakes up, he is a woman. Orlando's transformation brings a change in the perception of time.

Upon waking as a woman, Orlando asserts her own ethics concerning the prevailing morality. Adding to this, Orlando seems endowed with immortality, or at least sufficient longevity to live through ages, observing social changes. Faced with a vision of the future, Orlando asserts his individuality, just as he did in early childhood when guided by childish creativity to invent games. The child is present in the adult, as a living memory and a present body.

A life is composed of the overlapping of times, the now is fleeting, yet it is the constant realization of the multiplicity that fits together to form what we experience as the “I”.

The Hours and the Ages

Aging is the constant process of assimilating the present. The steps of Chronos and the sensation that time passes quickly. It is interesting that the novel “Mrs. Dalloway” was initially titled “The Hours,” since all the action of the book takes place during a few hours of the protagonist's day, even though the narrative transitions between the past and the future, as memories and thoughts enter the narrative flow.

Virginia Woolf always seems to remind us of the fury of time, always threatening and lurking, always abundant, laden with the force of the past and the uncertainty of the future. Living is inhabiting the present, the vulnerable moment where life happens.

In the novel “To the Lighthouse,” published in 1927, the plot takes place over two days separated by ten years. The book begins with the characters of a bourgeois family and their friends on an afternoon on the eve of an excursion to the lighthouse. The lighthouse is on a small island visible from the windows of the house. Although the journey is not very long, it is dangerous if the sea is not in the right condition, due to bad weather, the excursion is canceled. Ten years later, some characters return to the old house, this time to complete the trip to the lighthouse. Ten years have passed, the house is no longer the same, after being deteriorated and renovated, the characters are no longer the same, some have died, and the living carry the weight of the dead in their memory. In one scene, the excursion to the lighthouse departs while Lily Briscoe stays behind, determined to paint. She sets up her easel with the painting started ten years ago. Now, she looks at the unfinished painting, watches the boat crossing the waters, a small speck cutting through the sea, thinks about the passengers, considers changing the scene of the painting, reflects on life, remembers the past, and remembers so intensely that the beloved deceased figure becomes present. Physical death represents an end, yet symbolic life continues, the dead remain alive in the temporal overlay that forms subjectivity. The present, the past, the imagined, ten years diluted into seconds, all tangled in the living experience of now.

Life and Literature

As previously stated, Virginia Woolf's literature reveals the fabric of reality, showing the mechanisms of the everyday machine. The strength of her narrative lies in its proximity to the constitution of the experience of thought, existence is the constant present, as infinite as it is ephemeral.

Routine living tends to be standardized by social pressures and the needs of desire. Most of the time, this leaves unconscious what escapes the algorithmic sequence of daily life. Literature allows the eyes to contemplate forgotten details, making it possible, as poet William Blake aptly puts it,

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

Linear time, from the past toward the future, is a discursive fiction, used to organize experience and enable sharing. The time of existence is the present, the only moment where anything can be done, where the past is updated and the future is lived.