RENDING THE VEIL: DREAMS IN FIVE NOVELS BY VIRGINIA WOOLF

MARILYN ANN DYRUD, Purdue University

Abstract

A study of selected novels by Virginia Woolf indicates an aspect of her artistry virtually unexplored in criticism: her use of dreams and dream psychology to reveal character and explore the magnitude of the moment of awareness. In all of her fiction, Woolf immerses herself in a shadowy dream world and uses elements of the Freudian dream-work, with which she was familiar, either symbolically, structurally, or both. The Voyage Out and Night and Day exhibit a rudimentary handling of dream patterns, for in both novels she reports dreams that her characters experience. In The Voyage Out, Woolf examines the unconscious mind of Rachel Vinrace, and dream patterns climax in the final chapters describing Rachel's illness and death. Technique in these chapters broaches experimentalism and focuses primarily on displacement and condensation of imagery patterns introduced in the earlier sections of the novel. In addition, Woolf presents a Platonic schism of reality, suggesting the existence of a perceptual dichotomy, a veil separating concrete phenomena and absolute reality. In comparison, Night and Day is less statisfying artistically, long and rambling, the novel lacks the psychoanalytic richness of The Voyage Out. Dreams are primarily Freudian wish fulfillment, and no character experiences a fully-formed moment of awareness, although Mary Datchet and Katharine Hilbery approach the visionary realm. In Orlando, Woolf uses displacement and condensation structurally as well as symbolically, for the form of the novel simulates a dream. Condensation is particularly apparent in the character of Orlando, who is a composite figure, the androgynous artist. The Waves is the climax of dream patterns in Woolf's body of work. As does Orlando, The Waves simulates a dream through displacement of time and space. The characters' soliloquies are complex dream reveries, consisting of shared dream images, that fuse, in dreamy contemplation, past, present, and apprehensions of the future. The Waves is Woolf's artistic zenith, masterful in style and profound in thought. Between the Acts, Woolf's last novel, is a distillation of her previous works and exhibits a final experiment with form. Juxtaposing poetry, prose, and drama, Woolf extensively uses allegory to explore the interrelationship of life, art, and time. More self-consciously realistic than The Waves, Between the Acts emphasizes becoming rather than being, and Woolf focuses on the process of becoming aware rather than dramatically depicting the revelatory moment. The Conclusion suggests that Woolf's primary emphasis is on the unconscious mind and its confrontation with concrete phenomena. Dream patterns are technical devices to indicate the complexity of the inner life, and the result of the dream vision is epiphany--the character's fusion to absolute reality. Woolf translates vision into art, making perceptible the world of dreams.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

British and Irish literature

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