House of Notes

Stream of Consciousness in “To the Light House” Introduction Virginia Woolf is considered the perfect master of stream of consciousness novel. The phrase “Stream of consciousness was first used William James in his “Principles of psychology” in 1890. Three novelists – Marcel Proust in France, James Joyce in Ireland and M. Richardson in England – were three main architects of this type of the novel. This new type of novel flourished during the period between 1915 to 1939, and it was Virginia Woolf who gave this type of novel a proper shape and adequate refinement. Study of Human Psyche, The chief object of the stream of consciousness novel is the study of human psyche or human consciousness. The novelists of this technique believe that human actions are determined more by the sub-conscious and the unconscious than by the conscious. Instead of a tendency at concentration around a limited issue, those novelists fly off in an eccentric manner in different directions. They hav