INTRODUCTION

Virginia Woolf deals with "Moments of Being".
Since she was a modernist she wanted to experiment in art. She rejected the cannons of the novelists she considered materialistic (à they don't look after their subjectivity) like Arnold Bennett and Jhon Galsworthy because she wanted to focus the attention on the subjectivity of the character, on their consciousness; she thought only subjectivity and consciousness could convey to the reader the truth of human existence, the truth of life. In order to reach her aim she tried hard to create novels that rendered the flow of the consciousness, its stearm which explains from the rythm of the prose and the use of language of poetry. Flashback and flashforwards are the means through which she conveys the inner life of her characters because this is the way the mind works.
She adopted and was a skilled exponent of the STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS TECHNIQUE given through FREE INDIRECTIVE STYLE, THE ECLIPSE OF THE NARRATOR, THE SHIF OF THE POINT OF VIEW and THE INTERNAL MONOLOGUE (p. 531).
Her idea of life is well expressed in her The Common Reader (1925) where she invites the reader to look within and look at life. Here she wants the reader examine (à analisi precisa) what happens in an ordinary mind on an ordinary day (Virginia Woolf provides an example of an ordinary day: "the life of Monday or Tuesday"). She explains that the mind receives impressions of a different nature (trivial or banal but also important). Such impressions that make up people's ordinary life, it is impressions that the writer has to transmit to the reader. It follows that "there is no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest". According to Virginia Woolf's thought therefore LIFE CANNOT BE RETURNED TO THE READER IN A SERIES OF "GIG-LAMPS SIMMETRICALLY ARRANGED". Virginia Woolf concludes the essay highlighting the concept that the novelist's task is to convey THE UNKNOWN SPIRIT OF ONE'S CONSCIOUSNESS.

MOMENT OF BEING

Virginia Woolf is recognized as one of the great innovators of modern fiction. Her experiments
with point of view have influenced many writers that followed her. But one particularly
interesting technique that does not seem to receive much attention is her use of "moments of
being."
To wonder why some moments are so powerful and memorable -- even if the events
themselves are unimportant -- that they can be vividly recalled while other events are easily
forgotten. She concludes that there are two kinds of experiences:
- moments of being
- moments of non-being.
Moments of non-being appear to be moments that the individual is not consciously aware of
even as she experiences them. She notes that people perform routine tasks such as walking
and shopping without thinking about them. This part of the life is "not lived consciously," but
instead is embedded in "a kind of nondescript cotton wool".
It is not the nature of the actions that separates moments of being from moments of non-being.
One activity is not intrinsically more mundane or more extraordinary than the other.
Instead, it is THE INTENSITY OF FEELINGS, one's consciousness of the experience, that separates the two moments.