Virginia Woolf speaks of moments of being and James Joyce of paralysis. She had the opportunity to be the most read in England. Since she was a modernist she wanted to experiment in art like other modernists. She rejected the standards of the novelists which she considered materialist like : Arnold Bennet and John Golsworthy.
Because she wanted to focus the attention on the subjectivity of the character on their consciousness. She thought that only subjectivity and consciousness could convey the truth of human experience: the truth of life. In order to reach her aim she tried hard to create novels that rendered the flow of the consciousness, it is stream that explains for the rhythm of her prose and the use of language reminding the language of poetry. Flashbacks and flashforward are the means through which she conveys the inner life of her character because this is the way the mind works.
She adopted and was as skill exponed of the stream of consciousness technique given through free indirect style, the eclipse of the narrator and the shift of the point of view and last but not least the internal monologue.
Her idea of life is well expressed in her Common Reader (1925) where she invites the reader to look within and to look the life. Here she wants the reader to examine what happens in a mind, an ordinary mind in an ordinary day ( the life of Monday or Tuesday). She explains that the mind receives impressions of a different nature ( trivial but also very important). Such impressions are incessant and they create the shape of the day. Since it is such impressions that make up people's ordinary life it is such impressions that the writer has to convey to the reader. It follows that "there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love..". According to Virginia Woolf's thought therefore life cannot be returned to the reader in a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged. Virginia Woolf concludes the essay highlighting the concept that the novelist's task is to convey the unknown spirit of ones consciousness.

 

 

Moments 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 reach much attention is her use of Moments of Being, to wonder wise some moments are so powerful and memorable - even if the events themselves are important - that they can be vividly recalled while others are easily forgotten.
she concludes that there are 2 kinds of experiences:
a) moment of being
b) moments of non-being
Moments of non- being appear to be moments that the individual is not consciously aware of even as she or he experiences them.
Virginia Woolf notes that perform nature tasks such as walking and shopping without thinking about that. 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 feeling, ones consciousness of the experience, that separates the two moments. A walk in the country can be easily be hidden behind the cotton wool for one person, but for Virginia Woolf the experience is very vivid. Virginia Woolf asserts that this moments of being, this flashes of awareness, reveal a pattern hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life, and that we - I mean all human beings - are connected with this, that the all world is a work of art - that we are parts of the work of art.
But the individual artist not important in this work. Instead Virginia Woolf says of all people - we are the words - we are the work of art, we are the music- we are the thing itself". Thus for V.W. a moment of being is a moment when is aware of himself, but catches a glimpse of his connection to a larger pattern hidden behind the opaque surface of daily life.
Unlike moments of non- being, when the individual lives and acts without awareness, performing acts as if asleep, the moments of being opens up an hidden reality.
Moments of Being can be found throughout V.W.'s fictions... examine examples from all her novels: Mrs Dalloway, To the Light House, An Between the Acts, these are often moments of intense power and beauty.
Unlike Joyce's Epiphanies, these moments do not reveal something important for the character. But they provide moments of energy and awareness that allow the character who experiences the TO SEE LIFE MORE CLEARLY AND MORE FULLY, if only briefly. And some of the characters try to share the vision that they glimpse, making the work of art that is life.
Mrs Dalloway presents the two characters who are the most receptive in all V.W.'s fictions - Clariassa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith.
Clarissa's experiences her moments of being while in the middle of what appears to be trivial acts, indicating that is not the action, but her awareness that sets the moments of being apart from her other experiences. For example, as Clarissa catches taxi cabs pass by she find them absolutely absorbing. Her thoughts reveal that "what she loves was this, here, now, in front of her the fat lady in the cab.. Did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely.. or did it not become consoling to believe that somehow in streets of London, on the Abb and the flow of things, here there, she survived."
Throughout the day Clarissa is particularly aware of these threads of connections between herself and her surroundings. The moments of being are marked by vivid and powerful language. Because they are moments of exact feelings, the language used to convey them must naturally be evocative. THE FORM AND THE CONTENT MUST BE IN PERFECT SYMMETRY. In her moments of being Virginia Woolf uses a language that approaches poetry. Clarity is precisely what Virginia Woolf achieves in a moment of Being.