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 and nonbeing.
Woolf never explicitly defines what she means by "moments of being." Instead she provides

examples of these moments and contrasts them with moments of what she calls "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 nonbeing.
One activity is not intrinsically more mundane or more extraordinary than the other.
Instead, it is the intensity of feeling, one's consciousness of the experience, that separates the
two moments. A walk in the country can easily be hidden behind the cotton wool for one
person, but for Woolf the experience is very vivid.
Woolf asserts that these moments of being, these 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 whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of
art." But the individual artist is not important in this work. Instead she says of all people, "We
are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself"
Thus for Woolf a moment of being is a moment when an individual is fully conscious of his
experience, a moment when he is not only 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 moment of being opens up a hidden reality.

 

Moments of being can be found throughout Woolf's fiction. Mrs. Dalloway presents the two characters who are most receptive to moments of being in all of Woolf's fiction: Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith. Clarissa experiences her moments of being while in the middle of what appear to be trivial acts, indicating that it is not the action, but her awareness that sets a moment of being apart from her other experiences. For example, as Clarissa watches taxi cabs pass by she finds them "absolutely absorbing." Her thoughts reveal that "what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her, the fat lady in the cab.

Throughout the day Clarissa is particularly aware of these threads of connection between herself and her surroundings. Moments of being are immediate, they often do not allow a character to reflect or assign meaning to them.

The moments of being are marked by particularly vivid and powerful language, because they are moments of exact feeling, the language used to convey them must naturally be precise and evocative; the form and content must be in perfect symmetry. In her moments of being Woolf uses a language that approaches poetry.