On The Narrative Techniques Of Time In Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf is regarded as one of the most prominent writers in modern fictionand the pioneer of the stream of consciousness novelists. Her innovative andexperimental theories and practices on stream of consciousness novel techniques pavethe way for the flourishing of modern novel writing techniques. Both her uniqueperspectives on time and her artistic arrangement of narrative time in her fictionscontribute a lot to the narrative techniques on the treatment of time in modern fiction.Woolf breaks away from the chronological narrative pattern in the traditional novelwriting by adopting an innovative approach on time. The one-day narrative novel, Mrs.Dalloway, is a perfect revelation of Woolf’s treatment on time. The story happens withina dozen hours on a June day when Mrs. Dalloway is preparing for her evening party.However, the time span of the simple novel covers about thirty years of the protagonist’slife under Woolf’s skillful manipulation on the narrative techniques of time.As regards the matter of time, the French narratologist, Gérard Genette, is no doubt amaster in this field, whose famous theory on narrative time still works well nowadays.Taking Genette’s theory on narrative time as the theoretical basis, this thesis intends toanalyze Woolf’s artistic techniques on time from the aspects of temporal order, temporalduration and temporal frequency, as well as reveal the profound significance of Woolf’sarrangement of narrative time.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One generally introduces Woolfand her creation of Mrs. Dalloway, reviews the current studies of Mrs. Dalloway at homeand abroad and then shows the academic value and structure of this thesis. Chapter Twogives a brief introduction of narratology and mainly presents Genette’s theory onnarrative time. Chapter Three makes a detailed analysis on the narrative techniques oftime and their functions in Mrs. Dalloway based on that of Genette’s theory, includingtemporal order, temporal duration and temporal frequency. Chapter Four deepens theanalysis in Chapter Three and digs out the profound significance of Woolf’s conceptionof time from the reflection of the true state mind of the characters to the realization of the spatiality of time as well as the revelation of her time and life philosophy——“momentsof being”. Chapter Five summarizes the whole thesis and points out the significance ofthe study in this thesis.To sum up, by scrutinizing Woolf’s narrative techniques of time in this novel, thisthesis means not only to display Woolf’s unique arrangement on time and the functionsin this novel but also to reveal the significance of Woolf’s conception of narrative timebeneath “the tip of the iceberg”.