On The Construction Of Character Relationship In Mrs. Dauaway

Since the first publication of Mrs. Dalloway, the masterpiece of famous Britishwriter Virginia Woolf in stream of consciousness, with exquisite structure, uniquedescription of consciousness, and a novel sense of time, the work has attracted theattention of scholars and critics. And as the perspectives and, visions in literary criticsare increasingly expanded, the novel has become a timeless study with newunderstandings. The most striking features of the novel are the amazing andsignificant world of consciousness. In the reading, the readers constantly findthemselves got into the consciousness world of the characters, drifting with theflowing of characters’thoughts. So characters in the novel are the carrier of the flowof consciousness. The thesis mainly focuses on revealing the hidden clues in the novelwhich seemingly covered by the messy character relationship, and tries to exploremarvelous establishment of relationship among characters in the novel.Recent years, cognitive poetics which is the interface of between literature studyand cognitive linguistics, has injected new power to the interpretation of literary study.According to the mental space theory under the perspective of the cognitive poetics,the meaning of the text is constructed in a series of dynamic cognitive process ofestablishing and integrating mental space when readers read the novel. In view ofbuilding up the mental space network of the novel, the paper found boundaries ofbetween the consciousness world among characters and the physical world in the story,realized the vein of the streams of consciousness, illustrated the metaphor meaning ofimages appeared in the deep consciousness of characters’, as well as indicating themeaning of setting parallel relationship between two main characters in perspective ofthe blending spaces.This thesis is divided into six parts: the first part summarizes the research historyhome and abroad and illustrates the purpose of paper as well as main content. The second part discusses cognitive tendentiousness in novels of streams of consciousnessand explains mental space theory, blending theory and text world theory under theperspective of cognitive poetics. The third part analyses the novel’s mental spacenetwork system in different layer and explores characters’relationship in space andtime. The forth part of the main body figures out the memories and images shared bydifferent characters in their consciousness space and reveals hidden coherence andintegrity among characters. By applying the blending theory, the fifth part indicatesthe significance of the blend which was the blended space that the two main paralleledcharacters projected. Final part is the conclusion. Based on the above analysis anddiscussion, the thesis believes that the constriction of character relationship in Mrs.Dalloway is innovative and modernity, which also reflected the theme of the novel.