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Account for some of the ways in which modernist writing has represented
subjectivity
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As a result, in the literary works of the Modernist
movement, there is a great deal of subverting not only the conventional cultural
organizations which the human subject is oppressed by, but also traditional
syntactic, narrative and linguistic structures manipulated in order to reflect
the subjective fragmented consciousness of the individual character to the
greatest possible extent
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In the writings of the period, there is, therefore, an interest to
represent the subjectivity of individuals, the conscious self, since this is a
more reliable technique of reflecting human nature in comparison to external
reality
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For
instance, the linear development of plot through narrative structure is
destructed and arranged in a way to best reflect subjectivity of characters as
Lukacs points out in: ‘The Theory of the Novel’ (1974), with regard to the
narrator in works:
‘…may be moved and impressed by the strange, profound experiences of an
individual and pour them into the mould of an objectivised destiny’
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Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs Dalloway’ (1925) is an example of innovative Modernist
writing in which the author subverts narrative technique through free indirect
discourse in order to represent the internal subjective thoughts, opinions and
sensations of her characters
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The mind receives a
myriad impressions--trivial, fantastic, evanescent…Life is…a semi-transparent
envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end’
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This intricate formal method obscures the authority of
the third-person omniscient narrator that may be prevalent in texts using a more

direct style of narrative; consequently, the subjective perspective of
characters becomes the dominant focus in the work
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Dalloway’, Woolf obstructs syntactic order in the novel since there are no
chapter divisions, so to unfold the consciousness of characters in a free
flowing method, in addition to the lack of speech marks to indicate the
introspection of each character, which provides them a narrative voice
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Another notable element which can be seen through Woolf’s free indirect style in
‘Mrs Dalloway’, is the digression of one character’s introspection to another’s
reflection or action, creating an overall impression of a network of
subjectivity to the whole novel
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However, this apparent parentheses of multitudinous thoughts and external action
ironically creates the effect of unifying all elements of plot and character
together and stresses subjectivity
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Her stomach was in her mouth…Away and away the aeroplane
shot…a symbol…thought Mr Bentley…’3
Undoubtedly, this alternation of interior monologue to external commentary
throughout the novel creates a continuous cycle of intervention of the narration
by subjective introspection, highlighting the importance of human consciousness
at the expense of narrative authority
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Moreover, it is evident that the representation of subjective perspectives and
memories of characters in ‘Mrs Dalloway’ is to such great extent that it
obscures the distinction between illusion and reality, the past and the present
so that a subjectivity discourages a literal reading of some passages in the
novel
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Arguably, Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith are counterparts in
that the depiction of these characters serve to represent the conflict between
social codes which shapes subjective consciousness and the inherent
psychological worlds which exists separately from these external conditions
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a Skye terrier snuffed his trousers and he started in an agony of fear
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As a result, the innovations of Modernist writings include the integration
of alternative perspectives of realities, those which are not conditioned by the
norms of society, as represented by the social consciousness of Clarissa
Dalloway:
‘Clarissa Dalloway…felt very sisterly and oddly conscious of her hat
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Through the contrast of the subjectivity
of Clarissa and Septimus, Woolf reveals the preoccupation of Modernist writings
on the meaningless state of social order and existence
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Innovative works of literature during the high modernist period
aims to illustrate post-war disillusionment and nihilism where instead of social
regeneration, fragments of subjective memory dominates themes, pointing out to a
nostalgia for the unity of the past
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S Eliot’s poem ‘The Wasteland’ (1922) is
an example of a Modernist work which profoundly focuses on modern society’s
disintegration of values, and stresses the emptiness of the human soul
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’6
In this passage of the poem, Eliot remarks on the subjective consciousness of
the common individual, conveying how it contains no answers or knowledge to the
question because it is dominated by the memories and images of the fruitful past
which was characterized by stability
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However, this
subjective feeling of nothingness offers the speaker escapism form external
institutions in society which aims to justify the actions of the war, in
particular from the modern city which is only contained with the ghosts of the
dead
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Similar to Woolf’s representation of illogical reality that can exist in
subjective consciousness through the depiction of Septimus Smith, in: ‘The
Wasteland’, Eliot represents the significance of the internal world of humans
that makes external realities meaningless
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Certainly, Eliot’s poem aims to highlight the futility of reason and order
brought about by the norms of literary form, for it is the representation of the
subjective feeling in the individual that can best explain meanings in a
Modernist work
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As the unidentified woman in this
section asks for the subjective thoughts of
the speaker, the reply is highly ambiguous:
‘I think we are in rats’ alley/Where the dead men lost their bones
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In either work of Modernist
literature, it is not possible to derive meanings through literal meanings or
normative structure, it is the subjectivity of each character which the reader
must seek to interpret
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The poem stresses the
desperation of the human soul for salvation from the moral decay of the world
through imagery of barrenness, dryness and waste which draws attention to
destruction
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This degeneration of Western culture as a result of corruption is exemplified in
the last section of the poem, the pinnacle in which the allusions to death in
the earlier episodes meet in an apocalyptic ending:
‘Who are those hooded hordes swarming/…What is the city over the
mountains/Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violent air/Falling towers…’9
Arguably, the religious references to destruction and doom is ironic in a postwar setting in which the poem is constructed, however, Eliot’s imagery alludes
here to the destructed morale of individuals in the period, whereby an internal
regeneration is
more difficult in comparison to the external world
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As it is evident through the works of Woolf and Eliot, standard forms of
literary writings are insufficient to offer subjective readings or an accurate
representation of the human consciousness, resorting the writer to adopt
inventive styles
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10
Breton’s emphasis on surrealism in artistic works which depicts the irrational
consciousness of the subject to a very great extent is shared by the literature
of the absurd, groups of literary works that represents the meaningless state of
the human condition
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This surrealist representation of disordered human experience is undoubtedly
explored in Franz Kafka’s novella: ‘The Metamorphosis’ (1915), which emphasizes
the meaningless state of modern life where the individual subject is oppressed
and alienated to the benefit of dominant social forces
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Kafka unfolds the plot in a matter of fact manner through the
narrative, and does not detail the metamorphosis or show any implications of
whether
to perceive the transformation metaphorically, which adds to the surrealism and
absurdity of the notion
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Through a farcical situation of a human being transformed into an insect, in
this extract, Kafka highlights the irony that the socially conscious

protagonist’s preoccupations with the routine modern life of individuals are yet
more absurd, the seemingly rational thinking is a result of the same oppressive
forces of external society that has led to Septimus’s suicide and Clarissa’s
sacrifice of the soul in Woolf’s ‘Mrs
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It is possible to argue then, that the central theme of Kafka’s novella is not
on the whole concerned with the complications and the surrealism of the
transformation of the character into an insect, but rather reflects on the
subjective, nightmarish anxiety of the author and other socially conscious
thinkers such as T
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Indeed, this
accounts for the absence of a detailed account of Gregor’s physical
transformation and the frank tone of narrative commentary despite the pathos of
Gregor‘s alienation, since Kafka, as part of the generation of writers in the
German movement of expressionism in the early Twentieth century, aims to convey
the development of internal personal feelings of the protagonist as a result of
this situation, a style of writing which contradicts the conventions of realism
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His opinion about the necessity
for him to disappear was, if possible, firmer than his sisters’
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By maintaining the narrative of the
subjective consciousness of a character, Kafka communicates his own fears and
anxieties in a rapidly changing modern world which alienates the society from
their introspective values
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However, the
major developments in literary technique was arguably in the post-war period of
high modernism, whereby the adoption of a stream of conscious style by authors
such as Virginia Woolf not only stressed the fragmentary nature of the human
consciousness and the meaninglessness of the seemingly united social
institutions, but also offered successive artists to utilize a method of
representing the subjective realities which may otherwise remain obscured by
standard literary forms

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