‘I wobble’. Narrative Strategies: Public and Private Voices

Abstract

The terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ are useful in discussing Woolf’s use of narrative voices: how she utilizes, combines and moves between public and private voices in her fiction. Her extensive use of free indirect discourse is an area of her narrative strategy where the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ can be illuminating. Most of the work on Woolf and free indirect discourse was written between 1945 and 1975, when her narrative techniques, particularly her use of point of view, were of primary interest to critics. Consequently, discussions of her use of free indirect discourse rarely consider the political implications of her most widely used narrative method. It is important that narrative voice, such an integral part of Woolf’s writing, is not ignored in favour of her politics, but is seen as essential to that debate: as William R. Handley writes, ‘her narrative experiments are in their effects and functions discernibly political’.1 Narratology is one of the areas of Woolf’s writing where qualities which have come to be called ‘postmodern’ are most prevalent: the style and structure of her writing are therefore integral to any political reading.