Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown

In contrast, when Woolf quotes Arnold Bennett, we can see that he preferred to write in the third person and to take on an omniscient perspective in which the author is implied to be infallible. For example, describing “Freehold Villas,” a row of houses that his character Hilda observes from her window, Bennett writes (and Woolf quotes): “It corresponded with a Building Society Secretary’s dream of paradise. And indeed it was a very real achievement. Nevertheless, Hilda’s irrational contempt would not admit this” (15). This description is simple, objective, and certain; it admits no debate, nor does it allow that there is anything the novelist does not know about his characters. This is a marked contrast to Woolf’s depiction of character which is more “fragmentary,” as she puts it, but which seeks to capture complexity and contradictions. By placing this authorial voice alongside her own, Woolf reveals a different style of authorship that treats the writer as all-knowing. The contrast adds further substance to her argument.

Stream of consciousness is a style of writing for which Woolf is well known. Mrs. Dalloway (1925), perhaps her most famous novel, is a continuous stream of consciousness. The whole novel is the sequential thoughts and impressions that cross the mind of the titular character. This technique offers direct access to a complex and sometimes contradictory experience of life, apparently without filtering or restructuring. Stream-of-consciousness writing is often regarded as a form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in thought.

There are elements of this approach in Woolf’s depiction of Mrs. Brown. For example, we can see a reference to a flow of thoughts in the statement, “all this shot through my mind as I sat down, being uncomfortable, like most people, at travelling with fellow passengers” (6-7). Stream of consciousness is a characteristically Modernist style that attempted to find a form with which to capture chaotic and complex experiences and people. Woolf calls for the development of new literary forms and conventions, so her use of elements of stream-of-consciousness writing illustrates her point.

Characterization is a key theme of “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” and it is also a central literary device because Woolf sets out to demonstrate her thesis as well as to explain it. She begins her description of characterization by calling characters “will-o’-the-wisp[s]” and “phantom[s]” and suggesting that most writers must “be content with a scrap of her dress or a wisp of her hair” (3). The implication is that Woolf believes that characterization will always be incomplete because capturing a person in all their complexity is impossible.

However, she sets out to try and, indeed, suggests that this attempt is the essence of good writing. Woolf argues that character in literature is like character in life and, therefore, we all have some skill in judging it. When she comes to draw Mrs. Brown’s character, she observes her while they share a railway carriage and has the humility to make it clear where she is speculating. For instance, she uses the words “might” and “perhaps” to show us that she does not have a total grasp of this character. This fragmentary form of characterization is appropriate to an essay that argues that modern life eludes representation because it is complex, and the inherited conventions of literary representation cannot do it justice.