Virginia Woolf's Use of Moments of Being

Virginia Woolf's Use of Moments of Being

Virginia Woolf is recognized as one of the great innovators of modern fiction.

Her experiments with point of view and her use of stream of consciousness have

influenced many writers that followed her. But one particularly interesting

technique that does not seem to receive much attention is her use of "moments of

being."

She first mentions moments of being in her essay, "A Sketch of the Past," which

was to be the beginning of her memoirs. She begins with one of her earliest

memories: a night in the nursery at St. Ives. She vividly recalls the way the

blinds fluttered in the wind, the light coming through the window and the sound

of the sea. She had a feeling of "lying in a grape and seeing through a film of

semi-transparent yellow" (65). This memory is so strong that when she recalls

those sensations they become more real for her than the present moment.

This observation leads her to wonder why some moments are so powerful and

memorable--even if the events themselves are unimportant--that they can be

vividly recalled while other events are easily forgotten. She concludes that

there are two kinds of experiences: moments of being and non-being.

Woolf never explicitly defines what she means by "moments of being." Instead she

provides examples of these moments and contrasts them with moments of what she

calls "non-being." She describes the previous day as:

Above the average in 'being.' It was fine; I enjoyed writing these first

pages . . . I walked over Mount Misery and along the river; and save that

the tide was out, the country, which I n...

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...ople.

When the cotton wool is rent, when one experiences a moment with full

consciousness, one experiences the true intensity of life. These moments of

being can be read as brief poems hidden among the trivial details of life that

some characters--and readers with them--are fortunate enough to experience.

Works Cited

Winterson, Jeanette. "A Gift of Wings." In Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and

Effrontery. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Woolf, Virginia. Between the Acts. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1969.

-------. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.

-------. To the Lighthouse. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1981.

-------. "A Sketch of the Past."In Moments of Being.Ed. Jeanne Schulkind. 2nd

ed. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1985.