The Use of Free Indirect Discourse in Modernism

Further notes towards an essay (or two?) around Modernism. Here looking at Virginia Woolf and Langston Hughes and the way they each used Free Indirect Discourse.

Virginia Woolf (left), Langston Hughes (right)

In the romantic and Victorian novels that were dominant ahead of Modernism, writing relied on a clear structure where moral absolutism allowed for a narrative to move forward with clear indications and cues around who was speaking (“he said” / “she said”). Modernism opened this up to include more impressionistic takes, narratives flowing between narrators, and the interior monologues guiding the flow of the work. Subjectivity, stream of consciousness, and then the chance to present an unreliable narrator all came from the narrative technique of free indirect discourse.

In Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf embraced the technique of free indirect discourse to transition between the thoughts of her multiple characters. The stream of consciousness writing helps the author to present the mental and emotional state of her characters, not just descriptions of time and place and social etiquette, but a dive into the minds; at times dizzying, it gave the author a chance to play with obfuscation, making the lack of certainty around who is speaking, and the different ‘takes’ of main characters a part of the novel’s concerns, and flow. Subjectivity replaces the objectivity that had been the dominant force behind narration. In Mrs Dalloway, we hear from both Clarissa and Septimus, the characters never meet, and can be seen as opposites to one another, but they ‘double’ in many instances, both shellshocked from the war, in different ways, both lovers of Shakespeare, they quote or allude to Cymbeline (“Fear no more the heat 'o the sun / Nor the furious winter's rages”) and though it is Septimus that commits suicide, we know through the interior monologues that Clarissa also considers the move. This blurring of their gestures and thoughts, this decision to let the readers in on the interior lives, is a hallmark of the novel, and greatly achieved through the use of free indirect discourse. Some of the dizzying feel of the way the dialogue (and ‘inner’ dialogue) sweeps and shifts helps in achieving an intended ‘edge’ or discombobulation of action that plays out over one day.

Langston Hughes used free indirect discourse in his short stories to provide commentary around social status, class, privilege and race. He would often deliberately obfuscate who was speaking, in terms of tone of voice in his stories, so as to leave himself hovering over the story rather than deeply imbedded in it. Often in Hughes’ stories it can be hard to tell if the narrator is the character being discussed, or whether the narrator is the author in that hovering position. He does this to cast little external judgment, often leaving his white characters to ‘hang’ themselves by their own words. In the story Slave On The Block, the outrageous way the white couple describe their love for negro culture feels like a written version of minstrelsy and blackface. A deliciously grotesque characterisation as caricature, deliberate and jarring.

This is a similar approach to using the free indirect technique to achieve a type of social commentary as Woolf. Hughes might have been focussing on capturing a different tone of voice, in a different location (Harlem) but both he and Woolf are concerned with perspective. For Hughes it is more about rhythm, for Woolf it is about memory; that said, the rhythm of Hughes’ black characters suggests they carry their memories with them, as if a conversational swagger or stride. Where Woolf was looking at gender roles, the ‘doubling’ of her opposite characters and the pressures that society has put on them and their mental states, Hughes was delving more into how race impacts/dictates class. Woolf’s use of the technique feels psychological and introspective, forensic in the sense of showing what is pushing down on the character. Hughes was able to mine more humour from the technique, the parallels of imbalance if you like, the way a form of resilience was shown through sly humour and even some ribald moments, the glorification of the negro form through the eyes of white people so sure they’re in tune with the different race as to not see their own privilege at all. Woolf’s characters are somewhat more obsessed with owning and showcasing their class, not trying to disappear from it. Woolf wanted to show how perspectives can be moved across with a fluidity that could add to the interior tension. Hughes was more about using the technique to offer versions of ‘real’ dialogue, the rhythm and feel of the spoken language. Woolf’s Modernist exploration of consciousness is, then about psychological depth, whereas Hughes’ is more often about social critique.