ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

cause and consequence, World War I is narrated as the complete absence of history.
After Andrew Ramsay’s death, nothing specific happens. Time does not pass, but
instead “ran shapelessly together.” Battle does not occur through time, but instead
time itself battles. The war, in short, consumes time, while narrative is only possible
when time and event are comprehensible as distinct aspects operating at different
levels of comprehension. With the melding of time with the war, history exists in
“Time Passes” as presence beyond not only scenic narration, but direct narration in
summary as well, instead narrating them metaphorically. The narration remains
anchored in a particular place, without direct access to these major historical events.
It remains, then, a sort of stream of consciousness, though without any particular
consciousness as an anchor.
In order to maintain a sense of narrative in the face of lyrical and real-world
chaos, in sections eight and nine of “Time Passes,” the narrator largely abandons the
seasonal narrative and heavy figuration of the middle sections of “Time Passes” for
human focalizers. In part, this marks a gradual return to the normal narrative mode of
To the Lighthouse. However, there is a difference in these sections from the parallel
earlier sections featuring Mrs. McNab which provides a deeper challenge to the class
orientation of the novel and narrator as a whole. Mrs. McNab, along with Mrs. Bast,
who joins her in preparing the house for the Ramsays’ return, receives the same sort
of focalization characters do in “The Window” and “The Lighthouse.”
The first of these sections narrates a particular occasion in which Mrs. McNab
cleans the house and shuts it up. Section eight ends, “The rain came in. But they
never sent; never came. Some of the locks had gone, so the doors banged. She didn’t
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