Difference between Psychological Time and Clock Time

with reference to 'To The Lighthouse'

PAPER - 9 : The Modernist LiteratureSTUDENT’S NAME : Gohil Yashpalsinh B.CLASS : M.A. Sem-3ROLL NO. : 15YEAR : 2013SUBMITTED TO : Prof. Dilip Barad (English Department, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University)

Two different types of time :

1. Clock Time (The time the clock tells)

2. Psychological Time (Time in the human mind)

1. Clock Time (The time the clock tells)

Clock time governs the relentless progress of life, ordering events in a chronological, linear sequence according to when they happened in time.

It is what history is made of.

Minutes, hours, days, weeks, years and centuries are all indicators of clock time.

The clock represents time that is objective and public.

2. Psychological Time (Time in the human mind)

The time told by the timepiece of the mind.

A term taken from the philosopher Henri Bergson.

The time system of the mind is subjective and personal.

Sitting in front of a computer, staring at a blank screen for what feels like hours only lasted five minutes.

A three-week holiday seemed to pass in a couple of days.

It does not always matter what time it is according to the clock. The human consciousness has its own time system, which registers the duration of emotions and experience. It does not rely on segmentation of time into minutes and hours.

2. Psychological Time (Time in the human mind)

2. Psychological Time (Time in the human mind)

This type of time is the temporal experience in the human mind: it is flexible; it is constantly in flux and can be compressed or extended.

A period that is compressed in the mind seems to pass very quickly in comparison to clock time: an event took more clock time than the human mind perceived. When time is extended, the actual time span of an event was much shorter that experienced.

'To The Lighthouse'

In ‘To The Lighthouse’ we can understand this concept of psychological time during moments of interior monologue. In the dinner table scene we descend into Lily Briscoe’s interior mind as she considers the impending marriage of Minta Doyle and Paul Rayley.

“For any rate, she said to herself, catching sight of the salt cellar on the pattern, she need not marry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degradation. She was saved from that dilution. She would move the tree rather more to the middle.” (Woolf, ‘To the Lighthouse’, 111)

In the climax scene also Lily Briscoe goes ten years back into the past and she completes her painting. The vision of painting finally becomes clear to Lily Briscoe.

'To The Lighthouse'

“She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.” (Woolf, To the Lighthouse’, 226)

CONCLUSION

This is how Psychological time is represented in the novel ‘To The Lighthouse’ .

In the novel Virginia Woolf skillfully shows how different characters, at different points in time, see things in different ways.

Thank You.