Literary impressionism in selected texts by Walter Pater, Joseph Conrad, and Virginia Woolf

Abstract

This dissertation explores the interplay between literature and impressionism in three Modernist novels. The texts, Marius the Epicurean: His Sensations and Ideas by Walter Pater, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and The Waves by Virginia Woolf have affinities with literary impressionism. The style, which derives from Impressionist painting, prioritises a character’s consciousness before a plot of external actions, as the immediate impressions and sensations imbue within the character a sense of empirical understanding of events. This dissertation will discuss how these novelists make use of painterly techniques to experiment with narration in a manner that deviates from classic realism. Pater’s novel is concerned with the intellectual impressions, those that are invoked from the subjective experience that emerges out of an intimate connection with art. Conrad imposes intense atmospheric conditions onto his narrators which heavily influence their sensory impressions and thus their means of understanding events. Woolf creates a narrative space out of her six protagonists’ minds. Her use of light and how it affects colour and surroundings is impressionistic, but it also shows qualities often identified as post-impressionistic.