May Sinclair and the Stream of Consciousness: Metaphors and Metaphysics

134 MAY SINCLAIR AND THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS! METAPHORS AND METAPHYSICS By Diane F. Gillespie (Washington State University) May Sinclair's borrowed phrase, "Stream of Consciousness," reverberates widely and wildly through criticism of modern fiction. In spite of attempts to define both "consciousness" and "stream," usage in discussions of the novel remains problematic. Most users agree that the phrase refers not to a single technique but, rather, to a category of fiction identified by psychological subject matter and utilizing several techniques and devices. Users disagree, however, about the levels of nonverbal and verbal consciousness and the degrees of author intervention the term encompasses ; a work labeled "stream of consciousness" in one study, therefore, may be denied the label in another.1 This difficulty is compounded by the metaphorical nature of the word "stream." It has two conflicting sets of connotations. On the one hand, it connotes unity and continuity. When associated with consciousness , it suggests an active, creative self. On the other hand, stream connotes multiplicity and change. When associated with consciousness, it suggests a relatively passive receiver of impressions. May Sinclair was aware of this imprecision when, in I9I8, she applied William James's metaphor to Dorothy Richardson's novels.2 Richardson's objections to the term have been discussed.3 But, while Sinclair's pioneering use of the phrase has been acknowledged , her recognition of its limitations has not.5 Sinclair's reference to "Miriam Henderson's stream of consciousness going on and on" in Richardson's work exists in a metaphysical context! by not intervening between herself and her material, by "identifying herself with this life which is Miriam's stream of consciousness ," Sinclair says, Richardson gets "closer to reality than any of our novelists who are trying so desperately to get close."6 Sinclair's emphasis on reality in her critical and philosophical writings as well as in her fiction illuminates not only the history of a critical term but also her own mind and art. Sinclair's definition of reality is inseparable from her definition of consciousness. That definition bears some resemblance to that of William James. He compares consciousness to a stream when hé* explains the third of his "five characters in thought." First he observes that "every thought tends to be part of a personal consciousness" and that "within each personal consciousness thought is always changing." His third observation is that "within each personal consciousness, thought is sensibly continuous ."7 Every consciousness, he says, even after a time gap, feels that it is the same consciousness. Moreover, changes within the consciousness are gradual. Therefore consciousness . . . does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as "chain" or "train" do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A "river" 135 or a "stream" are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life." In context, then, the metaphor suggests to James the consciousness ' s sense of its own unity and continuity. Sinclair did not use James's comparison casually. A student of philosophy, she wrote two books on the subject. A Defense of Idealism was published in 1917, the year prior to the essay on Richardson.. More serious in tone and rigorous in method, The New Idealism appeared in 1922.9 That Sinclair should have borrowed the metaphor from a philosopher with whose views she fundamentally disggreed is, however, curious. Although eclectic, her borrowings usually reflect a consistent, if evolving, metaphysical position. James could propose a comparison she considered sufficiently apt only because she detected basic contradictions in his thinking. Sinclair's two books of philosophy are primarily responses to the threat to a particular form of metaphysical idealism posed by the "new realists," a group of thinkers which includes not only William James, but also men as diverse as Samuel Butler, Henri Bergson, Bertrand Russell, S. Alexander, and Alfred North Whitehead.1° Sinclair readily acknowledges that these men are justified in attacking traditional idealism if they identify it with solipsism or subjective idealism. The destruction of that position, she says, is...