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Point Of View And Speech-Thought Presentation Analysis of A Haunted House (1943) By Virginia Woolf

A Haunted House

Virginia Woolf

A.      Point Of View

Based on my analysis of this story, the author uses many points of view. Because in the first paragraph, the pronoun of ‘you’  can be defined by the second-person point of view. The use of the second-person pronoun ‘you’ attempts to involve us in the narrator’s experiences, as if to suggest that we have all felt something similar to this, things on the margins of our conscious experience. But in a few paragraphs, there is also the use of the pronoun ‘my’ and ‘I’ which can be categorized as a first-person point of view, the use of the pronoun ‘I’ is identified as a description of the character in the story, namely one of the couples who live in a haunted house, who often hears invisible whispers in the house that can be called a ghost couple. 

Overall, in my opinion, the point of view used in this short story is Omniscient Limited or the third-person point of view. The author tells the story using pronouns ‘they', ‘she’, ‘he’, ‘it’, etc. We know only what the character knows and what the author allows him/her to tell us. We can see the thoughts and feelings of characters if the author chooses to reveal them to us.

More specifically, when viewed from the approaches to point of view, this story uses a lot of points of view on the spatial planes, where the author explains how things are happening and what is happening. We can see one example of text from a story included in the spatial plane:

“Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.”

The paragraph above explains how someone who is the main character (explicitly is a woman) feels cared for, the narrator imagines a ghostly couple standing over her while she sleeps, and, holding the lamp above the living couple's bed, the ghosts stop, still looking for 'hidden joy'. Wherefrom this point of view, we can see and imagine how the situation experienced by the narrator. The writer through the narrator explains how the conditions that are being experienced by the characters.

In this story, the use of negative shading can be seen with the epistemic modality that appears that indicates an indication of what is likely to occur. You can see one of the example paragraphs in the story:

“... one might say, and so read on a page or two. ... one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. ... one might rise and see for oneself, ...“What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?” The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.”

B.      Speech And Thought Presentation

Summary of Speech and Thought Presentation in the Data.

DS/FDS

DT/FDT

IS/FIS

IT/FIT

25

12

4

3

Woolf uses direct-speech presentation the most in the story. For example one of the quotes in the story:

‘Here we left it,’ she said. And he added, ‘Oh, but here too!’ ‘It’s upstairs,’ she murmured. ‘And in the garden,’ he whispered. ‘Quietly,’ they said, ‘or we shall wake them.’

In short, the narrator describes the house where she and her partner live. Every time she wakes up at home, she seems to hear voices: the door is closed, and the sound of a 'ghost couple' roams from room to room in the house. The narrator claims to be able to hear this ghost couple talking to each other.

A Haunted House seems to be Woolf's attempt to convey the feeling of feeling only at the edge of hearing or vision: something that cannot be seen directly but can be felt, only at the periphery of our vision. We can probably all relate to the experience of being alone at home and feel that every creak, every hum, every sound that is at risk of something - ghosts, or bullies, for example. The story of Woolf tries to summarize that experience.

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