The term stream of consciousness was coined by William James in his book “Principles of Psychology (1890). William James used this technique to characterize the continuous, non-linear, un sequential and unbroken flow of thoughts that arrive in our mind like an endless and ceaseless chain. Later the term was adopted by novelists as a narrative style in Modern Fiction.

“A narrative device which mimics the chaos of natural thoughts pattern that often lacks obvious connections.”

Long passages of self-analysis or introversion are found in the novelists like George Meredith, Henry James (Brother of William James) and Edouard Dujardin. After World War I, the term was clarified as a mode of narration to capture the full range and flux of a character’s mental affairs, in which the sensitivity mingle with subconscious and conscious memories, feelings and thoughts.

Sometimes the term “Stream of Consciousness” is understood equally to the term “Interior Monologue”. It might be useful to understand as Interior Monologue takes us directly to the state of characters mind without the interference of the author. Although the sense of concious flow of feelings and thoughts is non-verbal, hence can be a difference between both the terms.

Dorothy Richardson is the leading novelist of this technique focussing exclusively on the mind of her heroine, throughout the twelve volumes of her Pilgrimage (1915-1938). Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf; The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner; Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce and Cry, The Peacock (1963) by Anita Desai are a few notable examples of concious technique.