The Binding Vine is a stream of consciousness novel. Do you agree? Give reasons for your answers.

The Binding Vine as a Stream of Consciousness Novel: Stream of consciousness refers to a narrative technique by which a writer chooses to tell his story.

William James used this phrase for the first time to characterize the unbroken flow of thought and awareness in the waking mind.

James’ reference was to psychology. In literature, when a story runs in the mind of the main character, his senses seem to work in the past.

The character remembers his past and the flow of thought takes us back and forth. The thoughts, memories, feelings, and past associations create the world of the novel.

We see and feel everything in relation to the character. To describe the scenes, the novelist uses interior monologue, long introspective passages, flashbacks, dreams and fantasies.

In interior monologue, the characters reveal their thoughts and feelings by talking to themselves.

The time is not clock time; it is psychological time. Clock time is a measure to determine the time in terms of duration-hours days, weeks, months and years.

Psychological time has no relation to clock time; it is experienced by the individual and is subjective. Psychological time shifts constantly from past to present and to the future.

Many writers have used the stream of consciousness technique but we cannot say that they all followed a similar pattern.

They have perfected it from time to time by making minor changes, keeping the main pattern intact. 

The Binding Vine is a stream of consciousness novel because it is told from the consciousness of the main character, Urmi.

It is through Urmi’s laments that what happened to Urmi, her daughter died and she is grief-stricken. Her consciousness works through associations.

Anu’s death reminds Urmi of Baiajji’s death, and Baiajji reminds her of her girlhood days in Randburg. We know about Urmi’s staying with her grandparents through her thoughts going back and forth reveal this fact.

From her conversation, interior monologue and her thoughts, we know her feelings.

Her childhood was a happy one, but she missed her parents and held Inni her mother, responsible for sending her away.

Urmi often makes use of the interior monologue when she comments on life situations and Mira’s philosophy of life.

For example, we do not know that Mira was raped in marriage; we only know that she dreaded her husband’s advances.

Urmi comments. “What has happened to Kalpana happened to Mira too”.

This comment is not spoken out, it is nonverbal and yet, it is revealing. A powerful example of interior-monologue is Urmi’s summing up at the end of the novel.

It gives us solid proof of Urmi’s optimism, her philosophy of life, her strength, and her success in getting over her grief. At the beginning of the novel she resolves,

“I will not break” and by the end, she shows that she is not broken.

The time used is psychological time but it is intermingled with clock-time in the Kalpana episode. Kalpana’s rape takes place in the present but we know through Shakutai.

Now, it is Shakutai’s memory that is at work. The prese is revealed with the day-to-day happenings in Shakutai’s life – Sulu’s suicide, her husband’s visit, and Prakash’s wayward behavior.

Shakutai reminiscences only when she is recounting some past experience. Otherwise, it is her present that is more saddening and the future that is scary.

During this period, Urmi also lives in the present and records her movements in clock-time, like her visit to darhaskar, her stroll on the sea-shore and the second visit of Amrut. Past and present mingle.

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