What is Psychological Fiction?
An offshoot of realism, psychologicalfiction focuses on
the conflicts and motivations of its characters. In such literature, plot
events are often less important than the inner workings of each character’s
mind. A technique closely associated with psychological fiction is stream of consciousness, which presents the random flow
of a character’s thoughts. Though psychological fiction is often viewed as a
20th-century invention found in the writing of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and
others, earlier writers—such as George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Thomas
Hardy—can be said to employ this technique in varying
degrees.
