Who cares about the stream of consciousness? On Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage

Abstract

This article brings the concept of care into the discussion of the literary representation of the stream of consciousness in Dorothy Richardson's thirteen-volume novel sequence Pilgrimage. I begin by looking at recent theorizations of care by Joan C. Tronto and Berenice Fisher, by Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, and by Sandra Laugier. I show confluences between this work and May Sinclair's famous essay on Richardson—in which the term “stream of consciousness” was first applied to a literary text. I then explore three interrelated forms of care that are central to Richardson's work. Subsequently, I isolate a particular strand in Pilgrimage in which Richardson's protagonist, Miriam Henderson, consistently conceives of her own consciousness in terms of care. I reflect in conclusion on the broader ramifications that care might have for considerations of the stream of consciousness in relation to the modernist novel.