Point of View

The Years makes use of first-person perspectives and free indirect speech throughout, punctuated with short scenes and vignettes told by an omniscient narrator. The overall effect of this is that she presents two layers to reality: the human level, in which thoughts, feelings, and perceptions melt together, and the non-human level, which tends to relate to facts and information about the weather and the world outside society.

Woolf uses multiple perspectives by stringing together chains of characters via their interactions. What this means is that the perspective of the book often shifts as the point at which characters speak to one another, meet, or go their separate ways. In a typical scene, we follow Rose to a meeting with Eleanor and hear Rose's thoughts; the narrative perspective shifts to Eleanor's viewpoint for the duration of the meeting, and afterwards she speaks to her cousin Kitty...