Woolf’s work has been the object of several studies concerned with her experimental use of techniques of speech, thought and consciousness presentation. These investigated the way in which different perspectives coexist and alternate in her writing, suggesting that the use of such techniques often results in ambiguous perspective shifts. However, there is hardly any empirical evidence as to whether readers experience difficulty while reading her narratives as a result of these narrative techniques. This article examines empirically readers’ responses to extracts from Woolf’s two major novels – To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway – to provide evidence for whether Woolf’s techniques for the presentation of characters’ voices, thoughts and perspectives represent a challenge for readers. To achieve this, a mixed-methods approach that combines a stylistic analysis with a detailed questionnaire has been employed. Selected extracts that were hypothesised to be complex due to the presence of free indirect style and/or interior monologue were modified by substituting these with less ambiguous modes of consciousness presentation, such as direct speech or direct thought. Readers’ responses to the modified and unmodified versions of the same extracts were compared: results show that the presence of free indirect style and/or interior monologue increases the number of perspectives identified by readers, suggesting that this technique increases the texts’ difficulty, laying a more solid ground for future investigations.

伍尔夫（Woolf）的工作一直是有关她对言语，思想和意识表达技术的实验性使用的若干研究的对象。这些研究调查了她的写作中不同观点共存和交替的方式，这表明使用此类技术通常会导致模棱两可的视角转换。但是，几乎没有任何经验证据表明读者由于这些叙事技巧而在阅读叙事时是否遇到困难。本文从经验上考察了读者对伍尔夫的两本主要小说摘录的回应：《到灯塔去》和《达洛维夫人》–提供证据证明伍尔夫表达角色的声音，思想和观点的技术是否对读者构成挑战。为了实现这一目标，已经采用了一种结合了风格分析和详细问卷的混合方法。假设某些提取物由于存在自由的间接风格和/或内部独白而被认为是复杂的，可以用意识模糊程度较低的模式（例如直接语音或直接思考）代替这些提取物。比较了读者对相同摘录的修改版和未修改版的回应：结果表明存在自由间接风格 和/或内部独白增加了读者确定的观点的数量，这表明该技术增加了文本的难度，为以后的研究奠定了更坚实的基础。