Present perfect In british and american

126) “And in herself, as from time to time she observed lovers or flirtation-seekers who lingered at street corners or about doorways, and who looked at her in a longing and seeking way, there was a stirring, a nerve plasm palpitation that spoke loudly for all the seemingly material things of life, not for the thin pleasantries of heaven.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

127) “…it is the expression, slightly emphasized, with which he has received most of the untoward blows of his life in the past.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

128) “And the glances drilled her like an invisible ray…” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

129) “And then one day a youth of that plausible variety known as “masher” engaged her in conversation, largely because of a look and a mood which seemed to invite it.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

130) “And there was little to stay her, for she was essentially yielding, if not amorous.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

131) “Once her husband has gotten up, she reaches out and takes the note, then merely glares at it again, her face set in hard yet stricken and disturbing lines.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

132) “She became secretive and hid her ways from her parents.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

133) “Youths occasionally walked and talked with her in spite of herself.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

134) “Although, as Clyde has come to know, it can be done eventually, of course.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

135) “She wished for other contacts — dreamed of some bright, gay, wonderful love of some kind, with someone.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

136) “Finally, after a slow but vigorous internal growth of mood and desire, there came this actor…” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

137) “…something else — some malign, treacherous, deceiving power which, in the face of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, still beguiles and betrays — and find it eventually in the error and perverseness of the human heart, which God has made, yet which He does not control, because He does not want to control it.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

138) “…actor was able within the space of one brief week and a few meetings to completely befuddle and enmesh her so that she was really his to do with as he wished.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

139) “Esta has tired of all this, as has he.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

140) “And the truth was that he scarcely cared for her at all.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

141) “Perhaps there is someone, like one of those dandies whom he sees on the streets with the prettiest girls, with whom she has gone.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

142) “To him, dull as he was, she was just another girl — fairly pretty, obviously sensuous and inexperienced, a silly who could be taken by a few soft words…” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

143) “And yet his words were those of a lover who would be true forever.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

144) “All she had to do, as he explained to her, was to come away with him and be his bride, at once — now.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

145) “She has taken it away too quickly.”  (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

150) “There was difficulty about marriage here, which he could not explain — it related to friends — but in St. Louis he had a preacher friend who would wed them.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

151) “She would travel with him and see the great world.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

152) “She would never need to trouble more about anything save him; and while it was truth to her — the verbal surety of a genuine passion — to him it was the most ancient and serviceable type of blarney, often used before and often successful.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

153) “She sometimes walked out alone, or sat or stood in front of the mission during its idle or closed hours.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

154) “At twelve they returned and after that, naturally, the curiosity in regard to her grew momentarily sharper.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

155) “If only he has looked first, silently and to himself!” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

156) “He picked it up, eager to read it, but at that moment his mother came into the room …” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

157) “He surrendered it and she unfolded it, reading it quickly.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

158) “He noted that her strong broad face, always tanned a reddish brown, blanched as she turned away toward the outer room.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

160) “Her biggish mouth was now set in a firm, straight line.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

161) “Her large, strong hand shook the least bit as it held the small note aloft.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

162) “Always the more impressive, Mrs. Griffiths now showed herself markedly different and more vital in this trying situation, a kind of irritation or dissatisfaction with life itself, along with an obvious physical distress, seeming to pass through her like a visible shadow.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

163)  “…but she suspects something, for she has talked occasionally with girls, but in a very guarded and conservative way.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

164) “In the face of so great a calamity, it was very hard for her, as Clyde could see, to get this straightened out, instantly at least.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

165) “For in some blind, dualistic way both she and Asa insisted, as do all religionists, in disassociating God from harm and error and misery, while granting Him nevertheless supreme control.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

166) “At the moment, however, only hurt and rage were with her, and yet her lips did not twitch as did Asa’s, nor did her eyes show that profound distress which filled his.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

167) “Instead she retreated a step and reexamined the letter, almost angrily…”  (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

168) “With Asa then she retired quite precipitately to a small room back of the mission hall.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

169) “They heard her click the electric bulb.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

170) “Even Julia hardly gathered the full import of it.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

171) “Now, however, it is more the way in which Esta has chosen to leave, deserting her parents and her brothers and herself…” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

172) “But Clyde, because of his larger contact with life and his mother’s statement, understood well enough.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

173) “That note told something, and yet his mother had not let him see it.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

174) “She has gone with some man.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

175) “It was dreadful.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

176) “The air was thick with misery.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

177) “And as his parents talked in their little room, Clyde brooded too, for he was intensely curious about life now.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

178) “Was it, as he feared and thought, one of those dreadful runaway or sexually disagreeable affairs which the boys on the streets and at school were always slyly talking about?” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

179) “How shameful, if that were true!” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

180) “There is something wrong about that, no doubt, for a girl, anyhow, for all he has ever heard is that all decent contacts between boys and girls, men and women, lead to one thing — marriage.”

181) “Certainly this home life of theirs was pretty dark now, and it would be darker instead of brighter because of this.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

182) “Presently the parents came out, and then Mrs. Griffiths’ face was less savage perhaps, more hopelessly resigned.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

183) “She talked as though she were addressing a meeting, but with a hard, sad, frozen face and voice.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

184) “And now Esta, in addition to their other troubles, has gone and done this.”

185) “She has chosen to go her own way, for a time, for some reason.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

186) “Such a father, as Clyde often thought, afterwards.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

187) “Apart from his own misery, he seemed only to note and be impressed by the more significant misery of his wife.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

188) “We can only hope that she will soon see how foolish she has been, and unthinking, and come back.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

189) “Mrs. Griffiths looked firmly and yet apologetically at her children.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

190) “Mrs. Griffiths paused.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

191) “I wish she hasn’t done this…” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

192) “Evidently she didn’t want to be found.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

193) “During all this, he has stood foolishly to one side — short, gray, frizzled, inadequate.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

194) “She was probably dissatisfied, just as he was.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

195) “If anyone asks where she is, we will say that she has gone on a visit to some of my relatives back in Tonawanda.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

196) “It was only another something which hinted that things were not right here.” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

197) “Mission work was nothing.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

198) “It hasn’t saved Esta.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

199) “All this religious emotion and talk was not so much either.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

200) “Evidently, like himself, she didn’t believe so much in it, either.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

 

We calculate 200 sentences from the text and look at the results: 57 sentences with the Present Perfect Tense and 143 sentences with the Past Simple Tense. 57/143 ~ 0,398~ 0,4. One sentence with the Present Perfect Tense corresponds to 2,5 sentences with the Past Simple Tense. The Past Simple Tense is almost 2, 5 times more often used than the Present Perfect Tense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.2 Analysis of the text "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf

 

In order to analyse  the frequency of the use of Present Perfect and Past Simple in the British English language through the analysis of the sentences from the text "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf.

In Jacob's Room, the novel preceding Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf works with many of the same themes she later expands upon in Mrs. Dalloway. To Mrs. Dalloway, she added the theme of insanity. As Woolf stated, "I adumbrate here a study of insanity and suicide; the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side." However, even the theme that would lead Woolf to create a double for Clarissa Dalloway can be viewed as a progression of other similar ideas cultivated in Jacob's Room. Woolf's next novel, then, was a natural development from Jacob's Room, as well as an expansion of the short stories she wrote before deciding to make Mrs. Dalloway into a full novel.

The Dalloways had been introduced in the novel, The Voyage Out, but Woolf presented the couple in a harsher light than she did in later years. Richard is domineering and pompous. Clarissa is dependent and superficial. Some of these qualities remain in the characters of Mrs. Dalloway but the two generally appear much more reasonable and likeable. Clarissa was modeled after a friend of Woolf's named Kitty Maxse, whom Woolf thought to be a superficial socialite. Though she wanted to comment upon the displeasing social system, Woolf found it difficult at times to respond to a character like Clarissa. She discovered a greater amount of depth to the character of Clarissa Dalloway in a series of short stories, the first of which was titled, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street," published in 1923. The story would serve as an experimental first chapter to Mrs. Dalloway. A great number of similar short stories followed and soon the novel became inevitable. As critic Hermione Lee details, "On 14 October 1922 Woolf recorded that 'Mrs. Dalloway has branched into a book,' but it was sometime before Woolf could find the necessary balance between 'design and substance.'"

Within the next couple years, Woolf became inspired by a 'tunneling' writing process, allowing her to dig 'caves' behind her characters and explore their souls. As Woolf wrote to painter Jacques Raverat, it is "precisely the task of the writer to go beyond the 'formal railway line of sentence' and to show how people 'feel or think or dream...all over the place.'" In order to give Clarissa more substance, Woolf created Clarissa's memories. Woolf used characters from her own past in addition to Kitty Maxse, such as Madge Symonds, on whom she based Sally Seton. Woolf held a similar type of affectionate devotion for Madge at the age of fifteen as a young Clarissa held for Sally.

The theme of insanity was close to Woolf's past and present. She originally planned to have Clarissa die or commit suicide at the end of the novel but finally decided that she did want this manner of closure for Clarissa. As critic Manly Johnson elaborates, "The original intention to have Clarissa kill herself 'in the pattern of Woolf's own intermittent despair' was rejected in favor of a 'dark double' who would take that act upon himself. Creating Septimus Smith led directly to Clarissa's mystical theory of vicarious death and shared existence, saving the novel from a damaging balance on the side of darkness." Still, the disassociation of crippling insanity from the character of Clarissa Dalloway did not completely save Woolf from the pain of recollection. Woolf's husband and close friends compared her periods of insanity to a manic depression quite similar to the episodes experienced by Septimus. Woolf also included frustratingly impersonal doctor types in Bradshaw and Holmes that reflected doctors she had visited throughout the years.

As the novel focused mainly on the character of Clarissa Dalloway, Woolf changed the name of the novel to Mrs. Dalloway from its more abstract working title, The Hours, before publishing it. Woolf struggled to combine many elements that impinged on her sensibility as she wrote the novel. The title, Mrs. Dalloway, best suited her attempts to join them together. As Woolf commented, "In this book I have almost too many ideas. I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense." Furthermore, she hoped to respond to the stagnant state of the novel, with a consciously 'modern' novel. Many critics believe she succeeded. The novel was published in 1925, and received much acclaim.

1) “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

2) “And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning — fresh as if issued to children on a beach.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

3) “For so it has always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she can hear now, she has burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

4) “How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen…” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

5) “He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she has gone out on to the terrace — Peter Walsh.” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

6) “He would be back from India one of these days, June or July…” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

7) “…she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull…” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

8) “…it is his sayings one remembers; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things have utterly vanished — how strange it is!” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

9) “She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall’s van to pass.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

10) “There she perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

11) “For having lived in Westminster — how many years now?” (Action was completed in the past, but it has a connection with the present through the result of this action. The Present Perfect Tense.)

12) “The leaden circles dissolved in the air.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

13) “For it was the middle of June.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

14) “The War was over, except for someone like Mrs. Foxcroft at the Embassy last night eating her heart out …” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

15) “Lady Bexborough opened a bazaar.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

16) “It was June.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

17) “The King and Queen were at the Palace.” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)

18) “And everywhere, though it was still so early, there was a beating, a stirring of galloping ponies, tapping of cricket bats; Lords, Ascot, Ranelagh and all the rest of it; wrapped in the soft mesh of the grey-blue morning air …” (Actions took place in the past, one by one, i.e., in chronological order. The Past Simple Tense.)

19) “But how strange, on entering the Park, the silence; the mist; the hum; the slow-swimming happy ducks; the pouched birds waddling; and who should be coming along with his back against the Government buildings, most appropriately, carrying a despatch box stamped with the Royal Arms, who but Hugh Whitbread; her old friend Hugh — the admirable Hugh!” (It is single complete action. The Past Simple Tense.)