Lispector’s style is characterized by a deliberate indeterminacy, meant to mirror the internal processes by which individuals perceive the world, themselves, and others. Laura’s fragmented thoughts are reflected in the author’s prose by sentences that are difficult to interpret or groups of sentences or phrases that seem not to go together. This creates an effect similar to what the protagonist must be experiencing, that is, a sense of the unfinished and inconclusive nature of reality and thought. The reader, however, is likely to be more aware of this than is Laura because the process of reading typically involves some level of introspection and analysis. In her use of fragmented interior monologue, Lispector has been compared to Virginia Woolf, although her narration is reminiscent in some ways of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857; English translation, 1886), whose narrator is neither first nor third person, but some combination of the two.