While Jane Austen did not use the stream-of-consciousness technique in the same way as modernist writers like Virginia Woolf, she did employ a similar technique of representing a character's thoughts as they occur in real time. This technique, sometimes referred to as "free indirect discourse," allows the reader to glimpse a character's innermost thoughts and feelings without the intrusion of a narrator's voice. It is a more subtle and controlled form of representing thought than the stream-of-consciousness technique, but it still represents a significant innovation in the development of the modern novel.