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''The Waves'' is a 1931
novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
by English novelist
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
. It is critically regarded as her most
experimental
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when ...
work, consisting of ambiguous and cryptic
soliloquies spoken mainly by six characters; Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis. Percival, a seventh character, appears in the soliloquies, though readers never hear him speak in his own voice.
The dialogues that span the characters' lives are broken up by nine brief third-person interludes detailing a coastal scene at varying stages in a day from sunrise to sunset. As the six characters or "voices" speak, Woolf explores concepts of individuality, self and community. Each character is distinct, but together composes a certain feeling of a silent central consciousness.
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, ''The Waves'' was voted the 16th greatest British novel ever written.
Plot
The novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood. Woolf is concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together.
Bernard is a story-teller, always seeking some elusive and apt phrase. Some critics see Woolf's friend
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly ''A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910), and ''A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous short stori ...
as an inspiration for him.
Louis is an outsider who seeks acceptance and success. Some critics see in him aspects of
T. S. Eliot, whom Woolf knew well.
Neville, who may be partly based on another of Woolf's friends,
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight ...
, seeks out a series of men, each of whom becomes the present object of his transcendent love.
Jinny is a socialite whose
world view
A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural p ...
corresponds to her physical, corporeal beauty. There is evidence that she is based on Woolf's friend
Mary Hutchinson.
Susan flees the city, preferring the countryside, where she grapples with the thrills and doubts of motherhood. Some aspects of Susan recall Woolf's sister
Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen).
Early life and education
Vanessa Stephen was the eld ...
.
Rhoda is riddled with self-doubt, anxiety and depression, always rejecting and indicting human compromise, always seeking out solitude. She echoes
Shelley's poem "The Question". Rhoda resembles Virginia Woolf in some respects.
Percival, partly based on Woolf's brother,
Thoby Stephen
Julian Thoby Stephen (9 September 1880 – 20 November 1906), known as the Goth, was the brother of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, both prominent members of the Bloomsbury Group, and of Adrian Stephen.
Thoby Stephen was the eldest son of L ...
, is the esteemed hero of the other six. He dies midway through the novel, while engaged on an imperialist quest in India. Percival never speaks on his own in ''The Waves'', but readers learn about him in detail as the other six characters repeatedly describe and reflect on him.
Style
The difficulty of assigning genre to this novel is complicated by the fact that ''The Waves'' blurs distinctions between prose and poetry, allowing the novel to flow between six not dissimilar
interior monologues. The book similarly breaks down boundaries between people, and Woolf herself wrote in her ''Diary'' that the six were not meant to be separate "characters" at all, but rather facets of consciousness illuminating a sense of continuity. Even the term "novel" may not accurately describe the complex form of ''The Waves'' as is described in the
literary biography When studying literature, biography and its relationship to literature is often a subject of literary criticism, and is treated in several different forms. Two scholarly approaches use biography or biographical approaches to the past as a tool for i ...
of Woolf by Julia Briggs (''An Inner Life'', Allen Lane 2005). Woolf called it not a novel but a "playpoem".
The book explores the role of the "ethos of male education" in shaping public life, and includes scenes of some of the characters experiencing bullying during their first days at school.
Reception
Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenar (, , ; born Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour; 8 June 1903 – 17 December 1987) was a Belgian-born French novelist and essayist, who became a US citizen in 1947. Winner of the ''Prix Fem ...
translated ''The Waves'' into French over a period of ten months in 1937. She met Virginia Woolf during this period and wrote: "I do not believe I am committing an error ... when I put Virginia Woolf among the four or five great virtuosos of the English language and among the rare contemporary novelists whose work stands some chance of lasting more than ten years."
Although ''The Waves'' is not one of Virginia Woolf's most famous works, it is highly regarded. Literary scholar Frank N. Magill ranked it one of the 200 best books of all time in his reference book, ''Masterpieces of World Literature''. In ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'', British author
Amy Sackville
Amy Sackville (born 1981) is a British writer whose debut novel '' The Still Point'' was the winner of the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.
Sackville studied English and theatre studies at Leeds University, followed by an MPhil at Oxford's Exete ...
wrote that "as a reader, as a writer, I constantly return, for the lyricism of it, the melancholy, the humanity."
Theatre director
Katie Mitchell
Katrina Jane Mitchell (born 23 September 1964) is an English theatre director.
Life and career
Mitchell was born in Reading, Berkshire, raised in Hermitage, Berkshire, and educated at Oakham School. Upon leaving Oakham, she went up to Mag ...
, who adapted ''The Waves'' for the stage, called the work "entrancing
Woolf's point is that the lasting and significant events in our lives are small and insignificant in the eyes of the outside world."
In popular culture
1970s
Glam Rock
Glam rock is a style of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s and was performed by musicians who wore outrageous costumes, makeup, and hairstyles, particularly platform shoes and glitter. Glam artists drew on diver ...
singer
Steve Harley
Steve Harley (born Stephen Malcolm Ronald Nice; 27 February 1951) is an English singer and songwriter, best known as frontman of the rock group Cockney Rebel, with whom he still tours, albeit with frequent and significant personnel changes.
Ea ...
, the lead singer of
Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, wrote a song titled 'Riding The Waves (For Virginia Woolf)' as track five on his 1978 debut solo album '
Hobo with a Grin
''Hobo with a Grin'' is the debut solo album by British singer-songwriter Steve Harley, which was released by EMI in 1978. The album was produced by Harley, except for " Roll the Dice", which was produced by Michael J. Jackson. Jackson also act ...
'. Woolf had long been an influence on Harley's music, and much of the lyrics of the song are taken from 'The Waves'.
Italian pianist
Ludovico Einaudi
Ludovico Maria Enrico Einaudi OMRI (; born 23 November 1955) is an Italian pianist and composer. Trained at the Conservatorio Verdi in Milan, Einaudi began his career as a classical composer, later incorporating other styles and genres such as ...
composed his first piano album,
Le Onde
''Le onde'' (Italian "The Waves") is an album released in 1996 by the Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi. The album is based on the novel ''The Waves'' by British writer Virginia Woolf, and was Einaudi's first solo piano album. The album enjoyed mai ...
, based on the novel.
References
External links
*
*
* Francesco Mulas (2002),
Virginia Woolf's The Waves: A Novel of “Silence”'.
* Jocelyn Rodal (2006).
"One World, One Life": The Politics of Personal Connection in Virginia Woolf's ''The Waves'''.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Waves, The
1931 British novels
Hogarth Press books
Novels by Virginia Woolf
Modernist novels