The Waves (1931)

The Waves is a novel about six characters: Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, Louis. To one who has not read the novel, these names appear quite ordinary. To one who has, the appearance of these names in conjunction calls up memories of what happened to each of them, of who they were and of what they did and said. The degree to which their names give rise to such feelings is a testament to the success of The Waves as fiction.

To say that The Waves is both a novel of experimental fiction and a success is to raise the question of whether its success is due to its structure, or in spite of that structure. In support of the latter case, let us consider one of the devices used by Woolf: an italicized descriptive section, devoid of human characters, that precedes each chapter. These interludes describe various reoccuring elements – the sun, a house, some birds – which will undoubtedly be endowed by some critics with a weighty significance. But in analyses of symbolism, the meaning assigned to any given symbolic element tends to reflect the intent of the critic more than that of the author. Still, here the author has made the symbolism to clear to ignore. So one must attempt to draw parallels between the occurences of the interludes and those of the chapters they precede. Some of them are clear enough; for example, the birds progress from isolation to togetherness in their song, just as they characters increasingly understand and work together with each other; similarly, the abrupt appearance of violence, as one of the birds kills a worm, mirrors Neville's “stabbing” Bernard with his rapier wit in the following chapter. However, The Waves is a character-driven novel, as much as any novel could possibly be, and whether such analyses can say anything about the characters that wasn't already known is the question that must be asked. Hence one must ask whether these realizations tell us anything about the characters' lives, or whether they merely appear clever in hindsight when paired with what we already know about their lives. The interludes do, it must be admitted, lend significance to the titular image, which is revealed in the final scene to refer to the waves of human experience that wash over us with such great power. But even this might have been conveyed within the main text, and indeed Woolf's character talk about waves well before the final scene: “the waves of my life”, “the protective waves of the ordinary”, “passions that … pound us with their waves”. In sum, it seems that the interludes work, to whatever extent they do, because of the power of the story, none of whose essential aspects would be excised by their removal. They are more of a distraction than anything else.

Woolf's other primary device is to narrate the novel through speeches by each of the characters in turn. Rather than with “Bernard saw a ring,” the novel opens with the line, “'I see a ring', said Bernard”. While this may at first seem like dialogue, the characters fail to respond to each other's speech, and we soon see characters who are alone continuing to “say” things, leading us to think that this speech is not spoken aloud. But then one character criticizes another for “making phrases”, suggesting that the latter's speech was in fact said aloud; and later we have instances in which two characters speak to one another in private. One might compare this type of speech to a soliloquy in a play. Though in Shakespeare the soliloquies generally go unheard by other characters, this is not the case in Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo overhears Juliet's soliloquy. A soliloquy in a play provides a way for a character to project his inner life to the audience, which seems to be in line with the primary purpose of Woolf's soliloquies. So should Woolf have written The Waves as a play?
Bernard: “I see a ring ...”
One feels that it would not have come off as well. If the characters were to take turns speaking on a stage, we would feel that no real action had occurred. When Louis says, “There is Susan”, we would want to see Susan, or at least to see the actor who plays Louis pretending to see her. But in the book such speech somehow does not require the other character to speak for us to imagine their actions. It is something like reading the diaries of two people and seeing the actions of each recorded by the other – but of two people who are extremely close, say a husband and wife, such that it is assumed that whatever is inner becomes outer as well. The effect is an extreme intimacy with the characters to a degree unparallelled for a work with so many protagonists. In short, this device is a success.

There is one instance when Woolf deviates from this model. In the final chapter, Bernard, who has come to serve as a sort of spokesman for the group (generally speaking first in the most important scenes) has dinner with a near-stranger at a restaurant. Speaking in the past tense, he narrates the story of his and the other character's lives. One wonders why Woolf wrote this chapter. Was she afraid that the reader would not have understood what came before, and did she want to fill in the gaps of our knowledge? Or did she wish to sum up what had happened? In either case, to be suddenly told what one had been delighted to have pieced together out of the narrative shards is disappointing and feels like a betrayal of Woolf's model, a withdrawing from it into conventional storytelling out of some trepidation.

But as one of Woolf's rare missteps, this final chapter reminds us of how far superior to most fiction the rest of the novel is. When the stranger leaves and Bernard returns to narrating his present experience, we rejoice as to the return of an old friend. For such the characters are to us, by the end of the novel: old friends for whose grief we grieve and in whose joys we take joy. This novel carries human experience within it. Whether you empathize most with one particular character, as I did, or with all of them, Woolf provides a model for life of extraordinary truth, compassion, and depth, and one well worth reading. ( )

For years after reading it, this was my favorite novel, or at least the novel that came to mind most readily after Lolita. It's time to read it again, I think. ( )

This is a difficult book, with it's non-linear narrative and interludes, many readers might be challenged if they're not used to this sort of thing. But it's a beautiful work, although for me, I began to lose ardor for it around half-way through. It's a book I intend to reread, however.

But if you're new to Virgina Woolf, you might consider beginning with one of her other, more famous works, and ease yourself slowly into the languid and ice cold pool of her prose. But don't surrender to weakness, her writing is a life-changing thing, and do not cheat yourself of the experience. Challenging is a good thing. ( )

What is that quote, that one that says that you cannot read some books, you can only reread them. Here is one. Rampant poetry that you ride, crest in and crest out of the waves of words that flow in such a way that one sentence is one of many, a social construct like the bees and the birds flocking in the sky. Fluidity does little justice to this book. One word does not exist without all the rest, and it is better to float through the sentences rather than tear them down and open into some semblance of meaning. Reread to your pleasure until the meanings flow through without excessive force on your part, otherwise they'll drip through your fingers as fast as thought. Oh Bernard, you and your phrases, ones that at the end did not show your friends to the world in the way that they have melded together and to you. They cannot convey Neville's love, Susan's hate, Louis' past lives, Jinny's aesthetics, Rhoda's water, your story. Virginia herself may not have accomplished it, for who can say they have compared and contrasted between these pages and her mind. We do get a small insight though. And that is worth everything. ( )

The Waves isn't the kind of novel you can sum up neatly and nicely. Just like the sea itself, my impressions of this unique, intense book are always changing, not resting for even a moment. Reading The Waves has been an experience I'll never forget.

You can read my full review of The Waves on my blog, Book to the Future: http://booktothefuture.com.au/?p=1369 ( )