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The Waves
Archive 08-19 GR Discussions
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The Waves - February Group Read
Mod
I'm still not enamored with any of these people. They are what, almost 25 years old now? (or was it almost 24?) Still, nothing about them impressed me, made me want to get to know them (though I know we will get to know them more as they age).
The "wave" introduction to each section is still not doing anything for me either. It seems to me like Virginia Woolf is trying too hard to be poetic, and it just seems fake. But maybe I'm just a curmudgeon towards her. LOL
I have to say that I like Susan but I'd also like to live in the country on a farm, so maybe I'm just projecting myself into her position. :DI think Bernard is going to have "issues" as he ages. He himself thinks "who's Bernard?" and if one doesn't have a sense of self, it's going to come back and bite you. Aren't you just living for others if you have no sense of self, if you're afraid to be alone & examine your thoughts, goals & desires? Won't you, one day regret living for others and not yourself (within the allowable confines of society)?
I feel most afraid for Rhoda.
I like the sea/sun sections but have to say that the 5th one (next week's reading) is very much different and I didn't like it much.
Something to think about when reading the fifth section: Wikipedia says that this section is the climax of the novel. I didn't find it any different than the other sections.....life goes on, they are aging...etc. Does this section seem climactic to you?
The characters are distant from us. We are looking at them from the inside out. We are listening to their thoughts and that is where we are trapped inside their minds. This reminds me of the Id, ego and super-ego the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. The super-ego can stop you from doing certain things that your id may want you to do.
Petra wrote: "Irene, I found this on Wikipedia about who VW may have based the characters on:Bernard is a story-teller, always seeking some elusive and apt phrase (some critics see Woolf's friend E. M. Forste..."
This is interesting.
At first, I didn’t like the novel - I mostly skimmed the first twenty pages. Slowly, I started distinguishing the voices . . . and enjoying them. So I backtracked, and started again, from the beginning.But the interpretation of the title is bothering me. I’m probably totally wrong, so feel free to point and laugh at me! But here’s my crazy dissertation [apologies for length!]:
In every criticism I’ve searched in the last couple of days, the title is interpreted as referencing water; the sea. But I once read a paper on the Feminine Sublime in which Woolf’s “waves of light” was referenced. Though not specified, I assumed this was a reference to The Waves [though I had no familiarity with it beyond its existence], and didn’t think anything more of it. But still, I went into this novel expecting it to be waves of light rather than water.
But let me preamble my “waves of light” argument with some background musings:
Renewed scientific discussion of light being both wavelike and particulate was contemporaneous to Woolf’s time. The concurrent interest in perceptions of reality spilled into art and literature. Woolf’s at her most experimental here, a deconstruction of the novel form, of reality; stream of consciousness in a time when conscious reality was subject to reinterpretation. Quantum physics, atomic theory, etc., etc. [And as Irene, above, noted specifically with the Id, there’s the whole Freudian thing.]
Now, to the novel: The six characters are a unit - are the same, like a wave; and they are individuals - independent/individual, like particles. Also, while there is water/wave imagery, light imagery and metaphor predominate - you can barely go a page without at least one mention of light.
So, though in the sunrise prologue there is the allusion of waves breaking on shore, it is the description of the light, the effect of the light that convinced me that I might not be totally off base. Starting with the premise that without light, nothing can be seen, here the book starts: “The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky . . .” As the sky lightens, we see the waves/water: “thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually.” They break on the sand, and recede. So, the waves are water - but only visible as the light increases.
Then: the sky clears as if a lamp had been raised “and flat bars of white, green and yellow spread across the sky like blades of a fan.” White light refracting as through a prism; the “fibrous” air. The grey sky is turned “to a million atoms of soft blue” - quanta, anyone?
It isn’t the water/waves that touch the garden and bring it to life. It’s the light/waves. The light touches the trees; birds start to chip. It reveals the house, wherein all “was dim and unsubstantial” - unlit. The children observe the light/colour: Bernard’s observation of “a ring . . . [that] quivers and hangs in a loop of light” and the spider web, the water like “drops of white light”; Susan sees “a slab of pale yellow [meeting] a purple stripe”; Rhoda, “islands of light” in the grass; Louis, “the burning lights of the window panes”; Neville, the “birds’ eyes bright”; and Jinny, “windows white with blinds”.
The masturbation scene and consequences of it, wherein the characters move together and break apart, light is mentioned over and over: Louis observes the “flowers swim like fish made of light upon the dark”; Jinny throws herself over him “like a net of light”; Bernard observes Susan’s stress in terms of the light - in the “woods out of the light”, “blind after the light”, “light seems to pant in and out”, and the “light is fitful”; Susan, “diamonds light as dust”.
The day advances; the children age: “The sun rose higher. Blue waves, green waves swept a quick fan over the beach . . . leaving shallow pools of light . . .” All is shadows, mosaics, colours. Change, continuity. While water/waves are mentioned, they exist almost as metaphor for the light. Colour is light, after all.
This metaphor continues later; Louis on Percival: “A wake of light seems to lie on the grass behind him.” And Neville on poetry: “. . . like one of those lamps that turn on slabs of racing water at midnight in the Atlantic, when . . . suddenly the waves gape . . . One must put aside antipathies . . . One must . . . let the light sound . . .”
Examples of light as being / evidence of existence and solidity / time:
Rhoda: “. . . even my body now lets the light through . . .” And: “I am drawn here . . . to light my fire at the general blaze of you who live wholly, indivisibly and without caring.”
Louis in his insecurity does not want to “live in the light of this great clock, yellow-faced, which ticks and ticks.”
Susan: “I am not a woman, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground.”
Bernard: “I wish . . . to sparkle, many-faceted under the light of my friends’ faces. I have been traversing the sunless territory of non-identity. A strange land.”
Neville: “After the capricious fires, the abysmal dullness of youth . . . the light falls upon real objects now.”
Jinny: “My body goes before me, like a lantern down a dark lane, bringing one thing after another out of darkness into a ring of light. I dazzle you; I make you believe that this is all.”
The dinner with Percival, who is a touchstone for them all and allusive to light itself: “‘Look,’ said Rhoda; ‘listen. Look how the light becomes richer, second by second, and bloom and ripeness lie everywhere . . . and one thing melts into another.’”
The shore is metaphor for the temporal, corporeal, battered body; the water/waves are metaphor for light, time, reality. My evidence involves spoilers for those not finished: (view spoiler)
Anyway, I’d love feedback on my theory - even if it’s: “Nah. You’re crazy!”
Roberta, I totally agree with you. I did notice the waves of light rather than of water and there are soliloquies that I thought referenced sexual behavior. Brilliantly analyzed.
Roberta, I would agree with you. Great catch.At first these sections seem all about the water waves but it's really the sun that's the main character. The light brings life, expands our horizons and lets us see.
"The shore is metaphor for the temporal, corporeal, battered body; the water/waves are metaphor for light, time, reality.".....beautifully put! (I haven't read your spoiler yet)
Section 5: Percival's deathSection 6: their 30's
Section 7: their 40's
How's everyone doing with this book? Are we still here? :D
I'm beginning to wonder when and where this group (by this I mean the book; not us :D) feels any joy or happiness. Everything is tinged with despair somehow.
Thinking about my own inner monologues about things I notice around me, there are negatives but I notice positives as well. This group doesn't seem to see the positives.
I got a shock at the end of Section 5 because I thought it ended with Rhoda's suicide:
"Now I relinquish; now I will let loose."
"We (her and Percival) will gallop together over desert hills"
"Into the wave that dashes upon the shore....I throw..my offering (herself) to Percival."
I guess VW tricked me. :D
The other thing I found interesting in this section was the mention that Bernard requires solitude sometimes. Until now, he's the one who's avoided being alone:
"...only that I need silence, and to be alone...to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my world."
Bernard's world shook a little at this close encounter with death.
I didn't get a lot out of Section 6. Life seems to be settling for our group. Louis is moving up in the business world, he and Rhoda are lovers (I'm a bit surprised that she let someone get that close).
Susan has children and is finding them somewhat confining to her life ("But I never rise at dawn and see the purple drops in the cabbage leaves...").
Sadly, Neville is looking for a replacement for Percival but not finding one. ("But you are not Ajax or Percival...You are you.")
Section 7 is full of mid-life crises'! Bernard is questioning the meaning of Life: "But I have never found that story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?"
Susan is feeling left out of life: "Life stands round me like a glass round the imprisoned reed". But she's contented enough, in a way: "I cut the dead petals from hollyhocks".
Jinny is feeling the passage of time and youth: "I am no longer part of the procession....who will come when I signal?".
Louis' section had me wondering. In his soliloquy, he says that:- Susan and Percival were born without a destiny.
- the group "pierced" (hurt/damaged?) Rhoda
I'm pondering whether the first is true. We can't know about Percival; he's too vague a character. But does Susan have no destiny? She's the mother, the bearer of the future. Is this not a destiny?
When did the group ever harm Rhoda?
Rhoda! Hmmm....until now she's seemed an outsider but she's never seemed hateful. In this section she sounds a bit hateful towards humanity in general. The first paragraph of her soliloquy is full of malice. At the end of this paragraph, she seems to be blaming others for ruining her life.
This seems unfair when she's the one that's been holding back.
She's still avoiding life. She longs for night when she can "feel the bed soften, to float suspended...to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams".
She realizes, though, that she's in some sort of despair and in danger: "there is only a thin sheet between me now and the infinite depths". She's comparing the safety of bed with the safety of death?
Anyway, that's about all I got out of these sections. It would be nice if one of these characters enjoyed something in their lives and was happy, if only for a moment.
Mod
I'm beginning to wonder when and where this group (by this I mean the book; not us :D) feels any joy or happiness...This group doesn't seem to see the positives. LOL!
Otherwise, I would have had to come back at you with: But this book sucks, Petra! I am very happy, yet I am POSITIVE that it sucks, and I am not afraid to say so! LOL!
I agree though, they are a very dreary group. I wonder if VW writes this way because she suffered from life long depression issues. Maybe this was how she saw the world. Maybe she was in the middle of a depression when she wrote it. Maybe she didn't see happiness, and so she focused on the despair.
I'm currently half done. I will read our next section here soon.
Me, too!Thanks for supporting my theories!
Petra, I love your analysis of Rhoda's malice and fear. Regarding the "thin sheet", I think she is carrying the analogy of the bed into her fears - the thinness of the veil between what she is on the surface [the real world face] and the terrifying [and ugly] inner life she hides. Also, its thinness represents how close she is to making the choice to die. Were she to breach that veil - to die - she doesn't view possible eternity as a release, but a plunge into unknown and perhaps dark "depths". Dead or alive, she is still ruled by her fears. And maybe her malice, as you say. Isn't it a truism that the way we regard the world is actually the way we regard ourselves?
LOL! I had to edit it after I posted and reread it. I had no intention of even insinuating that this group (myself included) were depressing or joyless. We're a great bunch! :DI agree, Sheila, that VW's depression and mental state may have influenced this book (and maybe her others). I'm more & more interested in reading either a biography or her diaries now.
Roberta, I'm pretty sure Rhoda is heading for disaster but I've been thinking this for awhile (hence my thinking that she committed suicide at the end of Section 5). I don't see a good ending for her. She wears a very thin sheet indeed. The malice & blame caught me by surprise. She didn't seem to have that in her before.
Petra wrote: "LOL! I had to edit it after I posted and reread it. I had no intention of even insinuating that this group (myself included) were depressing or joyless. We're a great bunch! :DI agree, Sheila, th..."Petra, I thought you meant the characters in the book. LOL!
Who do you like is the most successful out of the six?
Financially or personally? I haven't read the last 2 sections yet so I may change my mind yet.
So far, financially, I think Louis is the most successful. He started without a University education and as a clerk. He seems to have moved up into a management position and is quite influential in his company. At least that's the gist I got from his having to sign so many papers.
The others started with money; Louis had to build himself up from the bottom.
Personally...it's harder to tell because they are all so negative in their thoughts. Nothing happy happens that they mention.
Maybe Susan. She's led a peaceful life in the country, with husband and family. She may feel hemmed in and a bit stifled by her life but doesn't everyone at times? She isn't, though, riddled with so much uncertainty and turmoil as the others are, it seems.
I would say Susan is the most successful because she got the life she wanted. She lives on the farm and she has a family. I think something is wrong with Rhoda. I go back to read over her parts to figure it out.
I'm trying to figure out what became of Jinny.
From Sparknotes:The fifth section takes place not long after the dinner party, when the friends have learned that Percival has been killed in India. Neville is devastated by the news, overwhelmed by a sense of death and the fragility of life. Bernard is torn between joy and sorrow: his child has just been born and his friend has just died. Bernard goes to a museum to look at paintings and finds a kind of solace, even as he is aware that his memories of Percival must inevitably fade. Rhoda finds a similar solace in music when she attends an opera soon after she learns of Percival’s death, and she finds the strength to go on for a time.
From Sparknotes:In the sixth section, the characters have entered full maturity. Louis is rising in his firm and leads a sort of double life. Although he is a respectable businessman, he is drawn to the seamier side of life and spends his time roaming around poorer neighborhoods. Louis and Rhoda have become lovers. Susan is a mother now, both deeply gratified and stifled by her chosen life. On one hand, she is fully a part of the cycle of natural life; on the other, her own life has become subordinate to the lives of her children and the ongoing life of the farm. Jinny continues her purely physical existence, taking lovers but never settling down, content to revel in her own being. Neville also moves from lover to lover, but in his case, he is trying to keep the intensity of first desire alive—it is the source of his creativity.
From Sparknotes:The seventh section deals with midlife, as the characters begin to age. Bernard has traveled to Rome, where he observes the ruins and tries to come to terms with his own sense of failure, as he has begun to doubt both his own abilities and the ability of stories to capture reality. As Susan sinks deeper into her rural and domestic life, she regrets what she has lost even as she finds a measure of contentment in what she has gained. Jinny has a moment of dread in which she sees that she is aging and her beauty is fading. She reconciles herself to the inevitable passage of time, however, and resolves to make the most of her remaining years. Neville is becoming a successful writer. He is mellowing a bit, but he continues to shift the focus of his desire from lover to lover. Louis rises ever higher in his firm but still returns to his attic room to write. Literature seems to him an idealized realm even as his eye is continually drawn to the street. Rhoda has left Louis and travels to Spain, where she too has a moment in which she comes face to face with death—here in the form of the vast sea seen from the cliffs.
Irene wrote: "I think something is wrong with Rhoda. ..."She is the most puzzling of the six. She may just need a job and a purpose. She seems to have come into money and not need to work. Maybe a sense of purpose and/or striving and/or routine is needed for her to feel grounded? She's just floating through life without any grounding, it seems.
I found some discussion questions if you like I can post them. Let me know.
That would be great, Irene. Maybe they will help us understand more of this novel.
This is something I've been thinking about. Some reviews indicate that the six characters are really one. I wonder how can that be possible? As I reach the end, it starts to make sense.I don't want to spoil it for any one so I will wait until the end to share how it makes sense to me.
These are the questions I found.What is important about the title?
What are the conflicts? What types of conflict (physical, moral, intellectual, or emotional) did you notice?
How does Virginia Woolf reveal character?
What are some themes? How do they relate to the plot and characters?
What are some symbols? How do they relate to the plot and characters?
Does the work end the way you expected? How? Why?
What is the central/primary purpose? Is the purpose important or meaningful?
Would you consider this work a work of feminist literature?
What is the role of women in the text? How are mothers represented? What about single/independent women? What is important about women--in the historical context?
Would you recommend this work to a friend?
How does the work compare with other works by Virginia Woolf?
Wow! I don't know if I can answer a lot of these.I could add one more question:
Do you think that this book is better understood if read when one is in middle-age or somewhat more mature?
I was wondering this as I read the last section. As our characters age and mature and see Life differently, would these final sections be better understood or interpreted by someone who is also more aged and mature and has, perhaps, had some of these experiences and thoughts?
I'm not sure if I'm wording this correctly.
What are some themes? How do they relate to the plot and characters?I suppose I see the general theme as being "Life". The characters mature and go through each decade with a different outlook on the same things (love, friendship, beauty, etc). Their views change as they age and add life experiences under their belt.
Petra wrote: "Wow! I don't know if I can answer a lot of these.I could add one more question:
Do you think that this book is better understood if read when one is in middle-age or somewhat more mature?
I was..."
I have to think about that. That is a good question.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hnlsh8WyPEI just listened to a documentary of Virginia Woolf on youtube. Now this book makes sense to me.
Irene wrote: "http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hnlsh8WyPEI just listened to a documentary of Virginia Woolf on youtube. Now this book makes sense to me."
Irene, thanks for the link! I just watched it - really great. But what about it helped clarify this book for you?
Virginia suffered of mental illness and she heard voices in her head. Could these be the voices? Each of these characters are who Virginia was through her life. This is what I understood.Rhoda was definitely Virginia's character. Rhoda was an exception student. She stayed behind in the class because she had difficulty completing the work. Virginia had the same problem. Rhoda didn't feel comfortable with herself, and she experienced mood swings and anxiety attacks. Virginia felt the same way about herself. Rhoda commits suicide, so does Virginia. They both drown.
Bernard with his words, phrases, and story telling obsession. Louie trying to rid of his accent to fit in, Virginia experienced these things when she was young.
Susan married with a family, Virginia's sister accomplished this, but Virginia hoped for it. Their mom had died, too.
Jinny, was promiscuous. It could represent Virginia's sexual hunger. She had a brief affair with a woman and there was another affair with her brother in law.
Neville, was delicate, so was Virginia. She couldn't be exposed to excitement because of the anxiety attacks that lead to nervous breakdowns.
The only one I didn't connect was Percival.
Percival was their friend. I think he represented everyone's perception of a perfect person they wanted to reach to be. That idea dies.
I definitely saw these as six aspects of the same character. I had a very difficult time regarding them as distinct entities throughout the book. They blurred into each other, even at the hight of their maturation. I don't know enough about VW to connect them with her, but I did suspect that, if I did, I would be able to see her in each.
That's interesting, Irene. I haven't listened to the video yet so these comments don't relate to it.Virginia wrote these characters and I suppose an author writes about what they know, in a sense.
I think the "voices in the head" aspect of the novel isn't madness or mental illness but normal, everyday thoughts going through one's head as we all do. We communicate with words even with ourselves.
You stated above, and I've also read elsewhere, that some people speculate that the six characters are actually one character. I think I disagree with that. There are six characters. They are distinct and different and individual. But, like all human beings, they share attributes as well: they are all unsure at times, scared at times, confident at times, etc.
We tend to surround ourselves with people who, in some way, share parts of ourselves. Our friends are different than us (they are individuals) but they share parts of us and these parts bind us together. These six were the same. Something kept them together all these years. It's kind of nice to have a group of friends that hang in there together for so many years. It's rare in today's world.
For me, this book seems to be an experimental way of turning life into light. It's trying to somehow say that life is everything, despite it's down & depressing side, it's still worth every minute and we have to fight to exist for as long as possible. It's worth it; all the pain, uncertainty, stress, confinement, etc.
VW compares life with light waves. She seems to be trying to show that, in life, we need others (wave theory) in order to function as we should and that we need our individuality (particle theory) in order to function. We need both. They work together to make a whole.
Rhoda failed. She couldn't work as a wave. I'm not sure if she could work as a particle either. Perhaps, if one cannot function as a wave, the particle fails, too.
Maybe that's the meaning of the book? VW would have tremendous insight into the idea of fitting in. She struggled with it her life long.
In her way, she succeeded. She had wonderful friends who stuck by her, her husband never left her, everyone worked towards finding her a path where she could live. Many sacrifices were made to keep Virginia alive. People knew how fragile she was.
I wonder if a book such as this one could have come about if Virginia had access to treatment and medication that is available today. Could/Would she have written this book if she had obtained treatment and her meds worked?
I agree with you, Petra. The voices we read don't necessarily mean that it's what she heard but perhaps what she thought. I think this book is brilliantly written. She took aspects of different personalities and made characters who we only know by their thoughts. I think if she were on medication like what they offer today, she still would have been able to write. She just wouldn't have suffered as much.
Mod
I found myself wondering about VF and her mental state more also. She probably could have greatly benefited from medical help.
I also wonder if this book would ever have been published if VF and her husband had not owned their own publishing house. She published her own books so she had total control of what she put out. Would a traditional publishing house with an editor have ever published this?
I was amused to read elsewhere though that VF refused to publish Ulysses by James Joyce. Have to give her a little credit there. LOL
I think it would have been published, Sheila. It's brilliant, in its way. Just as Ulysses was published, this one would have been as well.I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who enjoyed both books, despite not understanding either one very well. Both are so different & experimental and if the time era was ready for one, it would have been ready for the other as well.
It's interesting that VW's publishing firm turned Ulysses down. They weren't the only one, of course, but since they were also in the "experimental" writing phase, they might have looked at it differently than other publishing houses would have.
I'm not sure, though, if with medication VW would have seen life and "things" as she did without the meds. Some of what she's saying in this book (I think) comes from her difficulties and the views she has from that.
Irene wrote: "Virginia suffered of mental illness and she heard voices in her head. Could these be the voices? Each of these characters are who Virginia was through her life. This is what I understood.Rhoda was..."
OMG. You women are smart. Between you, you have nailed this book for me!
I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking about Petra’s observations of Rhoda’s malice. And as I scanned through the book again, I was thinking of my wave/light theories and how we’ve bandied back and forth on the idea of the characters being one person or six. And then I came back to comment on my findings. And it all clicked.
Irene’s named it. Real-life Woolf’s voices in her head are all aspects of her. And the six characters are those voices. The voices that move together and break apart, behaving as waves/water, waves/light, and light/particulate:
Susan: The part of Woolf who wants the quiet life in the country, to recapture idyllic days of St. Ives.
Jinny: This is young and pretty Woolf, who fades and disappears.
Louis: The snob afraid of ridicule, perhaps how Woolf felt when the Stephens family moved to Bloomsbury, a lesser address than Hyde Park. And her own observations of being ashamed at marrying “a penniless Jew”.
Neville: He is Woolf’s battle against norms; the part of her who had an affair with Vita Sackville-West. He is also the intellect; the poet.
Rhoda: This is Woolf. The girl who held the petals in the brown basin, the petals representing each of the voices, including her own. The girl who hates the other voices [more below!].
Bernard: slight spoiler (view spoiler) The storyteller. It’s the stories Woolf writes that will survive her; live forever.
Rhoda’s malice comes from her fear and alienation. She’s not a good student [like Woolf]. She has no father [Woolf had a breakdown after her father’s death]. She is jealous of Susan and Jinny, and tries to hide behind them. While away at school, Rhoda fades [Woolf suppressed under her voices]:
[Susan:] “We go upstairs . . . Jinny and I with Rhoda following after.” And later: “I pass the looking-glass on the landing, with Jinny in front and Rhoda lagging behind.”
[Jinny:] “I flicker between the set face of Susan and Rhoda’s vagueness . . .”
Rhoda desires much, but feels flaunted, for no one cares:
“I will give; I will enrich; I will return to the world this beauty. I will bind my flowers in one garland and advancing with my hand outstretched will present them — Oh! to whom?”
And [perhaps of the voices?]:
“What I say is perpetually contradicted. Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room.”
Rhoda loves her solitude - is this Woolf wanting to be rid of the voices? At Percival’s dinner party:
[Louis on Rhoda:] “We wake her. We torture her. She dreads us, she despises us, yet comes cringing to our sides because for all our cruelty there is always some name, some face, which sheds a radiance, which lights up her pavements and makes it possible for her to replenish her dreams.”
[Rhoda:] “I am afraid of you all. I am afraid of the shock of sensation that leaps upon me, because I cannot deal with it as you do — I cannot make one moment merge in the next. To me they are all violent, all separate”
[Susan:] “Rhoda loves to be alone. She fears us because we shatter the sense of being which is so extreme in solitude — see how she grasps her fork — her weapon against us.”
[Neville - Woolf’s intellect:] Let Rhoda speak, whose face I see reflected mistily in the looking-glass opposite; Rhoda whom I interrupted when she rocked her petals in a brown basin . . . Love is not a whirlpool to her. She is not giddy when she looks down. She looks far away over our heads, beyond India.
It is after Percival’s death that Rhoda’s malice is fully birthed. I think, in the next passage, the “we” is the royal “we”, and the options of the voices in dealing with Percival’s death are all under consideration - or contempt - by Woolf:
“Here are hate, jealousy, hurry, and indifference frothed into the wild semblance of life. These are our companions . . . I think of Louis . . . afraid of ridicule; a snob. He says . . . he will shepherd us if we will follow. If we submit he will reduce us to order. Thus he will smooth out the death of Percival to his satisfaction, looking fixedly over the cruet, past the houses at the sky. Bernard, meanwhile, flops red-eyed into some arm-chair. He will have out his notebook; under D, he will enter “Phrases to be used on the deaths of friends”. Jinny, pirouetting across the room, will perch on the arm of his chair and ask, “Did he love me?” “More than he loved Susan?” Susan, engaged to her farmer in the country, will stand for a second with the telegram before her, holding a plate; and then, with a kick of her heel, slam to the oven door. Neville, after staring at the window through his tears, will see through his tears, and ask, “Who passes the window?”—“What lovely boy?” This is my tribute to Percival; withered violets, blackened violets.”
For me, there is only one question left: Who is Percival to Woolf? He is analogous to light . . . but who was Woolf light? Her dead father; dead brother; Vita, after the end of their affair [though they remained friends]? Or is Percival something more abstracted? Sanity. Stability. Happiness. Calm.
Sheila wrote: "I read the 5th, 6th and 7th sections last night. The writing still seems to just blur for me. It really seems like VW is trying way to hard with her words. I found myself wondering about VF and..."
Well, thank goodness Ullysses was published. It is brilliant- I read that, very difficult. But I couldn't read The Waves. I need humor, and Ullysses had plenty of that.
Roberta your observations are powerful. We see how each character is identified with VW. I like how she lets the readers know, that though she won't live forever, her stories will live on. She leaves no loose ends.
Who is Percival? He inspires poetry. What inspires poetry?
Percival is a knight of King Arthur's court who sought the Holy Grail.
Irene wrote: "Percival is a knight of King Arthur's court who sought the Holy Grail."Okay, that's cool information! What would have been Woolf's Holy Grail? Or rather, perhaps, what did she lose that might have provided it?
Mod
http://www.literature-study-online.co...
Sheila wrote: "Here is an interesting article talking about the role Percival plays in the book:http://www.literature-study-online.co..."
Thank you, this is good information.
That's an excellent article, Sheila. Thanks for posting it. "the hero has died, but not of a hero's death. Percival is thrown off his flea-bitten mare; Percival, the god, the reflection of what they all wanted to be, dies in the dirt. "
Do you think that if they had stopped seeing Percival as a hero, they would have been happier with their lives?
If they had not looked at Percival as "the reflection of what they wanted to be" but looked at their own lives and considered that to in actuality be "what they wanted to be", would they not have been happier & contented?
A reality is always better than a reflection, isn't it?
Petra wrote: "That's an excellent article, Sheila. Thanks for posting it. "the hero has died, but not of a hero's death. Percival is thrown off his flea-bitten mare; Percival, the god, the reflection of what t..."
Hmmm . . . Petra, stop making me think! LOL. But that whole reflection/reality bit - the image of Narcissus admiring his reflection hit me. VW, her voices/characters - everybody's a narcissist here, aren't they? In abstracted terms [rather than as a "real" person (that is, if the entire novel is a metaphoric expression of VW's inner life)], is that what Percival is? The sum of their combined narcissism and egotism reflected back at them?
@Sheila - great article! Thank you so much. And it's opened up another can of worms in my brain, obviously. Squirmy, messy things!
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Bernard is a story-teller, always seeking some elusive and apt phrase (some critics see Woolf's friend E. M. Forster as an inspiration)
Louis is an outsider, who seeks acceptance and success (some critics see aspects of T. S. Eliot, whom Woolf knew well, in Louis)
Neville (who may be partially based on another of Woolf's friends, Lytton Strachey) desires love, seeking out a series of men, each of whom become the present object of his transcendent love
Jinny is a socialite, whose Weltanschauung corresponds to her physical, corporeal beauty
Susan flees the city, in preference for the countryside, where she grapples with the thrills and doubts of motherhood
Rhoda is riddled with self-doubt and anxiety, always rejecting and indicting human compromise, always seeking out solitude (as such, Rhoda echoes Shelley's poem "The Question"; paraphrased: I shall gather my flowers and present them—O! to whom?)
Percival (partially based on Woolf's brother, Thoby Stephen) is the god-like but morally flawed hero of the other six, who dies midway through the novel on an imperialist quest in British-dominated colonial India. Although Percival never speaks through a monologue of his own in The Waves, readers learn about him in detail as the other six characters repeatedly describe and reflect on him throughout the book.