The Waves- Virginia Woolf

The extract I have looked at from Virginia Woolf’s modernist classic The Waves is taken from the beginning, when all six characters are children and the narrative fluctuates freely between their separate voices in the form of free indirect speech. The stream of consciousness technique employed by Woolf allows the narrative to effortlessly rotate between the actual and the metaphorical, the real and the unreal, in an attempt to accurately portray the intricacy of the human mind, and express how a person’s sense of reality is located in their private subconscious. 

Towards the beginning of the extract, the character Jinny notices that the hedge she’s looking at is moving, causing her to ask “What moves the leaves? What moves my heart, my legs?” This is an example of how the stream of consciousness technique allows a characters thoughts to flow one after another. In her essay “Modern Fiction”, Woolf describes life as “an incessant shower of innumerable atoms”, and by using the stream of consciousness technique Woolf is attempting to “record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall.” In this particular instance there is an obvious shift from considering the real (“what moves the leaves?”) to making a philosophical observation (what moves my heart?”) and this shift characterises the form in which Woolf is writing.

Susan see’s Jinny kissing Louis through the hedge, and grows distressed because she has feelings for Louis. This anguish causes her to say “I will wrap my agony inside my pocket handkerchief... it shall be screwed tight into a ball.” This profound image seems to represent the depth of emotion reminiscent of an adult rather than a child. However this mature sense of despair is juxtaposed with Susan’s childish claim that “I will not sit next Jinny or next Louis.” The representation of the close link between adult and childish emotions is one feature which makes the extract so strong. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the image is reinforced when the narrative shifts to Bernard’s point of view, and he says that Susan’s “nails meet in the ball of her pocket-handkerchief” as she runs with her clenched fists outstretched. This exemplifies how the constant narrative shift allows Woolf to employ a sense of irony and togetherness with her characters.

Another point of interest in the extract is the power dynamic between the male and female characters. The two girls in the extract, Jinny and Susan, personify two different representations of females. Jinny is very feminine; she wears a pink frock, instinctively kisses Louis and immediately afterwards dances and smells geraniums. In contrast, Susan sums up her distress in seeing Jinny kiss Louis with claims that she wants to sleep under branches, and allow her hair to become “matted” while she eats nuts under the brambles. In addition, Bernard says himself that his role is to follow Susan and “comfort her when she bursts out in rage and thinks, “I am alone”, demonstrating a stereotypical approach to the male ‘looking after’ the female.

All in the all, the extract has a depth of language and ideas which make it ideal for analysing in terms of love and grammatical devices. The next step for me is to read a Virginia Woolf novel and compare this extract to a more informed response of her work.