Jocelyn Smith

The Waves, first published in 1931, is considered Virginia Woolf�s most experimental novel because of the poetic nature of its prose. In fact, it is often referred to as a prose poem. It is also a modern Bildungsroman, following the lives of six characters from childhood through adulthood and ending with old age and death. All six manifest different personality traits, but they merge together in the character of Percival, who forms the center of the others’ consciousness. He is present in all six monologues although he never speaks. These monologues are then interspersed with poetic descriptions of a coastal scene at varying stages of the day. The position of the sun and the action of the sea coincide with the stage of life reached by the characters. While they are young, the sea is calm and the sun hasn’t risen. As they age, the sun moves toward its zenith and waves start to form on the sea. At the end of the novel, the characters have reached old age. The sun has sunk and the sky and sea seem to merge again as they had in the beginning, only this time, the waves that have been building up all day finally break on the shore, signaling the completion of the life cycle. In this manner, Woolf links nature to modern human life: the cycle of life and death is mirrored in the motion of the wave forming far out at sea and eventually breaking on the beach. At the same time, she uses nature and the outer world to parallel the inner emotions of the characters.

My favorite excerpt from this novel is a passage that describes the character Rhoda’s reaction to the death of Percival in terms of a surreal natural setting. The poetry of the text is beautiful because of the images it conjures, particularly that of violets being thrown into breaking waves. This action signifies Rhoda’s tribute to Percival as well as her recognition of the frailty of life. Ever since my first reading of this novel, I have always been struck by the image of flowers amidst the surf. While part of the passage’s beauty lies solely in the language, there is also beauty in the ability of the author to represent so much emotion in such a small image. It is truly a painting in words.

The poetic nature of the prose brings the richness of Woolf’s images to life. Dark, vivid colors come to the foreground, such as the deep purple of the violets and the darkness of the pools of water. In an earlier passage, the light is described as purple, and one can easily picture the wave breaking over the violets possessing a grayish hue. The vibrancy of the colors is complemented by such dream-like images as those of the swallow and the pillars. The swallow’s action of dipping her wings in dark pools serves to create a mood within the reader, and the pillars standing alone, supporting nothing, have much the same effect. These ethereal pictures capture the atmosphere of this heightened moment in Rhoda’s experience as she faces the death of Percival. The final image of the violets battered by a breaking wave corresponds to Rhoda’s own feelings of fragility and isolation, which are reinforced by the futility in her act of picking flowers that no one will receive.

Percival’s death is described in terms of color, as Rhoda notes how “the shadow has fallen and the purple light slants downwards.” For Rhoda and the other five characters, Percival represents an example of complete, natural humanness that they do not possess. Whereas the six are plagued by insecurity, Percival knows no self-doubt. He is a naïve strongman, a seemingly indestructible figure who lives up to his mythical name. His accidental death, brought about by a fall from a horse, is disastrous from the standpoint of the six characters because it destroys their faith. Whereas they are consumed by existential anxieties, Percival stands out as a beacon of harmony and self-assuredness. He is a strange combination of Nietzsche’s Superman and Schiller’s ideal of totality stemming from the notion of well-rounded, natural completeness as embodied by the ancient Greeks. In essence, he is a hero better suited to past ages, totally unfit for life in modern times. His death signals the death of heroism and myth. The image of violets destroyed by waves expresses Rhoda’s awareness of this. The crushed flowers represent not only her own delicate nature, but also the unexpected fragility of her hero.