The Waves

“The others are allowed to go. They slam the door. Miss Hudson goes. I am left alone to find an answer. The figures mean nothing now. Meaning has gone.”

This passage is the first moment when Rhoda begins to lose a sense of meaning. In this first instance, “meaning” can be taken literally to signify the meaning of the lesson but it foreshadows Rhoda’s deeper existential despair and her recurrent anxiety about life’s meaning. This passage links Rhoda’s angst to her feeling of isolation: In this first instance, her isolation is literal but through the novel, it will become increasingly metaphorical and internalized.

“But here I am nobody. I have no face. This great company, all dressed in brown serge, has robbed me of my identity. We are all callous, unfriended.”

Rhoda’s identity crisis is emphasized in boarding school because the girls are in uniform, follow the same routine, and match the same expectations. The uniformity of this experience is dehumanizing.

“I recover my continuity, as he reads. I become a figure in the procession, a spoke in the huge wheel that turning, at last erects me, here and now. I have been in the dark; I have been hidden; but when the wheel turns (as he reads) I rise into this dim light.”

This passage speaks to the power of words. Louis finally feels that he belongs to a tradition. He leans into Dr. Crane’s sermon and finds himself seen and heard by another’s words. In this quote, the “huge wheel turning” is a metaphor for society, as does the “procession.” This imagery speaks to Louis’s need to be “elevated” socially and to belong to a social and national line of tradition. The school setting suggests that Louis sees a route to his preferred identity through learning.

“The brute menaces my liberty […] when he prays. Unwarmed by imagination, his words fall cold on my head like paving-stones, while the gilt cross heaves on his waistcoat. The words of authority are corrupted by those who speak them.”

This passage highlights the difference of individual experience and perception. Louis and Neville listen to the same sermon by Dr. Crane, but while Louis is buoyed and inspired, Neville feels restricted and threatened. “The brute menaces my liberty” may be a reference to Neville’s growing adolescent sexual identity and his sense that his freedoms to be himself will be curtailed by establishment structures and rules.

“His magnificence is that of some medieval commander. A wake of light seems to lie on the grass behind him. Look at us trooping after him, his faithful servants, to be shot like sheep, for he will certainly attempt some forlorn enterprise and die in battle.”

In this characterization of Percival, Louis defines Percival as hero and leader. It is representative of the ways in which the characters (especially the boys) idolize Percival. His language overtly references Percival as a medieval chivalric figure; the light, leadership, and sheep are also reminiscent of Christian imagery. This passage prefigures Percival’s death.

“Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then—our friends are not able to finish their stories.”

This passage functions as a literal plot point, as tensions arise when Bernard’s story is interrupted, and as a larger metaphor in a book that literally tells the story of the lifespan. “Friends[‘] stories” will be unfinished when they die. By presenting this as a tragedy, in both literal and metaphorical senses, this passage is part of the novel’s exploration of group dynamics and the importance of community. It is characteristic that Jinny speaks this, as she is the most positively social of the friends.

“They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it.”

This passage reveals the depths of Rhoda’s lack of identity and feeling. She observes and studies the other girls to see how to interact with the world around her. She imitates others as she feels out of touch with her own emotions. It is not clear how much this alienation is caused by acute social anxiety and how much Rhoda is in fact neuro-divergent in some way that affects her ability to feel and/or express emotion spontaneously.

“The fact is that I have little aptitude for reflection. I require the concrete in everything. It is so only that I lay my hands upon the world. A good phrase, however, seems to me to have an independent existence. Yet I think it is likely that the best are made in solitude. They require some final refrigeration which I cannot give them dabbling always in warm soluble words.”

Bernard is a social personality but his writing forces him to express solitude in order to refine his compositions. The language of his reflection speaks to the sense of the tangible and intangible in life, and the inner and outer experience, and how these intersect in the individual to make a sense of self.

“Bernard in public, bubbles; in private, is secretive. That is what they do not understand, for they are now undoubtedly discussing me, saying I escape them, am evasive. They do not understand that I have to effect different transitions; have to cover the entrances and exits of several different men who alternately act their parts as Bernard.”

Here, Bernard explores the idea of the self as a multiple set of possible personalities that are managed in the consciousness. This passage explores the gulf between the internal individual experience and the social projection of the self. The idea that a person actively chooses or regulates their possible selves is characteristic of Bernard, who is very social in a traditional, mannered way.

“It foams. It becomes artificial, insincere. Words and words and words, how they gallop—how they lash their long manes and tails, but for some fault in me I cannot give myself to their backs; I cannot fly with them, scattering women and string bags. There is some flaw in me—some fatal hesitancy, which, if I pass it over, turns to foam and falsity. Yet it is incredible that I should not be a great poet. What did I write last night if it was not poetry? Am I too fast, too facile? I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am.”

Like Louis, Neville is trying to find his writer’s voice. For Neville, poetry is a natural extension of his human experience and he finds it unlikely that he should be called to write poetry for no reason. However, he, like all writers, finds the writing process difficult and sometimes unsatisfying. This quote highlights the complex relationship between control of art, the artists, and the intention of art.

“To be loved by Susan would be to be impaled by a bird’s sharp beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door. Yet there are moments when I could wish to be speared by a beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door, positively, once and for all.”

This quote captures Susan’s characterization as someone who is intense, expressed through her connection with nature. Susan is often described, and describes herself, using animal imagery. Bernard’s statement also captures an important message about identity: Bernard’s longing is expressive of a wish to have the power of choice removed from him.

“But here and now we are together […] We have come together, at a particular time, to this particular spot. We are drawn into this communion by some deep, some common emotion. Shall we call it, conveniently, love? Shall we say love of Percival?”

The group of friends is connected throughout space and time thanks to love—for self, others, and for Percival specifically. Their reunion and communion is special because it is in celebration of Percival. However, it is also special because this demonstrates the power and influence one person has to bring everybody else together. It’s rare to be in communion with one another, and it’s rare to have deep love for other people.

“Women shuffle past the window as if there were no gulf cut in the street; no tree with stiff leaves which we cannot pass. We deserve then to be tripped by molehills. We are infinitely abject, shuffling past with our eyes shut. But why should I submit? Why try to lift my foot and mount the stair?”

Neville’s heartbreak over Percival’s death finds no place in the society that moves around him. This quote emphasizes how the world keeps turning and people continue with their lives even when painful events such as the death of a loved one occurs. While Percival’s death means a lot to Neville, it can’t mean everything to everyone. Neville sees the world continue to turn and refuses to be a part of the continued human movement forward.

“There is no respite here, no shadow made of quivering leaves, or alcove which one can retreat from the sun, to sit, with a lover, in the cool of the evening. The weight of the world is on our shoulders; its vision is through our eyes; if we blink or look aside, or turn back to finger what Plato said or remember Napoleon and his conquests, we inflict on the world the injury of some obliquity.”

In this passage, Woolf emphasizes the ways in which adults will sacrifice meaning in their lives in favor of routine and work. The pressure Louis is under to make his career a success keeps him away from the philosophy, history, and poetry he once enjoyed spending time studying. Rather than think about the past, Louis has committed to capitalistic notions about constantly moving forward, making more money, and covering more area in order to—metaphorically—keep the world turning.

“But we who live in the body see with the body’s imagination things in outline. I see rocks in bright sunshine. I cannot take these facts into some cave and, shading my eyes, grade their yellows, blues, umbers into one substance. I cannot remain seated for long. I must jump and go.”

Jinny’s disposition is to live in her physicality. While other characters in the novel commit to routine, the pursuit of beauty, or business, Jinny lives for the moment because her lived experience is all about corporeality. Thus, Jinny’s life derives meaning from moving, socializing, seeing, and experiencing. She enjoys being a part of society because to see and be seen is, for her, how she should live. This emphasizes yet another way of living and being. The connection between the physical and the subconscious can, Woolf asserts through Jinny’s character, be powerful.

The drop falls; another stage has been reached. Stage upon stage. And why should there be an end of stages? And where do they lead? To what conclusion? For they come wearing robes of solemnity. In these dilemmas the devout consult those violet-sashed and sensual-looking gentry who are trooping past me. But for ourselves, we resent teachers.”

This quote questions the unfurling of different chapters in the cycle of life. As the characters get older, they leave the majority of their lives in the past. Looking toward the future becomes a question of what could possibly happen next in the lives they have carefully chosen and tailored. This quote asks what the point is in thinking about the future and the different stages in life. Inherent in this question is a larger existential question about meaning in life.

“I am in the heart of life. But look - there is my body in that looking glass. How solitary, how shrunk, how aged! I am no longer young, I am no longer part of the procession. Millions descend those stairs in a terrible descent. Great wheels churn inexorably urging them downwards. Millions have died. Percival died. I still move. I still live. But who will come if I signal?”

Jinny’s reflections on aging are specific to her relationship with her physical self, but they are also universal reflections on the nature of age and saying goodbye to youth. The tone of her musings is characteristically matter-of-fact and she turns from one side of the question to the other in a way which displays a pragmatic approach to problem-solving and to understanding her own feelings.

“None had the courage to be one thing rather than another. What dissolution of the soul you demanded in order to get through one day, what lies, bowings, scrapings, fluency, and servility! How you chained me to one spot, one hour, one chair, and sat yourselves down opposite! How you snatched from me the white spaces that lie between hour and hour and rolled them into dirty pellets and tossed them into the waste paper basket with your greasy paws. Yet those were my life.”

Rhoda’s life has been wasted, she feels, because she’s been forced into constructing identity rather than simply living for the sake of living. This quote points to the dangers of society’s pressures and expectations. It is characteristic of Rhoda to be resentful about her friends, especially when with them: Her narrative suggests that her sense of isolation is exacerbated when she is with the group.

“I am merely ‘Neville’ to you, who see the narrow limits of my life and the line it cannot pass. But to myself I am immeasurable; a net whose fibers pass imperceptibly beneath the world. My net is almost indistinguishable from that which it surrounds.”

In this quote, Woolf uses Neville as an exemplar of the ways in which people have multiple layers. Some layers are external and can be read, observed, and analyzed by other people. Other layers are internal and cannot be seen by others. Here, Neville expresses a universal human experience that speaks to the theme of The Existential Human Condition: Identity and Meaning.

“How swift life runs from January to December! We are all swept on by the torrent of things grown so familiar that they cast no shade; we make no comparisons; think scarcely ever of I or of you; and in this unconsciousness attain the utmost freedom from friction and part the weeds that grow over the mouths of sunken channels.”

The swiftness of life between January to December, one full calendar year, metaphorically echoes the swiftness of one’s life, which flies by so quickly. This passage captures the conflict between the inner and outer self and suggests that a person is most truly themselves when alone, in their most unconscious moments.

“Yet there are moments when the walls of the mind grow thin; when nothing is unabsorbed, and I could fancy that we might blow so vast a bubble that the sun might set and rise in it and we might take the blue of midday and the black of midnight and be cast off and escape from here and now.”

What is at first an awkward reunion marked by resentments turns into true appreciation of one another. This section emphasizes how a shared past can be formative in building community and uses soft, natural imagery to depict the pleasure of having life-long friendships and a community of formative people in one’s life.

“While we advance down this avenue […] I leaning slightly upon Jinny, Bernard arm-in-arm with Neville, and Susan with her hand in mine, it is difficult not to weep, calling ourselves little children, praying that God may keep us safe while we sleep. It is sweet to sing together, clasping hands, afraid of the dark, while Miss Curry plays the harmonium.”

This passage captures a moment of togetherness. Rhoda is in Spain during this chapter and so is excluded from this vignette of closeness between the five characters. The tone is bittersweet and deeply nostalgic, recalling the fears of the group as children. As the group is advanced in age, the “darkness” of which they are now afraid is death, the imagery suggests.

“How tired I am of stories, how tired I am of phrases that come down beautifully with all their feet on the ground! Also, how I distrust neat designs of life that are drawn upon half sheets of notepaper. I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.”

By his elderly years, Bernard has grown tired of stories and the language he has used throughout his life to depict stories. He has not found the ultimate purpose of these stories, and finds his use of language finally and ultimately inauthentic and therefore useless. Bernard has striven for eloquence and completeness in language through his life but now he rejects this as an artificial construct.