As we finish The Waves, I am becoming more aware of Woolf’s sense of connectivity between the words and the reader. We already saw Woolf throw out any sense of logic and reason in Orlando, which presents issues such as time and gender as very loosely defined yet thoroughly explored themes. However the language of Orlando does not take as free of a form as that of The Waves, as within Orlando there are still concepts of the narrator and a relative order of events. The Waves instead relies completely on its characters’ dialogue, which presents its own constrictions but at the same time frees Woolf to use even more vivid and imaginative language. Because Woolf is not obligated to provide a narrator’s voice giving directional, spatial, and psychological information, she is able to present all of the plot and imagery through first-person language. This allows her to simultaneously impose the speaking character’s personality on a scene while providing new visual information, which is then juggled around between the other characters in their conversation.
Even more intriguing than the form of The Waves are the multiple levels of conversation that happen at once throughout the novel. The idea of the inner conversation is one that Woolf takes to a new level in this novel. Between Bernard’s pompous demeanor and Rhoda’s near constant depressive state, there are times when each of the characters feels like a part of one greater mind. Perhaps each of the characters represents a faction of Woolf’s own ego, as it’s not difficult to see such connections between Bernard’s love of language or Neville’s passion for art. Yet even such characteristics can be seen on a much deeper level. Aside from numerous superficial similarities between Woolf and her characters (three of them have ambitions to be writers), other characters explore much deeper emotions. These emotions tend to reveal themselves in multiple characters, but they are each usually resolved only in one. For instance, Susan, Rhoda, and Louis all feel like they are excluded from their surroundings in some way: Susan debates the advantages of living a simple country life away from the city, Rhoda suffers from a sense of complete alienation from the other characters, and Louis is self-conscious of his lower-class appearance and accent. While ultimately neither Rhoda nor Louis get over their insecurities, Susan makes the conscious choice to live a domestic life on a farm, thus bringing closure to her sense of exclusion while she was in the city. This pattern is seen again between Bernard, Louis, and Neville to a lesser degree. All three of the men have ambitions to become writers in the future, but ultimately only Neville is successful in doing so. This is because Neville is able to dedicate a part of his life to art that the others are not: Bernard is almost lost in his own world to the point that he inhibits his own success. He is constantly infatuated with language and words, and while he is very talented, he is also heavily invested in the group and his relationships with the other characters. He does not always make this aspect of his personality obvious, but the way he insists on telling everyone’s story at the end suggests that he is more concerned with the other characters than he may let on. On the other hand, Louis is similarly invested in his personal relationships that he does not refine his art as Neville did, and instead Louis is constantly questioning his identity. While each character is unique in their own ways, the similarities between them propel the unconscious conversation between their lives.
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