Unfinished Stories

"'Among the tortures and devastations of life is
this then--our friends are not able to
finish their stories'" (39).

Points for Reflection

The Waves, pp. 7-107

1. At what point do the novel's six central voices become distinct enough from one another to be recognizable?
2. What is the great, chained beast which Louis hears stamping on the shore?
3. Who is more of an outsider, Louis or Rhoda?
4. Susan says she is "'tied down with single words,'" whereas Bernard "'[rises] up higher, with words and words in phrases'" (16). What does Susan mean by this distinction, one she elaborates shortly thereafter (18)?
5. What is the Elvedon of which Bernard speaks (17)?
6. Why does Louis choose not to demonstrate his knowledge during lessons and thereby not rise to the top of the class (20)?
7. Does anyone other than Neville (24-25) seem aware of death?
8. What does Susan mean by her repeated assertion that she is afraid neither of "heat" nor "the frozen winter"?
9. Are sleep and dreams a reliable refuge for Rhoda?
10. Which of the seven voices we encounter relies most heavily on figurative language when expressing an idea or observation? Consider the narrator, Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, and Louis. What might a certain voice's reliance on simile and metaphor suggest about him/her?
11. Does Bernard's relationship with words/phrases resemble that of Neville?
12. Are Neville's and Louis's respective affinities for Percival homosocial or homosexual in nature?
13. What is the intended product of Louis's "supreme endeavour" (39)? What is he attempting to create?
14. Why does Susan dislike school so intensely?
15. Do Susan's, Jinny's, and Rhoda's individual experiences with the looking-glass resemble more than they vary from one another's experiences?
16. Which emotion do the three young women evince most often at this point in their lives?
17. What about Archie, Hugh, Parker, Dalton, Larpent, and Smith so entrances Louis?
18. What "hard" thing has grown inside Susan during her time at school (54)?
19. What does Susan want out of romance (55)?
20. Why does Susan long for day, and Rhoda for night (54-56)?
21. What do you make of Rhoda's enigmatic experience with an envelope--what actually happened here (64)?
22. Why does Neville consider Bernard's storytelling impulse faulty (69-70)?
23. Has Neville's love of literature been altered by his experience at school?
24. Would it be inappropriate to suggest that Bernard and Jinny are different sex representatives of the same personality type? What of Rhoda and Louis?
25. Does Time’s progress appear as inexorable and violent in this novel as it has in Woolf’s previous works?
26. Is Bernard's self-description apt--does he combine within his character both "'the sensibility of a woman'" and "'the logical sobriety of a man'" (76)? Are his capacity to feel and his ability to reason tightly integrated (77)?  Does he approach the androgynous mind advanced by Woolf in the recent A Room of One’s Own (98-104)?
27. Bernard represents himself as simultaneously "disparate" and "integrated," as both sympathetic and cold (77), and begins to wonder how many different people he is (76-81). Neville does not agree that Bernard's personality is variable, his character fluid (87, 89, 90)? Which of these two characters' perspectives holds more weight?
28. What types of waves do each of our characters encounter?
29. Recall Clarissa Dalloway’s effort to draw all the fragments of herself into one whole for the benefit of others in Mrs. Dalloway (37). Do each of our central figures find themselves similarly splintered, similarly . . . various?
30. Why might Woolf, a lifelong pacifist, repeatedly employ martial imagery to describe waves in the italicized, dream-like preludes to each section?
31. Would The Birds be as apt a title for this novel as The Waves?
32. Is Neville at heart an aesthete? Does his approach to life resemble that of Walter Pater or Oscar Wilde?
33. Neville both desires friendship and dislikes having his self "mixed up" in another’s self (83). Which impulse proves stronger?
34. Is Bernard's description of Neville accurate (85)?
35. Why does Neville dislike shop-girls? What does he mean when he claims that they remind us of "our degradation," of "the vulgarity of life" (86, 88)?
36. What is the secret Neville wishes to share with Bernard (88)?
37. What does Bernard suggest is necessary for artistic perfection--something he imagines Neville obtaining while he himself does not (91)? Does the text provide evidence that one character does indeed achieve greater artistry than the other?
38. Does Louis desire to write fiction like Bernard or create poetry like Neville?
39. What does Susan mean by her claim that she "'cannot be divided, or kept apart'" (97), a claim quickly followed by the observation that she does not know who she actually is (98)?
40. What "hard" thing continues to grow inside Susan?
41. Is Rhoda's self-consciousness and lack of confidence with others a function of actual social clumsiness, her own anxiety, or a profound disinterest in relationships (105-107)?

The Wave (1879)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu