The Voyage Out

In The Voyage Out, strangers and family members alike are confined in close quarters, far from the social settings they’re accustomed to, and forced to interact with one another in new ways. The ship that brings Helen and Rachel to Santa Marina and the steamboat that takes them deeper into Santa Marina’s rural forest are symbols of internal transformation. The lack of privacy on these vessels forces people to get along with one another in new ways. They don’t have the ability to leave when they want and return home; they must find a way to converse with and live with one another. Through this proximity, Helen discovers how ineffectively Rachel’s education and experience have prepared her for adult life. They form an intimate friendship because they are two women surrounded by mostly men on a journey far from home, and Helen becomes a mentor to Rachel, offering her the space to undergo a process of Self-Discovery before her sudden, early death. Without the setting and environment of the ship, Helen and Rachel might never have learned about one another’s complexities.

Because the village of Santa Marina is a small community in the midst of what the English visitors see as a threatening wilderness, they must spend time with one another whether they like each other or not. Most of the novel’s characters find St. John Hirst as irritating as the reader likely does, but he is a part of the hotel life and one of the few English people on the island, and therefore he is included in everything the other English tourists do. For months, Rachel, Helen, and Ridley are on their own in the villa. They create a balance of socialization and private wanderings. But their idyllic villa life is challenged by the arrival of English tourists. Without intending to, Helen and Rachel become involved with the other English people on the island.

Hirst struggles to understand the complexities of human relationships because he rejects the importance of human connection. Hirst believes that no one is capable of having a real conversation with him. His personality if off-putting to others because he is so egotistical, yet he is aware of his reputation and wants to be liked. His friend Hewet helps him branch out socially. Hewet defends Hirst to the other characters who don’t like him and is able to explain Hirst’s intellectual affect in a way that makes other characters more sympathetic to him. Helen challenges Hirst’s understanding of human connection and his low opinion of women. He finds her both beautiful and capable of deep and meaningful conversation. Thus, Hirst makes a real friend even by being himself. His friendship with Helen is an infatuation as well, though it’s an impossible one since Helen is a married woman 20 years his senior. Through Helen, Hirst learns that he can develop a friendship with a woman that is not defined either by sexual attraction or by misogynistic dismissal of her intellectual abilities.

For Rachel, the set-apart quality of the resort is an opportunity to learn not only about other people but also—and most importantly—about herself. Rachel has not considered herself to be anything other than a pianist. The voyage to Santa Marina teaches Rachel that she is capable of emotions, sexual sensations, and passions that were unknown to her in England. She starts relying on herself more. Though she takes other people’s advice seriously, she also reads the novels she likes, even when she’s teased for it. She continues honing her piano skills even though many people find her intense interest in the piano largely useless. She starts forming opinions about other people and discovers that people are necessarily dishonest. Essentially, people must put up a façade of social norms in order to protect their own vulnerabilities. This frustrates Rachel because she has so little experience dealing with society and social norms. Rachel also discovers that other people can be kind and interesting and that they can help her in her own development. Rachel develops self-respect as she becomes attuned to emotion, the beauty of the world, and her ability to be liked. Early in the novel, when Hirst gives her the copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, implying that she won’t be able to understand it because she is a woman, she genuinely fears that he may be right, that there must be something wrong with her if she doesn’t like it. By the end of the novel, she is confident in her low opinion of both Gibbon’s history and Hirst himself. The second important lesson in the complexity of human relationships is falling in love with Hewet. Their engagement offers Rachel her first taste of true happiness, but she also discovers that falling in love can be painful since it means accepting that her loved one, Hewet, will always be fundamentally unknowable to her. As close as they are, she’ll never know what’s going on inside his mind.

Woolf asks many questions about human connection in this novel. In the social context of Edwardian England, marriage is the prime structure of human connection, but is it sufficient? Is marriage an accurate portrayal of how people feel and interact with one another? Woolf also questions how love is formed. Evelyn, for example, can pinpoint and analyze the precise reasons why she likes someone. However, Hewet believes that real connection and love can’t be identified; he thinks love is a strong feeling that can’t be analyzed. Other characters see connection and human relationships as a necessity for survival and community, believing that it is the way in which people rely on each other that breeds love, not the other way around. Ultimately, every human being is on their own journey for connection, but connection is inarguably important. It helps people get through challenging times and makes them consider a way of being better than how they were before.