The Waves

Woolf’s experimental use of language in the novel is an explicit investigation into how the language of a text intrinsically shapes the way in which it presents the illusion of reality. Her use of stream-of-consciousness narration and the structure of this novel, in which characters speak in soliloquies one after the other, highlight this theme of the role of language in shaping reality, showing how language both shapes and is shaped by personal perspective.

In departing from traditional realist styles, the modernist invention of stream-of-consciousness challenged the idea that the established modes of linguistic composition, which previously had a monopoly on the capture and description of life’s realities. The stream-of-consciousness narrative style, in which characters narrate their thoughts, feelings, and actions in the moment that they are happening, seeks to find a way to mimic real human thought processes. It is significant that the flowing, informal style and structure of the novel suggest that these soliloquies are the unconscious “inner” voices of the characters and not their outward projections of self in the style of a traditional conscious first-person narrative. Woolf’s boundary-pushing style of stream-of-consciousness narration therefore reflects concepts of how the language in a person’s mind expresses the sensations of their lived experience. Rather than focus on events, this narrative style constructs reality by using language of the self and of the conscious to explore how people view themselves and others.

In this novel, reality is shaped through intimate language that enables the direct comparison of the voices, temperaments, and attitudes of each character through their first-person narratives, against each other and over time between sections. For example, in Chapter 1, when the narrators are all children, their stream-of-consciousness reflects the minute wonder of children. Their sense of being in the moment and the naive simple language and concepts they express shifts as the novel progresses into increasingly sophisticated and self-reflective narratives, indicative of the adult impulse to protect and project a formed sense of self. In these earlier passages, every detail and feeling is explored and experienced because children do not yet censor their thoughts and they live in the moment. By the time the characters are adults, their stream-of-consciousness reflects the ways in which maturity, responsibility, and the threat of social shame inform the thoughts and experiences that adults go through privately. Thus, the articulation of age through stream-of-consciousness narration highlights how language shapes our different realities as we grow and age. The childlike expression of the early novel is also an exemplar in relating its concluding thoughts on the innate truth of childhood language; this exemplifies its own theory on the way artifice in language grows as people grow.

Language as a way of understanding and forming reality is explored by the novel through the characters who want to be writers, such as Bernard, Neville, and Louis. All three boys attend the same boarding school and listen to the same lecture, but their different reactions to this lecture reveal the differing ways in which they use language to create authenticity, highlighting Woolf’s belief in language as individual to self-expression. As a result, these characters’ beliefs about language are a lens through which the novel reveals and strengthens aspects of their characters.

For his whole life, Neville seeks to use language as a way of expressing authentic beauty and passion. He doesn’t want language to be overblown; instead, he wants language to encapsulate the human experience of love and beauty. This is a direct reflection of who Neville is as a person, and his success as a poet, the novel suggests, is a result of the personal “truth” of his linguistic expression.

Bernard, on the other hand, writes fiction that is overdramatic in its prose style, and his efforts are unsuccessful. This is also a direct reflection of who Bernard is and his rather traditional and unquestioning approach to life and its opportunities. His acceptance of an established male role without considering whether this is authentic to him is highlighted by his reliance on inauthentic language in his own compositions; the novel suggests that he has not gotten to the heart of life’s realities. Bernard’s identity crisis in later years is the culmination of these life choices and is again reflected in his expressed theories around language. In old age, he discovers that the language he has used for decades has not prepared him for this next, final chapter of his life, expressive of his newly-felt doubt about his identity and whether his life has been a true form of self-expression. In seeking this alternative self, he craves a new language that will be deeper and more authentic to atavistic human experience.

Louis is also a poet and his pursuit of linguistic creativity reflects the conflicts and divisions of his life, as he has constructed an identity for himself that answers his need for status but marginalizes other aspects of his character. Louis is a serious businessman but craves the role of intellectual, creative thinker of history and philosophy, precluded to him by his own ambitions. He wants to reinstate this second side of himself through private, almost furtive, poetic activity, and to reconcile both sides of his persona through his poetic experiments.