Virginia Woolf, The Waves Flashcards
What does Susan see?
A slab of pale yellow
What does Neville see?
A globe
What does Jinny see?
A crimson tassel
P.4
What does Louis hear?
A great beast’s foot which is chained, and stamping
P.4
‘But when we sit together…’
‘But when we sit together, close… we melt into each other with phrases’
Bernard, p.8
‘I am tied…’
‘I am tied down with single words’
Susan, p.8
‘Meaning has gone. The clock…’
‘Meaning has gone. The clock ticks. The two hands are convoys marching through the desert’
Rhoda, p.11
Troubled by a difficult equation set by the teacher, Rhoda is forced to sit and stare at the blackboard until she finds a solution. Unable to do so, her mind slowly wonders into abstraction as she envisages the hands of a clock as convoys of marching soldiers
- significance of the image of the desert? A Barron landscape, void of life, no meaning or order just vast inhabitable nature
Convoy - conveys the image of a unit, of order and structure. If the desert can be seen to represent an inhabitable landscape, which lacks structure and meaning, then the clock marching through this space may be symbolic of the very lack of meaning which Rhoda believes to be ‘gone’. Time, with its structure and order, seems to be aimlessly wondering, or progressing, through a space which is baron and meaningless.
‘The world is entire, and I am outside of it…”
‘The world is entire, and I am outside of it, crying, “oh save me, from being blown for ever outside the loop of time’
Rhoda, p.11
What is the last line of the final interlude?
‘Now the sun had sunk’
INTERLUDE
As they seem to discover their sensory perception, what do the children report of the world?
‘I see a ring’ - Bernard
‘I see a slab of pale yellow’ - Susan
‘I hear a sound’ - Rhoda
‘I see a globe’
‘I see a crimson tassel’ - Jinny
-I hear something stamping. A great beasts foot is chained’ - Louis
‘We shall not always give out a sound…’
‘We shall not always give out a sound like a beaten gong as one sensation strikes and then another’
LOUIS
He is referring to the ‘soliloquies’ that the students speak in. He refers to their speech resembling a beaten gong, being struck each time they are faced with a new daily impression / experience
P.22
Regarding ‘The Waves’, what did Woolf write in a letter to her friend Julia Briggs?
It’s possible to see read the characters as 6 different versions of a single self
Julie Briggs
- Woolf was trying to find new ways to convey the condition of the modern individual and depict real life. In order to do this, Woolf believe she must evolve a new style and form.
‘Prose and poetry, a novel and a play’
