An Exploration Of Life Experience In Virginia Woolf’s The Waves

The Waves (1931) stands out among Virginia Woolf’s novels as her most experimental one, earning it the reputation as a classic modernist text. Characterized by its highly stylized rhythmic prose and lyrical interludes at the beginning of each chapter, The Waves is also marked as Woolf’s most poetic novel. Woolf abandons the traditional structure and plot practiced in English novels since the time of Henry Fielding and builds the characters from inside out in The Waves. The novel is primarily made up of the interior monologues of six friends. The voices trace them from their childhood, through adolescence, young adulthood, middle age to the old age. The nine interludes before each chapter, depicting mainly the position of the sun and the movements of the waves at different times of the day, correspond to the different life stages of the six characters.This thesis explores the life experience in Woolf’s The Waves. First and foremost, the author probes into both the western and the Chinese understandings of life experience, and lays the theoretical foundation for the whole thesis together with Woolf’s life poetics. The following exploration of life experience falls into two categories. To begin with, the life experiences of the six major characters are divided into three groups. Jinny and Susan share physicality as the key word of life experience, though the former experiences it sexually and the latter maternally. Isolation is the core of life experience for Louis and Rhoda because of marginaliry and lack of identity respectively. Both Neville and Bernard concern profoundly about the truth of life and death, yet they form different reflections. Neville strives for life experience with order and perfection, and projects his pursuit onto literature and his beloved Percival. From his perspective, chaotic real life needs to be viewed with love."Death among the apple trees" represents Neville’s knowledge and fear of death. Phrasing is Bernard’s primary way of experiencing life. One of his most important phrases,"fin in a waste of waters", symbolizes his reflections on life, i.e., the majority of people live their lives automatically and instinctively; what’s more, meaning and reality will break the surface of life without warning. Bernard phrases death as "the ultimate enemy" and vows to fight against it till the very end. Then, life experience is interpreted through the two major symbols—waves and circles, to deliver the senses of continuity and wholeness.The Waves brings readers as close as possible to the innate truth of life. This thesis explores life experience in The Waves and contributes new insights into understanding the essence of this novel.