A Symphony About Life Crossing Time And Space

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is a great female writer of the 20th century in England. The success that she made in literary creation is so outstanding that she is both a representative of stream-of-consciousness and a forerunner of Western Feminist. During her own literary creation process afterwards, Woolf, who had been influenced by her father in the aspect of literature since she was very young, made great effort to break the literary traditions, to set up new novel styles as well as her literary theory, and tried out new methods along with skills. So it can be said that the process of Woolf s writing is a process with experiments to break free from the conventions and to perform her new literary standard. From the beginning to now, many critics keep great interest in her works, because of the feature of stream-of-consciousness, which is like floating clouds and running streams; the skills of literature, which is worked out with meticulous care; and the theory of internal monologue, which is in penetrating stroke.In Woolf s numerous works, the novels, with creativeness, ideological content, and artistic quality, are regarded not only as the concrete reflection of her literary theory, but also as monumental works in the English literary world in the 20th century. Among her altogether ten novels (including nine long novels and one short novel), The Waves, which was written in 1931, is one of the representatives of Woolf s stream-of-consciousness novels.Without thrilling story, The Waves is symbolically based on nine segments of the six characters' life, describing their thoughts during different stages carefully. In this way, the author's thoughts about life are explained, which is seemingly inconsistent, in fact is truthful and comprehensive. Strictly speaking, the six characters, that is, Jinny, Rhoda, Susan, Bernard, Louis, and Neville, have appeared in Woolf s other books, however, in The Waves they are different from others. Because the substantial description about their appearances is absent, instead, they become a kind of unreal image, murmuring on the abstract time and space background, sharing their different understanding of permanence of life, furthermore, expressing their colorful innerworlds. Just those symbolical lives, in which particularity and universality are combined with each other, represent the author's or the whole human being's view about life.To some extent, the success of The Waves can be due to its emblematic method as montage, which depicts the blurred but vivid figures to recount Woolf s deep and repeated thoughts about life. Being based on this feature, there are other marvelous characteristics that make this novel become perfection both in form and in content, such as, the smooth artistic style, the unique overall structure, the exquisite language, and so on.In The Waves, Woolf really realized her theory to release novel from the yoke of traditional rules, to integrate all the fragments by using stream-of-consciousness, moreover, to continue her own experiment by combining many methods of other artistic forms, such as poems, music, play, drawing, and so on. Therefore, The Waves is not a traditional novel any more, but a poetry-novel, which is thought of as the perfect work among the original ones by many critics. Conciseness of poetry, grace of prose, rhythm of music, together with perspective of picture, are interwoven with each other, echoing like the music notes in the great symphony that has the human being, the cosmos, and the permanence of nature as the theme. On the other hand, all the elements are permeated with the skills of stream-of-consciousness, through which the luxuriant innermost being is revealed.Besides the distinctive style, the structure of this book is also ingenious, so it is regarded as one of the most attractive determinants. Being lack of sequence or plots, the novel is full of the fragmentary and obscure statements of the characters. In spite of this, they are well organized by the author cleverly. The nine chapters, which give different pictures about their ni...