The Waves by Virginia Woolf
It’s been quite a while since I last read Virginia Woolf. The truth is – that mechanically, I respect and admire Virginia Woolf very much and can understand how revolutionary she was during her Bloomsbury days. But – deep down, within my more personal preferences, I find Woolf’s writings a little overly sentimental, pessimistic, and a little…arrogant sometimes. Perhaps I find it very difficult to relate to her due to such a grand gap in time, age, circumstance…but that’s the thing. Shouldn’t timeless classics be timeless?
Whatever my bias – The Waves is a very interesting experiment and probably Woolf at her boldest. It isn’t a conventional novel at all – far from it. I bet those who prefer the beginning, middle, and end – the classic structure of novels will probably not be able to get through or finish The Waves at all because it doesn’t follow any conceived notion of what a novel or story is.
Woolf herself described this work as a poetic experiment – that she did not believe the different characters were different at all – but that the book was one flowing consciousness – a long poem.
It definitely has the beauty of poetic language and the descriptive detail of any good pastoral lyric – but it is endless in its eulogizing. Despite that genius that picked up the stream of consciousness and turned it into poetry, its just a little too much romanticizing and not enough story to keep a more contemporary readers’ interest.
The book is sprinkled with “phrases” that have a great impact – especially on those coming to the book experiencing the same loss the characters experience with the death of a friend. Usually, these highlights of the novel are during Bernard’s monologues – so I would say that they are the strongest parts of the narrative though they are also the longest.
You see, this book is not an external reckoning of a story with characters that fill a plot. Woolf’s Waves is the inner monologues of 6 friends. The book is their recorded thoughts as they experience life, remember childhood, and hope or fear their future. Therefore, you must read with close, guarded attention to actually catch any real action or any real-time happenings outside of what that character is imagining. In the early 20th century, this was surely a pioneer’s genius at work. For 2013 – and my very young, millennial attention span – I kept finding myself caring less and less about the detail and just desiring that the characters get to a point.
You see – there is nothing REAL about the waves other than a few quotable proverbs about memory, life, death, etc. But – I find that the 6 characters in Woolf’s novel are just Woolf herself being the poet of the moment – the one that is suffering and calls attention to that suffering. The characters she is creating would not actually spend any of their internal thoughts and emotions on the long, verbose, grandiose imaginings that I found myself just getting progressively bored with – it was too self conscious – too much like Woody Allen’s films that spend time in art galleries pondering the meaning behind art. So much of this felt like that moment when Woody looks at the camera and wonders allowed. This novel is Woolf’s own self conscious wonderings about how far she can take the narrative psyche. There was not a real plot, story, or reason to really care at all.
I feel sort of…guilty about feeling negatively or writing a negative review on Virginia Woolf. But – I think as I grow into an adult, I find myself disliking her penchant for…needless emotional pessimism. It’s probably attuned to her own mental illness and struggles with self preservation. I am sure that I would feel differently about Orlando, Orlando – which is supposed to be her love story – that doesn’t present dark, death-obsessed undertones. And one day, I’m sure I’ll give it a shot.
I think my own inclinations these days are moving away from the poetic – the illusory – and also the horridly over sentimental. I am craving something that enhances my experience of life, and not forcing me to question it. Yes – perhaps questioning is the root to understanding…but the enhancement of beauty tastes so much sweeter. I’ve made a commitment to myself to be happy to be well to be positive…and sinking down into the depths of writers who are tired of life is not a way to achieve that goal one bit.
She is bound by her generation – her gender – there are many reasons that her writings are a product of her age. Literature post 1970 brings a realism to narrative that Woolf would not have dreamed of – and if she had lived today, she would have been quite a different person. Though her genius is not questionable, I find myself a little resentful of this book and how it could make a person feel…Perhaps there are those that will enjoy this book and be able to apply its lessons, its message in a more productive way…that is assuming there are those that can manage to get through all the wailing, all the regrets, and all the heartache each character takes about 50 pages to explicate.
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