- E.K Sparks for Engl
814
- Clemson University
- Spring 2000
- Structural
Outline of The Waves
- by Virginia
Woolf
- (Page numbers are beginning
of sections in Harcourt edition)
- Episode One : CHILDHOOD
- 7 Before sunrise
- 8 Impressions at dawn; Louis
alone before breakfast; Jinny kisses Louis; Susan gets depressed
and runs off; Bernard comforts her with fantasy of Elvedon; Rhoda
wi petals in bowl; lessons wi Miss Hudson; reactions to words;
Rhoda left behind; B & J under currant bushes; Miss Curry
takes them for a walk; Neville left behind; Susan sees servants
kissing; dinner; baths; Rhoda going to sleep
- Episode Two : SCHOOL DAYS
- 29 Sun rising; bud opening;
amorphousness
- 30 Bernard leaving for school
first time; Louis alienated; Neville fits in, Headmaster, old
Crane
- 32 Girls at school: react to
Miss Lambert
- 34 Boys at chapel & cricket
- 40 Girls getting ready to play
tennis
- 45 Cricket match: various reactions
to masculinity
- 53 Girls--day before vacation,
longing for future
- 57 Boys--day before vacation
- 61 Girls--first day of holidays,
on the train
- 65 Boys on train
- Episode Three : COLLEGE
& SOCIALS
- 73 sun rose; girl creating
jewels; detritus on beach; birds now sing in chorus; focus on
one object; look into unlit world; purulence; sun inside; waves
like warriors
- 76 men: Bernard at college,
writing love letter like Byron, fantasy of visit to country house;
Neville also at college, in love wi Percival, wants to be a poet;
Bernard reacting to N; N reacting to B, doomed always in love;
B meditating on friends; Louis in eating shop, feels alien and
vulnerable
- 97 Women: Susan in early morning,
imagining lover, hungry; Jinny going to party wi gilt chairs,
unfurls, rooted but flowing; talking freely; Rhoda terrified
at party., tongues cut like knives, wave breaks.
- Episode Four : DINNER PARTY
- 108 risen sun; thud of waves;
rivers move inland; in garden birds sing alone, now and then
songs run together, then sever; sun in room makes object on table
sharply defined
- 111 ARRIVALS: Bernard on train,
happiness at being engaged makes him feel connected to other
passengers; going to farewell dinner for P /118 Neville arrives
early/ 119 Louis sees Susan/ 120 Susan sees Jinny/ 121Nev sees
Bernard/ 122 Rhoda no face
- 122 PERCEVAL ARRIVES: Neville,
P restores order; B sees as hero
- 123 DINNER PARTY: everyone contributes
short sharp memories;
- 127 IDENTITY STATEMENTS: Bernards
flower speech; Nevilles re-incarnation speech, seeking a pattern;
Jinny sees social pattern but only in terms of own body; rapidity
and change of Nevilles mental life; Rhoda, lacks all connection;
Susan natural happiness only; B cannot bear solitude
- 135 SENSORY REACTIONS: R, mystic
light; Jinny membranes; L roar of London;
- 135 REACTIONS TO PERCIVAL: B
thinks of India, R sees him as a round stone; for Louis he is
the touchstone that makes falseness clear; S love hate;
- 138 DRIFTING INTO FANTASIES
AS DINNER ENDS: N overfed, fall into cavern; R white statues,
fountain, grove...Louis and Rhoda imagine a festival dance that
turns into a funeral procession
- 142 ESTABLISHING THE CIRCLE
BEFORE IT IS BROKEN: Susan senses circle as chain; Louis feels
it break in flow; R sees circle destroyed; B sees moment of ravenous
identity is over; Louis feels circle close again; J globe whose
walls are P
- Episode Five : PERCIVALS
DEATH
- 148 Sun at full height;
burns, uncompromising, exact, level. Starts out reds, goes to
grey. Roams over other countries, but then as comes back to England
turns green and purple. One green mound. Birds singing to each
other, building nests. In the house a zone of shadow. Waves make
sound of beast stamping.
- 151 REACTIONS TO PS DEATH: Neville
cannot pass by the tree, loses sense of reality; Bernards son
just born, sense of sequence, goes to art gallery; R cannot cross
puddle, walking thru town, violets; sense of death, hanging meat,
goes to concert; oblong in square; fantasy of dark pools, pillars
stand entire
- Episode Six : THE LIFE OF
WORK & LOVE
- 165 Sun past mid-point.
Birds, dragonfly, reeds, still. Red blinds. Light driving darkness
before it in mounds. Rising tide but fish stranded.
- 167 Louis in office--commerce;
attic room. He and Rhoda lovers. Make one of his many selves;
hatchet falls.
- 171 Susan at home with baby;
has become her mother. Glutted wi natural happiness
- 173 Jinny at a party, making
up stories about people; lover--jug jug
- 177 Neville in rooms wi lover,
remembering journey of the day/relationship. Hates pomposity.
How we build a relationship by noticing things together
- Episode Seven : MIDDLE AGE
- 182 Sun lower, clouds and
shadows draining color; tide at ebb. Birds flying in formation
except for one, solitary in marsh. Wind among flowers causes
them to bend and flash like a FIN cutting through water; petals
fall and heads droop. Fields of corn varnished wi red and gold.
Brown tinge in house, shadow of moth.
- 184 Bernard--drop falls: awareness
of loss. Goes to Rome. State of detachment; accepts limits. Collects
phrases but no story to connect them. Why select detail? But
then he begins to move again, caught up in the general sequence.
FIN in waste of waters.
- 190 Susan-- in field wi son,
summit of desire; round of country life. But sometimes sick of
natural happiness. Memories of childhood
- 193 Jinny-- Tube in London.
No longer part of procession. But takes solace in Empire
- 196 Neville-- says he doesnt
need anything anymore; we are not responsible for others. Thinks
of L and R; goes to his room where he reads and goes down into
self to write poetry; sits by fire, lover comes
- 200 Louis--back from office,
divested of authority; reads one poem (Shelley, West Wind); pyramid;
destiny trying to weave history together. P and R left him
- 203 Rhoda--coming
back from tube, hates crowds. House we made sq upon oblong. On
a hill in Spain, thinking abt jumping off cliff
- Episode Eight : REUNION
DINNER AT HAMPTON COURT
- 207 sun sinking: red and
gold turn to grey. Tree loses its uniformity, cut corn, pool
no longer reflects, one bone, heat and color have gone out. But
black turns to blue as shadows lengthen, foam leaves pearl rim
behind.
- 210 Difficulty of Meeting Again:
Bernard, slight discomfort; Neville sorrow over loss of P, feels
challenged by Susan but also discuss his various loves; Susan
aware of discrediting N because she has chosen monogamy; Rhoda
green knife
- 217 Reflections on separateness:
Bernard cannot bear solitude; Louis feels thread is broken but
relies on job and ironic distance; Jinny focuses on the present
surface, surround by people although she knows she is growing
older. Rhoda can talk to others but still has no real face, knows
she will fall alone but still imagines blowing bubble that will
surround them all
- 224 Meditations in silence when
replete after dinner: Bernard egotism blunted by food; j miracle
of life staying in present but R end of life and L sense of being
dissolved in history
- 226 Fight against the Chaos:
Nev love, r sees them getting ready to leave;
- 227 WALK After Dinner: Bernard
holds forth about history, N also evokes belonging to history
L walking with hands clasped WI others, remembers singing as
child; J feels triumph, B 6-sided flower, J flower too
- 227 R and L watch others walk
on as they stop by urn... see the other approaching as fish from
sea.
- 232 Other return: B comments
on destroying a world; B sense of tolerable of life--lights of
shopkeepers
- Episode Nine : BERNARDs
SUMMING UP
- 236 Sun has set; cant distinguish
sea and sky, black and grey. Things melt into obscurity. Waves
of darkness
- 238 B: sees globe of life but
needs words. Recounts narrative: the nursery; the garden (moment
of first awareness of self as separate), Elvedon; the things
that made them all different (N and dead man), school and Percival,
memories of Louis and Neville; discovery of girls (*248: what
is beyond the individual, what is perhaps permanent, is the symbolic);
first love;
- 252 willow tree by the river:
shares Ns vision, Rhoda sees tree in wasteland; Jinnys willow
is in the moment; Louis in city landscape... Moment when Bs I.d.
solidifies, sense of being inheritor of civilization
- 254 move into the house, complexity
of life, shell form, period of precision and completeness when
we become very competent, but still there are moments (*256--globe
is a bubble , cauldron with six little fish)
- 258 Bs leap--marriage, (biographer)
tendency to domesticity; sense of completeness in life and sufficiency
of language
- 263 , interrupted by ps death,
no language for pain; ability to be detached but guilt at not
having gone to Hampton court wi P. Talk wi Jinny about P, but
make him into a lily; goes to each friend.
- 267 Is this the end? But wave
rises again in him and he goes on, but now with some hesitation.
Visit wi Susan makes him see surrender to stupidity of nature;
Elvedon but sense of inescapability of death--lowest curve of
being, and yet fights, nets leaves of tree into order with words.
- 270 Back to city on train, pleasure
in pageant of existence.
- 271 Another drop falls; seeks
Nev. who thinks in unlimited time of the mind, but focuses in
on one person, moment; then visits L and R but no answer; thinks
of S and J
- 276 Remembers Hampton Court--sense
of rivalry yet together they make complete body
- 280 Barber shop, sense of dissolution,
cut in swathes, but then collects identity. Pretends to be with
R though she has killed herself. Goes to St. Pauls, which he
does no respect as Louis
- 283 Rhythm stopped for one day,
leaning over gate--nothingness, eclipse of sun, life as a dance
of dust. But sun and color return--though to a world new wiout
self
- 288 Meets you in the cloak room.
Doubts fixities; has lost shell which grows in youth--cant separate
self from others; try to tell story of life but all those figures
of the unconscious: old brute, hairy man
- 290 body like temple (merging
wi others sensations-- doves, rhoda, forks, Nev) in freedom from
desire, and identity. (Shock of wave which wakes him to see golden
loop--back to beginning) now merges with images of interludes
(birds, tunnels among flowers, house.
- 292 return to awareness of reader,
seeing him--walks into pillar box. Sense o how disgusting life
is. Pain inflicted by others. But then again, gradual acceleration
an unification. Praise of solitude (book drops to the floor).
Reiterates need for a little language
- 296 waiter comes, end of meal.
Outside, is a kindling in sky--not yet dawn. Eternal renewal,
wave rises again. Death is the enemy.