Between sensation and sign: the secret language of the waves

Abstract

The structure of Virginia Woolf 's late novel The Waves, which alternates between interludes of an uninhabited seascape and a series of non-mimetic soliloquies, has long puzzled and intrigued her critics. This essay argues that the images that circulate not only between separate soliloquies, but also between soliloquy and interlude, traverse the boundary between objectivity and subjectivity and frame sensations, perceptions, and thoughts as physical presences in the real world. In the recurrent treatment of words as sensuous entities, moreover, the novel suggests that all practices of language and aspects of consciousness are essentially physical phenomena in the world of people, words, and waves. The Waves thus accomplishes something new and largely unrecognized in modern narrative: the language, imagery, structure, and themes collectively establish the continuity of word, narrative, and world through a non-subjective, physicalized consciousness.