A Provocative Reading ofThe Waves: Virginia Woolf’s Biography of a Generation

Woolf’s seventh novel, The Waves, published in 1931, has often been considered the most difficult for readers; yet it was also her most popular novel to date, selling ten thousand copies between its September publication and February 1932, perhaps because her readers saw it for what it was: a biography composed of the inner lives of her contemporaries. This article mines her diaries and essays from the time period to illustrate her interest in biography and her intention to write “the memoirs of one’s own times during peoples [sic] lifetimes. … The question is how to do it. … One might write a book of short significant separate scenes” (Woolf, Diary 3: 156–57). Like much of Woolf’s work, The Waves interrogates the limitations of generic conventions and queries how stories are told. Percival’s truncated life represents the dying form of the Bildungsroman. The voices of the remaining six characters record their sensations and inner experiences, while, together, the voices craft portraits of the phases of all human lives: childhood, early school years, and middle age. These are conveyed in such a way that admits that “a large and important part of life consists in our emotions toward such things as roses and nightingales, the dawn, the sunset, life, death and fate” (Woolf, “Poetry, Fiction, and the Future,” Essays 4: 435). Read as the biography of a generation, The Waves gains unity and accessibility.