Discuss the ways in
which Modernism, Realism and Post-Structuralism have shaped the form of the
novel, in reference to Woolf’s The Waves (1931).
Through the
course of this essay I will look at Woolf as a modernist writer and how she
uses the Waves (1931) to rebel against and address issues in the design
of realist novel, this primarily being that they are unrealistic to life,
therefore unrealistic to the novel. However, this novels lack of realism, in
the conventional sense, should not question its place with in the form of the
novel, even though critics such as Watt (1968) would argue that realism is one
of the defining features of the novel form. Woolf appears to be employing
post-structuralist ideas within the text in order to address her problems
within the standard, realist novel. I will be arguing that Woolf’s novel is
with the product of the experimental idea of trying to form life into an
accurate narrative, which was initiated by the post-structuralist arguing that
language, therefore the novel, is a representation of life.
The
Waves (1931), as a modernist
novel, pushes the boundaries of the standard novel form. In the Waves
‘Introduction’, Parsons (2000) writes how this is supported in the way that
this text is read differently to the conventional narrative, its arrangement
being much closer to the medium of music, writing to a rhythm not a plot; it is
due to this key factor that this novels true literary form is often questioned. This novel was labored over much more than
Woolf’s previous novels in which two full drafts were made, reflecting Woolf’s
‘ever-increasing concern with the inflexibility of language and the need to
accomplish a greater elasticity of expression with the novel form’ (Parson,
2000, p.iv). This novel, through its conception to its creation, was an
experimental text, which Woolf feared would be incoherent, due to its contrast
to the standard novel, to the majority of readers. Keep, McLaughlin and Parmar writes;
In
literature, the movement [modernism] is associated with the works of Eliot,
James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats, [etc.] in their attempt to throw off
the aesthetic burden of the realist novel, these writers introduced
a variety of literary tactics and devices. […]
Modernism is often derided for abandoning the social world in favour of its
narcissistic interest in language and its processes. Recognizing the failure of
language to ever fully communicate meaning […] the modernists generally
downplayed content in favour of an investigation of form.
(Keep, McLaughlin & Parmar, 1993)
With this in
mind, this texts form is clearly a modernist attempt of addressing the function
of realism within the novel. In this novel, Woolf is questioning the fundamental
role that realism has within the novel, seeing it as a contradiction. She is
viewing the structural techniques used within these realist texts to be an
unrealistic processing of the written word and of human experience. Indeed,
through the use of the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique in the Waves (1931)
she is endeavoring to re-create the true realism of the mind. However, the
result is that the Waves (1931) is a novel that is rather unstable in
form, as it struggles to fit within any single form of literary text; with
Woolf often referring to it as a ‘Play-poem’, that address the unconscious
aspects of being, rather than a novel. However, there are many aspects of the
text that place it within the form of the novel, such as its use of ‘dialogism’
(many voices within the text, rather than one singular voice of the author)
that helps to create reliability which is lost though the lack of realism in
the text, which build upon the novels essential goal of exploring the reality
of selfhood and life.
In the novels, interludes are used at the
beginning of each of the nine parts, setting the
scene of the time of day and the stage in the lives of the six characters,
acting as waves that push the flow of the narrative. The interludes provide boundaries that help to shape the text, which can appear
to be a collection of soliloquies or monologues through its use of its
characters dialogue. Parsons writes that ‘the metaphor of the waves
provides the formal structure for the presentation of these lives’ (Parsons,
2000, The Waves ‘Introduction’, p.vi), aiding the suggestion that these
interludes are to help engage the reader with the text by Woolf framing her experimental writing
within small sections of more standard and realistic writing in order to
achieve clarity and foot hold for the reader that it searching for plot.
Yet, these interludes can interfere
upon the narrative and its rhythm, thus pointing out the flaws of realism
within texts. Undeniably, the interludes create a contradicting duality
towards realism in the novel. Watt
writes that realism;
Is
the distinctive narrative mode of the novel. [It is] the sum of literary
techniques whereby the novel’s imitation of human life follows philosophical
realism in its attempt to ascertain and report the truth. The novel’s mode of
imitating reality may therefore be equally well summarized in terms of the
procedures of another group of specialists in epistemology: the jury in a court
of law. Their expectations and those of the novel reader coincide in many ways:
both want to know all the particulars of a given case.’
(Watt, 1968, the Rise of the Novel, Chapter I).
In this sense the Waves (1931) largely challenges realism place within the novel, as it
contests this direct relationship between author, content and reader (which
links to my point about Kristeva’s, 1986, three textual
dimensions, p. 5). This novel never fully addresses ‘truth’ as it favors observations of
the ‘truth’ which, paradoxically, is more realistic to life. Furthermore, its
use of ‘stream of consciousness’ this text is insistent on creating a
hyper-reality that is as close to first hand human perception as is possible
within the written word. In this respect, Woolf’s text is questioning how a
realist novel could be labeled as realistic as the language and form of realist
text are not realistic in the logic of the human mind and experience. Yet her
text is not coherent within the logic of the standard novel form.
Indeed, Woolf is using
her novel to explore the essence of realism of self and what it is to be an
individual. Moreover, she is using this form to highlight contradictions found
in life and selfhood by putting a ‘true’ realism into the form of the novel. We can see this in her use of
characters;
In the Waves she
considered the six monologists as facets of one, larger complex identity,
writing to G.L Dickinson that. ‘I did mean that in some way we are the same
person, and not separate people. The six characters were supposed to be one’,
and continuing, ‘I come to feel more and more how difficult it is to collect
oneself into one Virginia…’
(Parsons, 2000, The
Waves ‘Introduction’, p.x)
By
Woolf using six characters in her novel, she relates to the ways in which
selfhood is divided. In the text Woolf intentions are shown in the character of
Barnard who affirms that; ‘I am not one person; I am many people; I do not
altogether know who I am – Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda or Louis: or how I
distinguish my life from theirs’ (Woolf, the Waves, 1931, p.156). This
split of character/personality is in order to follow the many paths that an
individual could journey, a task that realistically can not happen, hence why
Woolf may have been inclined to create an anti-realism text.
Moreover,
as a result of this, Woolf is addressing the centrifugal forces (unbalanced
events of life that are beyond control) in life and the novel that pull away
from selfhood. Structuralists believe that the novel was void of centrifugal
forces, however Bakhtin (1975) wrote otherwise, saying that the novel was much
more complex and was under constant shaping by theses centrifugal forces due to
the novel being the literary expression of life (The Dialogic Imagination, 1975,
‘Discourse in the Novel’, p.271). With this in mind, we can see how a
modernist writer would utilize this theory that challenged the form of the
novel in their own writing, in order to further the exploration and
experimentation with the novels form in order to further explore their topic,
life.
The
Waves (1931) relates heavily to
Kristeva’s (1986) theories of ‘dialogism’ (the theory that all novels are a
multitude of voices) which she constructed from the work of Bakhtin (The
Dialogic Imagination 1975, ‘Discourse in the Novel’). Before the work of
Bakhtin (1975), structuralism was the common method of interpreting a novel. Structuralism
is a method towards interpreting the novel as a methodical, narrow structure
which has a set path through which authors explore life through their texts.
They viewed and critiqued the novel with fundamental ideas that the novel was
monologic (a single voice, i.e. the authors). As Bakhtin (1975) was a Russian
writer, his ideas did not reach the west until Kristeva (1986) wrote and
elaborated upon them, arguing that the novel was in fact dialogic (many voices)
due to her idea that even the singular word was dialogic (see below, three
textual dimensions). Modernists, such as Woolf, explicitly illustrate in their
text how this ‘dialogism’ is present through their use of experimental forms.
As this text uses the voices of six personas to create a wave of consciousness,
wherein the voice is constantly changing through the dialogue and prospective
of the characters, Woolf is creating an apparent ‘dialogism’. All characters
represent different life directions and backgrounds which influences the
readers’ expectations of the character. This relates to Bakhtin’s (1975, p.
271) argument that the language of the novel, as with the language of life, is
shaped by the heteroglot national language (colloquial speech, dialects etc.),
rather than the ideological and monologic official language. However by the Waves
(1931) being rather difficult for the average reader due to its form, Woolf
somewhat questions the use of a heteroglot national language, as her book, like
the official language, alienates lower classes. But by creating characters that
represent very different roles and ambitions in life we can see that Woolf is
attempting to represent the national heteroglot and the diversity of language.
Woolf
may be exploring the three dimensions of textual space that Kristeva Word,
Dialogue and Novel (1986) addresses.
In the quotation, Kristeva writes that the “three dimensions [of
language ] are writing subject, addressee, and exterior texts” (Kristeva, 1986,
p.36), meaning that the word and therefore the novel is a product of word
definition, which is unstable due to the perceptions of the writer, literal
definition and reader. We can see that Woolf is exploring this in her work by
having each character deal with similar and overlapping ideas/themes. Indeed in
a sense, all six characters represent an exaggerated example of how in all
novels there are an overlapping of ideas and themes that is deeper than plot.
The
Waves (1931) is not a standard example of
Novel, however it is a crucial example of how the novel is shaped and re-shaped
over time, representing the era of the modernists and the need to allow
different formats and techniques within the novel form. It is a model of how
this form shouldn’t rely upon ridged, structuralist rules over language and
structure, as the novel is a written representation of life and selfhood, which
I believe is the main effect that the form of the Waves (1931) creates
for the reader. It is through experimentation that the novel should both
explore and evade from the techniques found in realism novels, in order to evolve into a written ‘truth’
that is as close to life as a work of literacy can become.
Bakhtin, M (1975). The Dialogic Imagination. Texas;
University of Texas Press.
Blackburn, S. (2008) Oxford Dictionary of
Philosophy, second edition revised. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Keep, C. McLaughlin, T. Parmar, R. (1993). Modernism
and the Modern Novel. Accessed [Internet] < http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0255.html>
Last accessed; 10th May 2013.
Kristeva, J (1986). Word, Dialogue and Novel. New
York; Columbia University Press.
Parsons, D (2000). The Waves ‘Introduction’.
Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire.
Woolf, V (1931). The Waves. London; Hogarth.
Watt, I (1968). the Rise of the Novel. Chatto
and Windus Press, London. ‘Realism and the novel form, Chapter I, p.9.
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© Kate Ruston and Happy Little Narwhal 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Ruston or Happy Little Narwhal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
