He dies midway through the novel, while engaged on an imperialist quest in India. Percival, partly based on Woolf's brother, Thoby Stephen, is the esteemed hero of the other six.

Rhoda resembles Virginia Woolf in some respects. She echoes Shelley's poem 'The Question'. Rhoda is riddled with self-doubt, anxiety and depression, always rejecting and indicting human compromise, always seeking out solitude. Some aspects of Susan recall Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell. Susan flees the city, preferring the countryside, where she grapples with the thrills and doubts of motherhood. There is evidence that she is based on Woolf's friend Mary Hutchinson. Jinny is a socialite whose world view corresponds to her physical, corporeal beauty. Neville, who may be partly based on another of Woolf's friends, Lytton Strachey, seeks out a series of men, each of whom becomes the present object of his transcendent love. Louis is an outsider who seeks acceptance and success. Woolf is concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together.īernard is a story-teller, always seeking some elusive and apt phrase. The novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood. In a 2015 poll conducted by BBC, The Waves was voted the 16th greatest British novel ever written. “Each character is distinct, yet together they compose a gestalt about a silent central consciousness”, according to a reviewer. As the six characters or 'voices' speak, Woolf explores concepts of individuality, self and community. The dialogues that span the characters' lives are broken up by nine brief third-person interludes detailing a coastal scene at varying stages in a day from sunrise to sunset. Percival, a seventh character, appears in the soliloquies, though readers never hear him speak in his own voice.

It is critically regarded as her most experimental work, consisting of ambiguous and cryptic soliloquies spoken mainly by six characters Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis.

The Waves is a 1931 novel by English novelist Virginia Woolf.

The Years by Virginia Woolf