Sorting Out Virginia Woolf's "The Waves"

Virginia Woolf remains my favorite author, or perhaps better said, the author that is most important for me.

I have transcribed -- completely, word for word -- two of her novels: Mrs Dalloway and The Waves. In transcribing Mrs Dalloway I discovered on my own that it was a "prose poem," something I did not know existed until then, and then discovered I had "re-invented the wheel," as they say. Having said that, it was one of the best "literature" things I have ever done, transcribing Mrs Dalloway in free verse.

I transcribed The Waves for a number of reasons. It is perhaps the most difficult to follow, and yet it is considered by many to be her best novel. In addition, closer to home, a close family friend, Ellen, considers it her favorite novel.

Mostly because I could not understand it, I transcribed The Waves.

Today I added the following to that transcription:

Perhaps somewhere else I tried to correlate the Greek party-goers and the characters in The Waves with Virginia Woolf’s circle, but if I did not, a couple of thoughts:

Jinny: serial lover of men, can only be Nessa, (Vanessa, Virginia’s sister; who had at least three lovers)

Percival: can only be Thoby; a he-man who died falling off a horse; Virginia worshipped her brother Thoby

Neville: homosexual; could only be Clive Bell, Nessa’s husband

Susan: possibly Virginia – Jinny’s life partner through extension of Greek counterparts

Socrates: could Virginia’s husband Leonard Woolf be Socrates?

Bernard is the storyteller in The Waves which is most likely Lytton Strachey. From wiki: he is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His biography Queen Victoria (1921) was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He was perhaps best known for his Eminent Victorians.

Rhoda is the youngest; I can’t think of a third woman in Virginia Woolf's circle; it was just Virginia and Vanessa, and many men: Leslie, Thoby, Adrian, Clive, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey. Roger Fry was also one of Vanessa’s lovers – she had at least three lovers: Clive, whom she married; Duncan Grant, whom she probably loved most, if I remember correctly; and, Roger Fry. There were several women in the group, but less well-known: Dora Carrington, Angelica Garnett, Julia Strachey, Molly (Mary) MacCarthy, Lydia Lopokova. Based on the linked essay below, Mary MacCarthy.  MacCarthy would have been, by far, one of the youngest. Virginia was born in 1882 and MacCarthy was born in 1912.

A superb essay, by the way on The Waves and the Bloomsbury Group: Utopian Wholes: Virginia Woolf's The Waves and the Bloomsbury Group. That link is now broken, but google the phrase to see other reviews.

This review looks pretty good: contemporary reviews for The Waves.