Woolf

Melba Cuddy-Keane asserts that many modernist writers, including Virginia Woolf, believed that a true democracy would "recognize the whole culture as the inheritance of every individual and the whole culture as a product of every participating part".1 Society should be truly egalitarian, and for Woolf, in the "ideal discursive community, all voices would participate"; "individual expression would be legitimized" in an "open and equal conversation".2 In Woolf`s words: "There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done[...] A new order shall arise, and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest".3 Crucially, such a society would not merely encourage individuality but would represent a collective spirit; the goal is "universal individualism", whereby individualism is "not the antithesis of but the route to collectivity, [which] locates the growth of the individual in a developing regard for other individuals".4 Woolf`s experimental novel The Waves could be read as the manifestation of these ideas on the future of democracy, reflecting her assertion that "the new art of democracy will be one that transgresses borders, inscribes variousness, and gives shape to incongruities".5 The merging consciousnesses of the novels` protagonists, their recurring visions of harmony, and the single voice that binds their experiences together, all hint at the "ideal bond of democratic community" where "experiences of the soul [would be] freely expressed, and each [would grow] conscious of our essential unity".6 However, to assume her experimental novel existed merely to reflect a future vision of united consciousness would be naïve. Collective harmony is only fleetingly glimpsed in Woolf novels; their experience of existence constitutes loneliness and separation as much as it does unity and cohesion. Her characters struggles to locate a coherent self amongst the chaos of civilization, and the alienation and loneliness that arise from this is of equal significance to her vision; the denial of lasting harmony in The Waves could be seen to entirely undermine theories of a future egalitarian, collective democracy.

If The Waves is to be interpreted as a `democratic` novel aligned with Woolf`s own political beliefs, then the novel`s unique style serves to affirm her longing for collective democracy whilst simultaneously confirming its impossibility in the real world. Perhaps the central paradox of Woolf`s vision of "universal individualism" is the implausibility of respecting individual imagination whilst attempting to promote collectivism. The characters in The Waves merge into a single poetic voice that hints at a deeper harmony, and yet the collectivism on display is extremely limited. During a typically Woolfian `moment of being` we are presented with a united party that embodies the communion of voices of a collective democracy:

`The iron gates have rolled back,` said Jinny. `Time`s fangs have ceased their devouring. We have triumphed over the abysses of space, with rouge, with powder, with flimsy pocket-handkerchiefs.` `I grasp, I hold fast,` said Susan. `I hold firmly to this hand, anyone`s, with love, with hatred; it does not matter which`. `The still mood, the disembodied mood is on us,` said Rhoda, `and we enjoy this momentary alleviation (it is not often that one has no anxiety) when the walls of the mind become transparent.`7

Breaking from the novel`s usual rhythm of extended soliloquy, this passage flits quickly between characters, each reflecting the same "triumph",and in doing so creating "One life".8 Yet despite this collective experience, the passage is saturated with contradictions concerning true egalitarian democracy. Even disregarding the immediate problem of Woolf`s characters all existing within the same social class, their united consciousness has no manifestation in spoken language, and is incomprehensible as a genuinely experienced material event. Jinny`s "Time`s fangs have ceased their devouring" is in the same meter as Rhoda`s "the walls of the mind becomes transparent"; a collective experience somehow occurs as a single voice, and therefore does not seem to reflect a culture in which individual difference is preserved.

Regardless of these flaws - which discredit Cuddy-Keane`s suggestion that The Waves is the manifestation of Woolf`s vision of the collective democracy of the future - the `moments of being` that punctuate all of Woolf`s novels after Mrs Dalloway are of great significance, and perhaps provide the answer to Woolf`s own lack of belief in the possibility of a genuinely egalitarian society. The most prominent feature of The Waves is the oscillation between two contradictory emotional states; transcendental unity and despairing isolation: "the two poles of Woolf`s fictional universe".9 Louise Poresky discusses how "Woolf`s characters do not achieve their potential community. Instead community is experienced symbolically or in moments of ecstatic longing. These moments alternate with the never-ending experience of social alienation".10 The feeling of "social alienation" - a complete disunity that results from mass society and the standardization of democracy - is prevalent throughout the text, as "massive structural connections ironically emphasize the profound sense of disconnectedness experienced by almost everyone";11 alienation is not felt in the absence of harmony, but as an important element of it. Rhoda embodies the profound loneliness, the sensation of drowning, that the chaotic mass of society evokes: "There was a star riding through the clouds one night, and I said to the star, `Consume me`.[...] Identity failed me. We are nothing, I said, and fell."12 This frequent "rise and fall, fall and rise again" of the waves of human consciousness undermines her political writings that suggest a lasting order of collectivity. The moments of unity when "One life" is achieved are inevitably undercut; just as Mrs Ramsay`s moments of triumph "vanish even as she looks",13 so too must harmony in The Waves break on the shore. "As the myriad atoms of the moment have converged to a substantive centre, so they must dissipate. The walls of the moment break; new atoms will fall, and another cycle of the moment, with its pattern of tension and release, begins again".14

Perhaps a more accurate definition of this novel, then, is that rather than projecting a "One Life" philosophy and presenting the vision of a future democracy, The Waves depicts the inescapably paradoxical experience of living in any democratic society, where the system of governance both unites and isolates, affirms individuality and negates it. The problem of democracy is highlighted in Friedrich Schiller`s On the Aesthetic Education of Man, in which he argues that "once the increase of empirical knowledge, and more exact modes of thought, made sharper divisions between the sciences inevitable,[...] the inner unity of human nature was severed too".15 Schiller presents the division of labour as the root cause of the fragmentation of society, suggesting that the impossibility of collectivism and individuality coexisting is not simply a flaw of democracy, but of capitalism. His language reflects issues Karl Marx would later develop, arguing that "enjoyment was divorced from labour, the means from the end, the effort from the reward. Everlastingly chained to a single little fragment of the Whole, man himself develops into nothing but a fragment; [...] he never develops the harmony of his being, [...]he becomes nothing more than the imprint of his occupation or of his specialized knowledge".16 Woolf`s characters` moments of harmony are immediately undercut, and they are forced to recognise their insignificance as "a single little fragment of the Whole",17 as a droplet of water in a vast ocean. D. H. Lawrence makes similar claims in his essay on Democracy, claiming that "it is a bubble, the One Identity", an ideal that serves only to alienate the individual as an insignificant element of it; "the En Masse is a horrible nullification of true identity and being.[...] At [its] worst, [it is] sheer self-destruction".18 The process of division that has cultivated our society leads to any concept of "One Life" instantly diminishing under the sheer weight of personal insignificance: you can "dwindle yourself away into a speck, lost in the Infinite Love[...] but still you`ll only be chasing the one mad reward, the reward of infinity: which, when you`ve got it, will burst like a bubble in your hand".19 A similar sensation is felt by Bernard, the character who repeatedly affirms and denies his own life in the novel`s final chapter, as he attempts to escape the inevitability of a fluctuating ego. Within a solitary paragraph he falls from a belief in "wider and wider circles of understanding that may at last[...] embrace the entire world" to realising he is "for ever alone, alone, alone - hear silence fall and sweep its rings to the farthest edges".20 The Waves may reflect the inevitability of severance and isolation in a mass democracy, but it does not present a manifesto for a future society of collective individualism.

There is, however, one crucial element of Woolf`s fiction that could allow us to perceive her fiction - and in particular The Waves - as a manifestation of egalitarian democracy. Characters may never realise their essential harmony, denied by a mixture of democracy`s inability to represent the collective and capitalism`s inherent severance of humanity from their oneness with nature, but this does not mean that such a connection does not exist, unperceived by any of the protagonists. In her essay `A Sketch of the Past`, Woolf presents the reader with a philosophy of life:

"Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we-I mean all human beings-are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art[.] we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself."21

The chapter openings in The Waves break dramatically from the emotional subjectivity of the main body of the text, describing the cycle of a single day in relatively objective terms. Although the italicised sections mimic the protagonists` journey through life, the approach to interpreting the universe is markedly different; Bernard`s attempts at summation are deeply emotional and consequently represent a chaotic attempt to find order, whereas the chapter openings simply record experience as it occurs. On the very first page of the book, Woolf notes that as the sun rose and the birds awoke, "one bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down".22 Unlike the children, who will re-enact this morning with intense emotion, Woolf describes the simple pattern: some chirp high, some chirp low. Woolf`s italicised sections imply that life is one tapestry, something insusceptible to the emotional untangling we attempt to give it. The conclusion that we reach, therefore, is that the world is an interconnected web of events, an eternally recurring day, that exists with all its chaotic beauty, a sea of waves "pursuing each other, perpetually".23 Each element of the day - the sun, the leaves, the birds, the sea - are intimately connected in a single paragraph, recurring at the beginning of each new chapter until, after the day has closed, Bernard himself witnesses the rise of the next morning and realises: "a redness gathers on the roses[...] A bird chirps. Cottagers light their early candles. Yes, this is the eternal renewal, the incessant rise and fall and fall and rise again".24 Bernard`s emotional experience needs no ordering, but exists as a fluctuating event amongst the beauty of nature; this is the "hidden pattern", this is the realisation that "the whole world is a work of art". Collective democracy, in political terms, is frequently undermined, and certainly the inherent problems of capitalism make The Waves an undemocratic novel in many respects. However, in a more spiritual sense, Woolf conveys to us a philosophy of life that is more truly democratic than our perceptions allow us to recognise: "we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself."