The Waves | Style

The Waves Style

Point of View

The point of view switches between the six main characters in a series of monologues. This point of view is not necessarily reliable for two reasons. Firstly, Woolf's use of stream of consciousness tries to capture the fluidity and randomness of a person's thought processes. As such, we rarely get to see how a character reacts to the outside world. In terms of a character like Rhoda, we only hear of how unhappy she is, but despite being a main character, Woolf chooses to say nothing about her job or her home life. Woolf articulates such detail about characters through another's eyes, but this information is usually too abstract or a view formed from their time together in childhood. For instance, Susan's bases her opinion of Jinny on her anger at Jinny kissing Louis.

Each character's monologue displays their individual obsessions. For instance, Neville constantly mentions Percival, and Bernard...
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