Bernard In Virginia Woolf's The Waves

A current and common reading of Virginia Woolf’s experimental novel The Waves places the character of Bernard against his friends as a dominating force. The novel is noted for its pluralism. The six speaking characters in The Waves express themselves through short monologues, sharing nearly equal space with one another until the concluding section. It is over the final forty-four pages of the novel that Bernard is fully emphasized, the voices of Louis, Rhoda, Jinny, Neville, and Susan giving way to his alone.
It is this moment Gabrielle McIntire explores in her essay “Heteroglossia, Monologism, and Fascism: Bernard reads The Waves,” arguing for an understanding of both Bernard and the novel that is deeply influenced by Woolf’s anti-fascist sentiment. McIntire pieces together an understanding of Bernard as domineering, with a drive toward controlling and subsuming methods of expression. Bernard concludes The Waves with a singular and summarizing internal monologue. His friends, while physically absent, are fully realized in Bernard’s memories of their childhood together. Although his aptitude for storytelling is present …show more content…
Woolf was deeply committed to pacifism and fully opposed to fascist thought, and her strong beliefs bleed into her creative work. It was not enough to merely denounce the rise of fascist politics as violent and domineering. Woolf perceived hidden aggression and a desire for domination not only abroad, but also at home in Britain. The presence of these fascist tendencies so close to home was deeply troubling to Woolf, and threatened the fabric of her society from beneath its surface. This disturbance is deeply embedded in the text of The Waves, a striking exploration and condemnation of the leveling of plurality into a single