Rhoda In Louis Woolf's The Wave

. The reader learns immediately from Louis, another outlier, that “…Bernard, Neville, Jinny, and Susan (but not Rhoda) skim the flower beds with their nets” (Woolf 6). Woolf’s use of a parenthetical statement, which interjects a modifier into the sentence, emphasizes Rhoda’s absence from the activity. In addition, Louis’s statement about Rhoda and her lack of participation in the butterfly catching is the first external description the reader has of her as a character. By making this initial depiction of Rhoda negative, Woolf emphasizes her disconnection from the rest of the narrative. Rhoda is a voice within the novel, but a voice marked by her separation from the social sphere. In this first phase of the book, the interaction between the …show more content…
During the grammar lesson, Louis remarks that Rhoda is the only character of whom he is not afraid and comments on the death of her father. While Louis perceives himself constantly as an outsider to the group because of his parentage (his father is a banker in Brisbane), he sees Rhoda as unthreatening to his status. Given that Rhoda is able to attend the same school as the rest of the characters, who seem to be from a relatively elite background, and the same dance as Jinny, it seems unlikely that Louis views her as innocuous because of her socioeconomic situation. When expressing his own insecurities about his accent and father, Louis mentions that, “Rhoda has no father” (Woolf ). Although it seems plausible that Louis’s statement could be more of a reflection of his own insecurities about his father, the absence of Rhoda’s father could be significant in light of her reclusive behavior. If Rhoda’s father were dead, then his death, which would have occurred in her childhood, would have greatly affected her mental and emotional