A Window on Intimacy: The Phantasmagorical Figure of the “Lady Writing” in Virginia Woolf's The Waves

Chiroux, Adrien
(2023) Virginia Woolf: For a Poetics and Politics of Intimacy (Société d’Etudes Woolfiennes) — Location: Université Jean Monnet (Saint-Etienne ; France) (11.May.2023)

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It is now well known that The Waves is one of Virginia Woolf’s most difficult works. In addition to the very peculiar style of this “playpoem” (as the author herself puts it), one of the major difficulties of the book lies in its intricate patchwork of characters: some critics see in them the different facets of the author’s personality; others, avatars of her acquaintances; and others still, mere fictional beings meant to depict the complexity of life itself. In this communication, however, I would like to focus on the significance of another character, surprisingly often neglected by the critics: that of the “lady sit[ting] between the two long windows, writing”. By considering this phantasmagorical figure, present from the very first manuscripts, in its connexion with Bernard, I will demonstrate that the “lady writing” works both as a catalyst and as a key allowing Woolf to reflect on her innermost intimacy. Since Bernard “the storyteller” (then writer), notoriously considered as Woolf’s closest “répondant allégorique” (to quote Starobinski) in the narrative, is the only one capable of evoking – and thus invoking – the “lady writing” through his speech (while being himself made up by the sum of the other characters’ voice), it is my contention that Woolf creates a mise en abyme that confronts different diegetic levels, and eventually gently parts the windows of fiction. This diegetic glimpse into a figurative extra-diegetic reality not only turns the whole novel (whose very essence relies on – and in – this relationship between Bernard and the “old lady writing”) into the most powerful figuration of the author herself, but also into the best tool for inner investigation.
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Chiroux, A. (2023). A Window on Intimacy: The Phantasmagorical Figure of the “Lady Writing” in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. Virginia Woolf: For a Poetics and Politics of Intimacy (Société d’Etudes Woolfiennes), Université Jean Monnet (Saint-Etienne ; France). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/105858