The waves

Woolf, Virginia

Bibliographic data

Collection Object

Persistent identifier:: 1587378836253

Title:: The waves

Author:: Woolf, Virginia

Publisher:: The Hogarth Press

Place of publication:: London

Year of publication:: 1963

Extent:: 211 S.

Language:: english

Structure type:: Monograph

Physical location:: Bibliohtek der Institut für Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft, Universität Stuttgart

Shelfmark:: VEN7--WOO2/29

License:: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/deed.de

Collection Object

Title:: The Waves

Structure type:: Chapter

THE WAVES “It shows our heads only; it cuts off our heads. And my lips are too wide, and my eyes are too close together; I show my gums too much when I laugh. Susan’s head, with its fell look, with its grass-green eyes which poets will love, Bernard said, because they fall upon close white stitching, put mine out; even Rhoda’s face, mooning, vacaat, is completed, like those white petals she used to swim in her bowl. So I skip up the stairs past them, to the next landing, where the long glass hangs and I see myself entire. I see my body and head in one now; for even in this serge frock they are one, my body and my head. Look, when I move my head I ripple all down my narrow body ; even my thin legs ripple like a stalk in the wind. I flicker between the set face of Susan and Rhoda’s vagueness; I leap like one of those flames that run between the cracks of the earth; I move, I dance; I never cease to move and to dance. I move like the leaf that moved in the hedge as a child and frightened me. I dance over these streaked, these impersonal, distempered walls with their yellow skirting as firelight dances over teapots. I catch fire even from women’s cold eyes. When I read, a purple rim runs round the black edge of the textbook. Yet I cannot follow any word through its changes. I cannot follow any thought from present to past. I do not stand lost, like Susan, with tears in my eyes remembering home ; or lie, like Rhoda, crumpled among the ferns, staining my pink cotton green, while I dream of plants that lower under the sea, and rocks through which the fish swim slowly. I do not dream. “Now let us be quick. Now let me be the first to pull off these coarse clothes. Here are my clean white stockings. Here are my new shoes. I bind my hair with a white ribbon, so that when I leap across the court the ribbon will stream out in a flash, yet curl round my neck, perfectly in its place. Not a hair shall be untidy ” “That is my face,” said Rhoda, “in the looking-glass behind Susan’s shoulder—that face is my face. But I will duck behind her to hide it, for I am not here. I have no 30

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