Date of Award
2015
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Department
English
First Advisor
Beverly Matiko
Abstract
This paper examines narrative, biography, and selfhood in Virginia Woolf's The Waves (1931). The novel, a "play-poem," follows six friends' monologues from childhood to death. I analyze aspiring writer Bernard from his childhood of telling stories about companions to his inability to narrate his autobiography, arguing that he fails because he has no self to narrate. Referencing Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology's (1974) theory of the deconstructed self identifiable only in conversation, I argue that Bernard destroys his identity by silencing his friends and becoming the sole speaker; Woolf's biographical theory thereby establishes the communal self, prefiguring tenets of postmodern philosophy.
Recommended Citation
Roschman, Melodie, "The Story Which He Never Stops Telling Himself: Autobiography, Narrative Community, and the Deconstruction of Selfhood in Virginia Woolf's The Waves" (2015). Honors Theses. 108.
https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/108/
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/honors/108
Subject Area
Self in literature.
Presentation Record URL
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/108/