The Waves by Virginia Woolf (post 3): Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis are alternate personalities of a person with multiple personality.

“In their attempt to come to terms with the strangeness of the narrative of The Waves, many readers have understood the six voices as aspects of a single character, a point of view apparently endorsed by Woolf herself…Woolf wrote in 1931 to Goldie Dickinson that she ‘did mean in some vague way we are the same person, and not separate people. The six characters were supposed to be one.’ The idea that the monologues ‘often seem like one pervasive voice with six personalities’ (Naremore) or that the six are aspects of a single being has been common in critical discussions of The Waves from early on. The point is made with slight variations by such differently oriented critics as Aileen Pippett, Dorothy Brewster, Guiguet, Richter, Poresky, Transue, Gorsky, Daniel Ferrer and Thomas Caramagno…” (1, p. 358).

Yet most discussions of this novel continue to make the mistake of referring to six “characters.” Woolf, herself, contributes to this semantic confusion when she says, “The six characters were supposed to be one.” Six “characters” cannot be one person.

Characters, by definition, are persons in a work of fiction—persons in their own right—not components of a person. Person-like components of a person are personalities, as in multiple personality.

1. Mark Hussey. Virginia Woolf A to Z: A Comprehensive Reference for Students, Teachers and Common Readers to Her Life, Work and Critical Reception. New York, Facts On File, 1995.