A Posthuman Quest for Establishing Self-Image through Nature in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves

Abstract

Virginia Woolf, in her highly experimental modernist novel The Waves (1931), depicts the psychological depth and texture of human experience through a series of fragmented and disjointed images, interior monologues and soliloquies, highlighting the feeling of loss, disillusionment, and brokenness. Throughout The Waves (1931), the characters strive to express themselves, and engage in a posthuman quest for a construction of a self-image through interactions with human and nonhuman life forms, and co-existence with the environment. This paper explores The Waves from a material posthumanist approach to offer a new perspective to Woolf’s understanding of the interface of nature and culture, self and the environment, the human and nonhuman agencies. This approach would be useful means to analyze the characters’ yearning for unification and their embodiment with nature, and explore the posthuman materiality of living and non-living beings that would help them redefine their shattered images and modern way of living.