Patterned Ambiguities: Virginia Woolf, Mathematical Variables, and Form

Abstract

This article argues that Virginia Woolf's most central, memorable symbols share the semantic properties of mathematical variables: markers that are designed to flexibly denote multifarious, undetermined meanings. Woolf uses the generality that characterizes pure mathematics to reinvent the scope and shape of ambiguity in Jacob's Room, and in turn variables allow for an understanding of form in terms of the patterns that characterize "the life of anybody" in The Waves. Mathematics offers its own definitions of form, tied to mathematical formalism, a revolutionary 1920s movement. Ultimately, mathematical attention to Woolf's patterns offers an understanding of what it is that we call literary form, an understanding built from pattern rather than particularity.