"Time passes, yes. And we grow old": old age in Virginia Woolf's "The Waves"

• Autores: Ana Maldonado Acevedo
• Localización: Proceedings of the 30th International AEDEAN Conference: [electronic resource] / María Losada Friend (ed. lit.), Pilar Ron Vaz (ed. lit.), Sonia Hernández Santano (ed. lit.), Jorge Casanova García (ed. lit.), 2007, ISBN 978-84-96826-31-1
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Virginia Woolf's experimental novel "The Waves" (1931) can be read as an unconventional biography of the lives of six characters who express their inner experiences from childhood to middle-old age. On this basis, this paper examines the representation of the theme of aging and its multiple implications in Woolf's novel, as delineated by the protagonists' own inner voices. Taking into consideration landmark studies on old age such as Améry's (1968) and Beauvoir's (1970), together with recent contributions [Munson and Tallent (1999) and Worsfold (2005)], this paper reveals how the aging process is conceived by Woolf as an intimate and private feeling more than a social status. Therefore, through their voices, especially Bernard's and Jinny's voice, and in a aesthetically peculiar way, Woolf provides an accurate observation of their psychical and physical transformation, raising issues such as the anguish about the passing of time, the conflict of "mirror-gazing" and the gendered social constructs about old age, or the contradictory feelings about death as the next step after old age. Certainly, in this light, the novel partly becomes a reflection on Woolf's personal concern about old age in her time.