Back to Virginia Woolf Seminar Home Page
Created January 25, 1999
What is the setting of The Waves?
The setting of The Waves may have come about from the summers Woolf spent at St. Ives, "witnessing the tranquil beauty of the ocean world. . . seeing [also its] monstrous incarnations" (Lee 444). The Waves is also shaped by the death of Thoby, Woolf's older brother, as seen in the character Percival.
In The Waves, Woolf traces the lives of a group of six friends from childhood to late middle age. We hear from each of them, in soliloquies, with the sea and roaring waves as the backdrop. Woolf also writes a set of interludes that details to the reader the descriptions of one day – from dawn to nightfall.