'how curiously one is changed by ...'

THE WAVES

by Virginia Woolf

This poetic novel, written in 1931, follows the lives of six friends from their early years at boarding school together, through to old age. The characters take turns centre stage of the novel, each sharing their inner world with the reader in a stream-of-consciousness style of narration. The ebb and flow of these internal monologues reveals each character's unique 'way of being' while also laying bare the relational undercurrents within the group. In this excerpt one of the characters - a poet, Neville - notices a distant figure approaching. As he tries to work out which of his friends it might be, he muses on the impact he or she will have on him:

'How curiously one is changed by the addition ... of a friend ... Yet how painful to be recalled, to be mitigated, to have one's self adulterated, mixed up, become part of another. As he approaches, I become not myself but Neville mixed with somebody - with whom? - with Bernard? Yes, it is Bernard...'

I love how Woolf captures, here, the impact of Bernard's presence on Neville's experience of 'being Neville'. Through Neville's interior monologue we understand that he anticipates his essence will be diluted by his friend's arrival. He will become 'the version of Neville that exists in Bernard's presence'.

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When we are on our own and unobserved we are free to simply 'be'. When somebody else comes into our sphere, however, we become 'myself with another'.

When we bring our attention to the ways in which we adapt when someone else enters our space, what do we discover? What do these findings tell us about ourselves?

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