the waves
In this essay, an analysis of process types will show how Rhoda, a character from Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves, experiences herself and the world. It will be demonstrated that Rhoda is a kind of 'displaced person in the universe', unable to act upon this world but longing for a transcendental, immutable dream world. In her interior monologue, Rhoda builds up a strong contrast between the room in which the party takes place (associated with agitation, terrors, heat, fire, scorn, individual details and the tiger) and another world, 'immune from change' (associated with rest, lovers, coolness, pools, beauty, absence of individual features and the swallow). This basic contrast is not only reflected in the circumstances of location (e.g. 'here' versus 'on the other side of the world'), but also in the nature of the material process types, the main type of process in this text. 'Here', in the room, Rhoda is mainly acted on (Goal): she is pursued by terrors, seized by people, pierced by arrows and by scorn, cut by tongues (metonymic for people) and so on. In those instances when she does act in the room, the predicator is usually modalized, or the action is expressed in a question, both of which construals imply that the action is
not necessarily carried out: she plans to do something ('I shall edge', 'I shall twitch'), she should do something ('I must take', 'I must answer') or she wonders what to do ('What answer shall I give?', 'What face can I summon'). Moreover, the material clauses in which Rhoda is Actor are often intransitive and therefore not Goal-directed ('I shall edge between them'), or the Goal is inanimate ('I shall twitch the curtain'). The few mental, behavioural and relational clauses are reduced in import in a similar way: 'as if I saw', 'I know no one', 'I must prevaricate', 'as if I had an end in view'. All these construals show that Rhoda is fundamentally incapable of acting on her environment. Moreover, she can hardly see, know or have things; she can only receive scorn and she is forced to lie, doubt and tremble. In the other world she conjures up, and in the two scenes which resemble this metaworld (the cat and the lovers), however, she is truly a Senser ('I who long for', 'I see some unembarrassed cat', 'I hate', 'I see the sky') and even an Actor ('the treasures I have laid apart', 'I rock my basins'). The immutability of this imagined world is evoked through the accumulation of intransitive material processes: 'the lovers crouch', 'the policeman stands sentinel', 'a man passes'. So far, we have concentrated mainly on Rhoda's incapacity to act in the real world. She appears to be equally incapable of interacting with other people. If we bear in mind that she is at a party, it is hard to imagine that people treat her with scorn and ri
Some common words found in the essay are:
Jinny Susan, Rhoda Actor, Virginia Woolf's, Yes No', , process types, relational clauses, 'what answer give', 'what answer, imagined world, jinny susan, 'not composed, ridicule pierce, scorn ridicule, answer give',
Approximate Word count = 1040
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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