Virginia Woolf’s The Waves and hero-worship: Identity, masculinity and education

This article argues that Woolf’s depiction of masculinity in the school scenes of The Waves is informed by her critical relationship to educational discourses surrounding public-school hero-worship that encourages an abandonment of individual identity in favour of a form of masculinity sanctioned by the public-school system. It considers criticisms of the public school’s hierarchical, moralistic pedagogy on behalf of both Woolf’s family, including her father, Leslie Stephen and uncle, Fitzjames Stephen; and members of her Bloomsbury circle, notably Lytton Strachey and Bertrand Russell, to illuminate a reading of Dr Crane and Percival. It argues that the novel’s formal innovation is integral to its political critique, pointing to previously unconsidered literary allusions to Tom Brown’s School Days in Woolf’s portrayal of Dr Crane to suggest Woolf’s ironic relationship to the educational ethos of the public school. It further notes that Woolf’s narrative devices render Percival, the novel’s public-school hero, an ambivalent figure that exposes the gulf between heroic identity and true individuality.