The Voyage Out

In these chapters, Woolf further explores the nature of love and marriage through Hewet’s internal conflict. Hewet is fully aware that he’s in love with Rachel, but he isn’t sure if he wants to get married. In the early 20th century, marriage was a social expectation, and it didn’t necessarily involve falling in love, though love certainly helped make a happier marriage. Hewet’s uncertainty about marriage bears a surprising relation to the theme of Colonialism and the Concept of Civilization: Nearly all the English characters Hewet interacts with are married, with the exception of the young people like himself, who are all wrestling with the question of marriage. Santa Marina is presented as in idyll—set apart from the pressures of English life and characterized by its wildness and abundance in contradistinction to England’s dull, gray parks and lanes. In this idyll, love is allowed to spring up naturally and to flourish in relative freedom. Marriage, however, represents the “civilizing” pressures of English culture: It is, at best, a domestication of the wild emotions of love and desire. Hewet sees a lot of examples of marriages around him, and what he sees is a mixture of happiness, satisfaction, and lost passion. Hewet fears the commitment of marriage. While other characters in this novel have spoken about marriage as a blessing and a necessity, Hewet sees that a life-long commitment to another person should not be taken lightly. Hewet’s fears about marriage are realistic, and he is conflicted by his doubts because his society is full of married people who only ever talk about the best things about marriage. Transparency about the more difficult aspects of marriage was not an acceptable part of discourse in the early 20th century. Therefore, Hewet has no one to turn to for advice and must figure out his conflicting emotions on his own.

Hewet’s attitude about marriage is matched by Evelyn, a young woman who doesn’t succumb to the social pressure to marry. Evelyn has two potential proposals, which most women of her class and era would see as a blessing. An unmarried woman in the early 20th century was vulnerable—unable to earn her own living or, in most cases, to inherit her parents’ wealth, she risked becoming destitute or dependent on the charity of her relatives. Even so, Evelyn cares more about feminist ideals of advocacy and activism. Rather than become a wife, Evelyn wants to become an activist. She doesn’t believe in the inferiority of women and wants to prove that if women work together, they can accomplish real change in their society. Evelyn is a radical-thinking character in this novel. Even relatively independent thinkers like Helen don’t dream about upending society. Evelyn represents a new progress in women’s attitudes about love and marriage. Evelyn knows what it is to fall in love, but she doesn’t necessarily think marriage is what’s necessary to be happy.

Meanwhile, Rachel continues her process of Self-Discovery. Although she comes across as a young woman who lacks self-confidence, her confidence is steadily growing. She starts coming up with her own ideas about people and the world around her. This voyage to Santa Marina has exposed her to more socialization than she’s ever had before, and she gives this new opportunity a real chance. But Rachel is still trying to figure out who she is and what she wants, including what she wants out of relationships with other people. She often grows frustrated because she notices how aimless and noncommittal people can be. Because Rachel is a little bit on the outside of social norms, she can observe how people interact with one another with more honesty than people who have always been in social environments. She finds that people are often uncaring, even though they lie and say they’re interested in people, places, or concepts. She sees that most of socialization is a façade. Rachel even sees this in Helen, whom she respects. Helen is noted by other characters for her directness and honesty, but Rachel doesn’t think that Helen is honest about the world around her. Helen is old enough and experienced enough to understand that there are certain attitudes she’s allowed to keep to herself, that this is part of her autonomy. But Rachel is still so confused by social norms that she sees any separation between outward portrayal of self and true self as a lie. For Rachel, these resentments are compounded by her confusing feelings for Terence Hewet. She doesn’t have any experience with dating, so she doesn’t know how to reach out to him or how to tell him how she feels. Rachel still doesn’t have the words to describe her new experiences with the world around her, including the people that now populate that world. Rachel begins to doubt certain beliefs that she always held as unimpeachable, such as her faith in religion. Indeed, the voyage out of England and to Santa Marina has changed Rachel in fundamental ways. She is still growing into a new version of herself, but her character development is consistent and deeply philosophical.

A major development in Rachel’s journey is her engagement with Hewet. They finally confess their feelings for one another in the privacy of the wild forest of Santa Marina. At a safe distance from the rest of their party and all the influences of society, Rachel and Hewet are more inspired to confront their feelings. Their literal privacy is also symbolic of a necessary separation from society. Because both Hewet and Rachel are trying to figure out their identities, dealing with their feelings for one another without dealing with society’s expectations of them gives them the freedom, however momentary, to be honest with themselves and with one another. It is a big step in Rachel’s character development for her to confess feelings of love. It shows that she’s allowing herself to be vulnerable with Hewet and that she trusts him. This shows significant progress; their walk through the wilderness echoes their first meeting, when they went for a walk together and came across Susan and Arthur in passionate embrace. At the time, this embarrassed and even disgusted Rachel. But now, Rachel has decided to be more open to love, passion, affection, and the idea of other people. Hewet and Rachel have an intimate connection because despite their flaws, they each accept the other person. Their love for one another is based on connection, and not about a checklist of desired elements in a partner. This makes their love authentic and adventurous.

However, falling in love and going through the process of nurturing that love is not the fairy tale that women like Clarissa Dalloway have promised Rachel it would be. Rachel is happy, truly happy, possibly for the first time in her life, but pain is intertwined with that happiness. Where does the pain come from? Woolf suggests a myriad of possible pressure points of pain while in the throes of happiness and love. Falling in love with another person is a special connection, but no matter how significant that connection is, a couple is still comprised of two separate individuals. Thus, Rachel learns that no matter how close she gets to someone, there is still distance she cannot bridge. She’ll never truly know what’s going on in Hewet’s head, and he won’t truly know what’s going on in hers. Therefore, loneliness is a necessary part of falling in love. What’s more, falling in love and getting engaged is an exciting new step in someone’s life, but it’s also fraught with tension. As Hewet discovered in his own internal conversation about love and marriage, marriage is a serious undertaking that can be intimidating. Rachel’s acceptance that pain is a part of happiness is yet another example of her character development. It shows great maturity to accept, understand, and embrace how happiness and pain paradoxically exist in tandem. Rachel is better at understanding this paradox than Hewet is. Hewet is easily irked by the distance that still exists between him and Rachel. As a novelist, he tries to observe human behavior with specificity and depth, but when he is the one in the love story, and not a character he’s written, he finds it more difficult to accept that falling in love can be both happy and painful. Both he and Rachel fear that their marriage will not offer the genuine happiness they seek or that they will not be able to live honest lives within the confines of marriage. When Rachel says “Let’s break it off then” and they both realize that they can’t break it off (303), that their love for one another is more important than their legitimate worries, it is a major breakthrough for both of them.

Developing the theme of Colonialism and the Concept of Civilization, Woolf returns in these chapters to the exoticizing of people the English deem as others. The voyage to visit the native village treats Indigenous people as props. The English tourists watch them in their own homes as though visiting a zoo. It is true that they’re moved by the differences they see, and those differences make them feel small. It’s a poignant reminder that the English lifestyle is not the only lifestyle in the world. Even so, they don’t interact with the Indigenous people as equals, arriving instead to gawk at them. Rather than learning about another culture, they use it as an opportunity to reflect on the superiority of their own, thus dehumanizing the Indigenous people they see. Notably, the villagers are described as being largely uninterested in the English tourists. This suggests that they’re accustomed to being watched and that they are more concerned with their own day than making connections with the English. This Indigenous tribe lives far away from the central town of Santa Marina, and this geographic distance suggests that they want to be left alone. Essentially, the distance signifies that tourists are not welcome, though they are tolerated. There are other signs that imply that English tourists should not be encroaching on this land. For example, Mr. Flushing tells the story of an Englishman who died of a desperate fever in the same location they’re visiting, which foreshadows Rachel’s grave illness. In the forest, Rachel passes out, another sign that warns of potential consequences for voyaging too far into an environment in which the English cannot thrive.