Evident throughout the various forms of Woolf's writings – from her novels and short stories, through to her essays, reviews, memoirs, letters and diary entries – is a consistent and dominant preoccupation with the relationship between the individual and the world. Refl ected in these works is Woolf's understanding that while the ‘world’ consists of the physical environment and its tangible objects, as well as those individuals with whom we co-exist, this notion also comes to be defi ned by the individual's everyday involvements and engagements; that is, ‘our experience of the world’ (Hussey 1986: xiii). As this chapter will demonstrate, for Woolf, defi nitive elements of this ‘experience’ are those expectations, prescriptions and hierarchical structures of the prevailing milieu and social order that not only regulate and direct the everyday lives of members of society, but also defi ne the individual's view of the world.

Woolf's understanding of the world as an inclusive and fluid phenomenon is poetically elucidated in the fourth section of her 1931 novel, The Waves. As the six central characters, now in their early twenties, prepare to go their separate ways after spending an evening together, Louis refl ects upon the ‘common feeling’ that embraces those within this group, and warns: