Seascapes, sailing, diving and the sea itself are aspects of nature and of human beings’ relationship with it which frequently inspired Virginia Woolf 's writing. Indeed, Woolf 's engagement with the sea pervades most of her novels and surfaces recurrently in her short stories, diaries and essays, letting emerge—when one looks carefully at it—a persistent endeavor in bringing about a groundbreaking thalassic aesthetics permeated by fresh politics. By employing the adjective “thalassic” (from the Greek noun θαλασσα, i.e. “sea”) in connection with Woolf 's marine aesthetics and sea–related metaphors, my purpose is to emphasize Woolf 's informed handling of the sea as a radical metaphor, in particular (though not exclusively) with reference to women as bearers of alternative politics. In other words, I argue that in Woolf 's writing, images of the sea configure a dimension that is simultaneously aesthetic and philosophical, and should be reconsidered as pivotal metaphors at the heart of her politics.

In the context of Woolfian studies, David Bradshaw has indicated Woolf 's childhood experiences in St. Ives as the source of the profuse sea imagery in her writing (101–104) and has interpreted her metaphorical treatment of the element as essentially associated with “the silenced and marginalised position of women,” “with isolation and annihilation” and, “occasionally,” with “security and peace” (101)—a partly correct but limited reading of Woolf 's more complex, ever evolving handling of thalassic metaphors. On the other hand, Gillian Beer has connected Woolf 's “fascination with the sea” to evolutionary theory and the historicization of the notion of the sea as origin of life that resulted from it, a notion which had been promulgated for millennia by “most myth systems” (17). In this line of argument, Beer postulates that Woolf 's fondness for the element “may be related to her search for a way out of sexual diff erence”—a problematic statement in relation to both Woolf and the import of her thalassic aesthetics—“or, equally, for a continuity with lost origins” (Beer 17).