The Voyage Out: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Voyage Out" is a novel that explores the journey of Rachel Vinrace, a 24-year-old protagonist who is portrayed as intelligent yet socially naive. Raised in a sheltered environment by her two aunts after her mother's death, Rachel's understanding of relationships is limited. Her life takes a transformative turn when she travels to Santa Marina, where she meets Terrence Hewet, a young man with literary aspirations. Their budding romance unfolds against the backdrop of Rachel's metaphorical voyage from innocence to experience, culminating in her engagement to Hewet and ultimately leading to her tragic death from a fever.
The novel also delves into the characters of Rachel's aunt, Helen Ambrose, who plays a pivotal role in guiding Rachel towards self-discovery, and St. John Alaric Hirst, a friend of Hewet who struggles with his own intellectual ambitions and romantic feelings. Through these characters, the story examines themes of love, education, and the complexities of human relationships. The narrative presents a thoughtful exploration of the protagonists' interactions and personal growth, inviting readers to reflect on the challenges and transformations that define the human experience.
The Voyage Out: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Virginia Woolf
First published: 1915
Genre: Novel
Locale: London, the mid-Atlantic, and South America
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: c. 1906
Rachel Vinrace, the twenty-four-year-old protagonist, an intelligent and sensitive but only informally educated young woman. She plays the piano beautifully and has considerable musical talent but is socially innocent and naïve, with a weak face and a hesitant character. As an only child, she has led a sheltered life, having been reared primarily by her two unmarried aunts, her mother being dead and her father, Willoughby, a shipping magnate, being a very busy man of affairs. She has been kept ignorant of the relations between men and women. When introduced through her aunt and uncle into the society of Santa Marina, which consists of a group of Englishmen vacationing at the local resort hotel, she meets and falls in love with Hewet after a series of encounters initiated by an afternoon climbing expedition and later a ball. They become engaged during an expedition by boat up the river into the jungle. The main plot of the novel revolves around Rachel's metaphorical “voyage out” from innocence to experience, from her initially naïve and unreflective state to a greater intellectual sophistication, her first experience of love, and finally her death from a fever, possibly contracted on the journey up the river.
Helen Ambrose, Rachel's aunt. She is forty years old, tall, and beautiful, not well educated formally but widely read and socially sophisticated. She and her husband, Ridley, a Cambridge scholar working on an edition of Pindar's odes, have left their two children with the grandparents so that they can spend a winter and spring away from England at her brother's villa in Santa Marina, a coastal resort town in South America, presumably in Brazil. Having become interested in her niece during the literal “voyage out” to Santa Marina on the ship of her brother-in-law, who has business on the Amazon, she invites Rachel to stay with them rather than continue the voyage with Willoughby. Helen sets herself the task of helping Rachel learn about life and developing her character.
Terrence Hewet, who becomes Rachel's suitor and eventual fiancé, a young man with literary tastes who is vacationing in Santa Marina with his friend Hirst and attempting to write a novel. He is twenty-seven years old, tall, and rather stout, and he wears glasses. The only son of an English gentleman, he attended Winchester and then the University of Cambridge for two terms before leaving to travel. He has an independent income (his father died when Hewet was ten years old) sufficient to allow him not to work. His role as the organizer of the climbing trip first brings him and Rachel together. Hewet is presented initially as a somewhat superficial character, but he becomes more sympathetic through his love for Rachel.
St. John Alaric Hirst, a friend of Hewet, twenty-four years old, a scholar and a fellow of King's College. He is one of the most distinguished young intellectuals in England. He is in Santa Marina trying to decide whether to continue at the university or to become a lawyer. Young but unattractive, already stooped and very thin, he is uncomfortable with women and does not seem to get along well with Rachel. Helen initially has the plan of recruiting him to help with the project of Rachel's education by recommending books to her. He is attracted to both Helen and Rachel, and for a while he imagines that Rachel has fallen in love with him. His cynical nature is softened by the novel's end by his observation of his friends' love and by Rachel's affecting death.