Abstract: Scholars have long acknowledged the significance of water in Woolf's works. Yet few have examined Woolf's specific representation of the deep sea and its inhabitants in The Voyage Out . Written during a boom in oceanographic studies and when the deep sea itself was being uncovered, The Voyage Out , I argue, is deeply engaged in an intellectual history of oceanography, which Woolf uses to inform her writing. Drawing on recent ecocritical, animal studies, and blue humanities readings of Woolf's works, I first examine material mentions of the deep sea to show how Woolf historically engages with thalassic findings of this period and the late-Victorian era. I then examine how Woolf uses the deep-sea ecology of the novel to articulate a new ontology of female embodiment at the turn of the century. I show how Rachel navigates gendered relationships alongside and in relation to the novel's deep seascape, an ecology that, like Rachel, is in the process of being discovered and determined. Together, this historical and metaphorical reading shows how deep-sea ecologies become an imaginative and creative space for Woolf to work out the complex system of pressures that act upon Rachel as she is initiated into patriarchal social systems.
C Angeles Weintraub (2025) studied this question.