UNIVERSITATEA „VALAHIA” DIN TÂRGOVIȘTE

FACULTATEA DE ȘTIINȚE POLITICE, LITERE ȘI COMUNICARE

SPECIALIZAREA: LIMBA ȘI LITERATURA ROMÂNĂ – LIMBA ȘI LITERATURA
ENGLEZĂ

FEMALE CHARACTERS IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S

MRS. DALLOWAY AND TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

Coordonator științific,
Lect. univ. dr. Ioana Raicu
Absolvent,
Andreea-Cristina Oancea

Târgoviște

2020
 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. VIRGINIA WOOLF AS PROMOTER OF FEMINISM

1. Victorian rules and values…………………………………………………... 11
2. Feminism in Virginia Woolf’s novels………………………………………. 27
3. Flow of consciousness narrative technique…………………………………. 38

II. FEMALE CHARACTERS BETWEEN INNER CONFLICTS AND TRAGIC

DESTINIES
1. Consciousness, time and space in Virginia Woolf’s novels………………… 41
2. From psychological strain to unbearable fate - Mrs Dalloway……………… 45
3. Art, beauty and reality as subjective means of preservation – To the
Lighthouse…………………………………………………………………… 55

III. CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………………………………… 66
IV. BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………….. 69

3
 INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, women can express themselves freely in most countries of the world and
they have the possibility to take decisions on their own. Throughout history, women have
fought hard to achieve some sort of independence and freedom of choice and the image of the
independent woman we are familiar with nowadays was not so easily constructed.
In order to understand how the status of the contemporary woman has evolved, it is
necessary to review the roles she has had over time. History shows us that men and women
had different roles in many traditional societies, so they evolved differently. The men were
hunters, while the women were the pickers. The fact that the person who undertakes these acts
of responsibility is almost always the man, links this idea to the desire of undertaking the role
of the leader, the role of the food supplier, and the role of the conqueror in human societies.
With this idea as starting point, the theories of human evolution focused on the activities of
men and not women, as a central part of the adaptability of individuals. Because in the
primitive society the provision of nutrients occupies a very important role and women, in
most cases, could not procure food alone, they enter into an agreement with the man only if he
wants to offer guarantees, as a partner. Thus, while men were absent, women become
responsible for maintaining the household and raising children, eventually developing a
greater sense of protection over them.
We could say that it was precisely this natural and strong relationship between the mother and
her child that was the main compulsion of primitive mothers to be subjected to more severe
working and living conditions.
As the years pass, marriage changes its nature, from a union that resembles rather a
partnership, in a form of institution, largely respected, of the community’s members.
However, the roles of family members remain the same: the woman has the role of wife,
mother, household administrator, while the man continues to engage in activities of the
public, politics, wars. It is the woman who also takes care of the elderly family, because, in
Antiquity, the sense of belonging to a particular group is very developed, and its interest first,
in most cases, in the individual interest.
If in Antiquity and the Middle Ages woman’s condition was one influenced by her
relationship of subordination to the man, with the industrialization, respectively with the
progressive involvement of women in the work specific to men, she begins to enjoy a new

4
status. More specifically, women are beginning to change their priorities and are increasingly
dedicate their time exclusively domestic lives at the expense of a social life acquired with
their employment in various positions that oblige them to spend more time in factories and
workshops than in the family taking care of children.
An important step taken by society in recognising and accepting women’s important
role is taken when they are guaranteed the right to vote, perhaps one of the most important
rights in a democratic society. Although this desire of women has been in their consciousness
since the French Revolution, the first state to grant this right was Finland (1906), after a long
period in which voting was a privilege only for the rich, exclusively men.
A huge support for women's rights and emancipation comes from literature, more
specific from women writers. They sustain the importance of women’s affirmation through
their works, where they describe and sustain dreams, desires and free attitudes, not permitted
by the society of the time.
One of these female writers of the 1920s, is Virginia Woolf. Describing woman’s
condition, Virginia Woolf started to write as a professional writer in 1905. She published
novels and essays with an intellectual character, being appreciated by critics and public. She
is considered to be one of the biggest innovators of British literature. Studies referring to
Virginia Woolf were concerned with feminist and lesbianism themes in her work.
My paper shares out female characters and patterns of femininity in two of Virginia
Woolf’s novels: Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. For a better analysis of the character’s
thoughts and behaviour, I pointed out in the following chapter the historical background that
influenced them. Mrs Dalloway was published in 1925 although it was set in 1923, To the
Lighthouse was published in 1927, and dealt with the period of time during the World War I
that took place from 1910 until 1920. These two novels reveal the struggle of the female
characters to escape the society’s constraints, trying to find their purpose in life through
interaction with others. They also revolve around the writer’s denial of the Victorian
patriarchal dominant policy of the time. The basic approach of analyse female characters, as
the aim of this paper, is the feminine approach. Woolf used the stream of consciousness
narrative technique, thoughts, impressions and feelings to reveal certain truths regarding
women’s social status in the Victorian era. Her fight against the Victorian patriarchal society
is also displayed in these two novels, Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. In the novels,
most of the women grew up in the Victorian Age (1837-1901). Life is presented in the
narration as a transitory phase to modernism. The change of women’s role in the early 20th
century, the values and attitude as well, will be analysed in more detail. The first women in

5
Britain to do battle for the equality of sexes can be considered the Victorian ones. Feminism
was not out loud spoken at that time; it rather went through literature, novels and essays.
My work analyses the important female characters from these two novels, living
turbulent times, where rules and conventions were questioned. Those female characters
manage the situations and the resulting changes differently. Some choose to live according to
the tradition of society, others choose to battle them. Each of these women is worth looking
at, in detail. Role models, as orientation, are important in times of change. We will find out if
these women are happy with their lives, we will discover their dreams, interests and their
opinion regarding their role as a woman. The Victorian age, as a patriarchal society,
marginalized women’s role. It delivered numerous issues related to women. With all its strict
and curious puritanical factors, sex was appeared as a taboo idea. Victorian women were
depicted as weak, fragile and helpless. The female had to ensure that home became a place of
comfort for her husband and circle of relatives from the stresses of industrialized Britain. In
this age, men have been visible physically stronger than women; consequently, men have
been intended to dominate women by nature. Furthermore, the churches were visibly
influential at the moment within the society at the time. A church gave commands to men on a
way to act towards women and described the place of the women in the society. The only
manner for a woman to climb the social ladder became getting married. Woman’s self-image
was undervalued by the Victorian values regarding femininity and family. Women, being
expected to be domestic, did not considered themselves to be anything. Woolf, who is
considered to be a pioneer in feminism, described how the female gender was minimized by
society in her works. Beyond being a female gender supporter, she expressed thoughts,
feelings and experiences in her writing. Woman’s illusory worthlessness was constantly
underlined in her novels: Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927). In these two
novels we witness the women’s fight to run away from limitation, attempting to find
motivation, purpose by interacting with others. It also reveals the writer’s contradiction of the
Victorian society, dominated by men. This paper focuses on analysing the feminine characters
in the novels, in which the writer used her narrative technique, impressions and feelings to
show woman’s social status in the Victorian era. She was against the conventional beliefs,
according to, the choices- outside motherhood and marriage-were few for women.

Chapter one, called Virginia Woolf as promoter of feminism, has three subchapters:
Victorian norms and rules, Feminism in Virginia Woolf’s novels and Flow of consciousness
narrative technique.

6
 The first subchapter presents Virginia Woolf’s biography and background and her
struggle against the patriarchal society that she was live in. She and other feminine writers
were fighting against male domination by maintaining their integrity and their own identity.
For their own identity to be created, women should have the courage to talk about their own
experiences, create their own identity and encourage writing in order to kill the angel and
create an artist. She believed that society can be changed by women and, at the same time,
saved from self-destruction. We are introduced to the historical context and the Victorian
rules of the century and Woolf’s struggle to change the patriarchal society that she was living
in.
The woman’s condition is presented in every aspect, as displayed in To the Lighthouse
and Mrs Dalloway, through the female characters of her novels.

The second subchapter, Feminism in Virginia Woolf’s novels, presents the evolution
of the woman’s condition in society. Going from the way that a woman used to be or still is
treated in the family, presenting her clear status, to the way that women are taught to put
others’ needs above their own. The woman’s’ ‘lower condition’ is admitted even by the
Church, her being considered more sinful than a man.
An analysis regarding the changes that Virginia Woolf brought along in British
literature is also presented in this second subchapter which makes reference to the novel
culturally placing it within 18th century- beginning of 19th century. Her adhering to the
Bloomsbury Group is presented in this subchapter and a reflection is made through her
representative novels, describing her feminist and innovative beliefs.
The third subchapter, Flow of consciousness narrative technique, presents the named
narrative technique used by the writer in her novels that gives the impression of a mind at
work, jumping from one observation, sensation or reflection to another without problems and
often without conventional transitions. Through her works, Virginia Woolf exerted a strong
influence on the reconsideration of the novel's possibilities and the role of the writer-woman
in artistic life, experimenting with both the flow of consciousness technique and the
psychological and emotional motives of the characters.
Starting, however, with Mrs Dalloway, the internalization of each sensation, the
thinking of each gesture acquires new valences. We witness a stylization of the cognitive and
affective register, the subconscious, the involuntary memory taking over the narrative space
after controlling, in a fictional plan, the vital space of the character. To the Lighthouse is a
book that destroys the temporal scheme of the traditional novel. There is not a chronological

7
unfolding of the facts but an exposition that highlights the memory. The subchapter reveals
Woolf’s feminist ideas but also the technique used by the writer through the female
characters, representative for the two novels.

The second chapter, Female characters between inner conflicts and tragic destinies, is
structured in three subchapters Consciousness, time and space in Virginia Woolf’s novels,
From psychological strain to unbearable fate – Mrs Dalloway and Art, beauty and reality as
means of preservation – To the Lighthouse. These three subchapters present a deeper analysis
of the female characters in the above-mentioned novels.
The first subchapter, Consciousness, time and space in Virginia Woolf’s novels shows
that time in Woolf’s art is no longer a simple cliché, a linear unfolding from one point to
another, but, like human life, it is a force that cannot be mastered. The most eloquent example
is given in the novel Mrs Dalloway by the repetition, at relatively equal intervals, of the
sequence. Time’s representation in Virginia Woolf does not present in Mrs Dalloway any
expression that represents its becoming or alteration. Everything is suspended in the
characters’ consciousness and only the purity of the moment is kept. The leitmotif which
marks the time passing occurs throughout the novel.
The second subchapter, From psychological strain to unbearable fate – Mrs
Dalloway, presents a superb indirect inner monologue, based on the technique of the flow of
consciousness, being considered one of the best novels of the 20th century. Some critics
believed that Woolf found her voice writing this novel. She reacted to the linear and
deterministic narrative style of the Victorian literature.
In Mrs Dalloway, the writer portraits a society woman. Clarissa Dalloway, Sally Setton, Mrs
Kilman and Elizabeth Dalloway are presented in the novel with all their dreams, beliefs,
aspirations, sufferings and frustrations. In this novel, the action is limited to a single day in
June. The wife of Richard Dalloway, a conservative member in the parliament, Clarissa is a
fifty year old, middle-aged woman.
Another important female character presented in the novel is Sally Setton that declared
herself a woman and asked for the same rights as men. Clarissa’s inspiration to read and think
outside the walls of her town was Sally. They dreamt about changing the world, putting an
end to private property. Their relationship was a gift compared to a diamond, expanded to
infinity, a revelation, something beyond words. The authorial patriarchal voice has been
broken by Clarissa’s union with a woman. Clarissa’s attraction for Sally was also suffocated

8
by the restraint of society. Their dream was not accepted by limited minds. There was a
pressure for resigning, and people like Sally were not accepted for society.
Miss Kilman is presented as a woman with resentment for the world. Suspected to
have sympathy for the Germans, she lost her job as a school-teacher when the war came.
Feeling that she had been cheated by the whole world, she wanted revenge. She looked for
consolation in religion, as a choice of despair. Her consolation did not came from here,
because of her atrocious hate and she felt that she would have been victorious just by
embarrassing Clarissa, because she represents those who know nothing about her needs and
suffering. Her hate against Clarissa represents the hate against a product of the patriarchal
society.
The portrait of Elizabeth Dalloway represents one of Virginia Woolf’s daughter
figures and their battle in achieving individuality. At the same time, she appears as another
portrait of an unconventional woman. The writer presents Elizabeth as a figure of capability,
independence and affirmation.
The third subchapter presents two important female characters from the novel To the
Lighthouse: Mrs Ramsay and Lily Briscoe. The conventional and obedient female of the
patriarchal society is represented in the novel by Mrs Ramsay. Human relationships and
emotion are what defines her. On the other side, the atypical character in the novel that fights
against gender division is Lily Briscoe. Virginia Woolf presents Mrs Ramsay’s life and
relationships to men as a statement to the female values, their power to create harmony and to
offer it, that also characterize her as well. The writer presents Lily’s life and relationship to
men characters and to Mrs Ramsay as an attempt to show women how important it is to
welcome their femininity, choosing whatever role they want to choose in their lives. Woolf’s
attempt to combine the masculine and feminine qualities, as having the same importance, is
represented through the examination of these two female characters.
Based on middle-class Victorian rules, Ramsay’s marriage represents the patriarchal
marriage in the novel. The Ramsay family is presented as a typical Victorian family. The
attention is focused on Mr and Mrs Ramsay. The adult intellectual exchange is not allowed in
this marriage. Mrs Ramsay is overwhelmed by her husband’s needs and consumed by his
world. She is observed as the angel of the house, being representative for the popular
Victorian woman who, normally, is devoted and obedient to her husband. She is charming,
unselfish and sympathetic, spends time with her husband, influences her children, takes care
of the house and entertains guests, even if she desires to have her own time. It must be
mentioned the fact that she does not have a first name, but she is only referred to by her

9
husband’s name, which I consider to be an extremely important fact in the definition of her
identity. Considered to be the Angel of the House, Mrs Ramsay dies in the novel, fact that
highlights the reader’s beliefs in a new era and a new world.
Apart from Mrs Ramsay, one important and excellent character is represented by Lily
Briscoe. This character experiences a change, from the first part of the novel, to the third part.
Presented as a single woman that has a profession and facing society’s conventions and rules,
the first part of the novel presents her own struggle. A hard-working and focused artist, she
visits Ramnsay’s summer house for improving her art of painting. For art’s sake, she has
given up marriage, sex and children. Her painting reappears through the whole novel. If I may
compare Mrs Ramsay to Lily, I would say that unlike Mrs Ramsay, who always tries to find
something around her to hold on, Lily constantly fights and makes efforts. She aspires to
capture in her painting the reality of life that may be found through intuition trying to get
beyond the reality that we all perceive. Lily manages to capture reality rather in her paintings
than in words. She does not accept Mrs Ramsay’s role in the norms imposed by the Victorian
standards and her life choices. Lily’s evolution is presented throughout the novel, from the
young woman who fights against society’s rules to the mature, grown up woman, who knows
who she is, who respects herself and knows what she wants.

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 I. VIRGINIA WOOLF AS PROMOTER OF FEMINISM

1.1 Victorian rules and values

The youngest daughter of the Stephen family, a large and talented family, Adeline
Virginia Stephen, was born on 25 January 1882. Leslie Stephen, critic and biographer, an
influential figure in the world of literature, was her father. Julia Stephen was her mother. The
couple had four children: Vanessa, Toby, Virginia and Adrian. In her family, the formal
education was allowed only to males and denied to her and her sister. But the two sisters were
able to take advantage of their father huge library. Unlike their brothers, who were sent to
school, for the girls this was the way to learn English literature and classics. Woolf's early life
got to an abrupt lead to 1895 with the loss of her mother and her step sister, when she had her
first mental breakdown. But her huge collapse came after her father’s death in 1904, and
shortly after this episode she was put in hospital.
Her nephew and biographer, Quentin Bell, and other modern savants, considered that
her ulterior repeated mental breakdowns were caused in a large part by the sexual abuse that
Virginia and her sister Vanessa suffered from their step brothers, George and Gerald,
Duckworth, which Virginia reminds in her autobiographical essays. Throughout her life,
Virginia Woolf suffered of these mental affections and sudden changes of personality.
Although this instability affected her social life, her literary activity continued up to the
moment of her suicide.
Virginia Woolf started to write as a professional writer in 1905. She published novels
and essays with an intellectual character, being appreciated by critics and public. She is
considered to be one of the biggest innovators of British literature. Studies referring to
Virginia Woolf were concerned with feminist and lesbianism themes in her work.
In Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Sexual Abuse on her Life and Work, Louise A.
DeSalvo sees the biggest part of Woolf’s life and career through the incestuous sexual abuse
that Woolf suffered as a young woman. Woolf’s fiction is also studied regarding the war,
social class and modern British society. Her documentary research shows the difficulties that
intellectual and women writers were going through because of the men, who were having
unequal law and economic power. According to Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary,
feminism is a belief that women should be permitted to have the same rights, the same power
and the same opportunities as men and to be treated in the same way. Feminism demands

11
moral, social, economic and politic equality between men and women. This movement tries
to increase the quality of women’s life, to save them from society’s customs, norms and
restrictions. Social conventions consolidated the idea that women were weaker than men,
physically and intellectual.
Women’s main occupation before the middle of the 19th century was marriage,
painting, sewing and nursing. This was Woolf’s background, being raised into a patriarchal
society, sexual abused by her brother and dominated by her father. She started a strong fight
against the male dominated society. Her writing was reflecting the passing from Victorian Era
to the modern one. The enormous changes were reflected in literature also. In 1939 Virginia
Woolf had a speech for National Society for Women’s Service. This speech was published
after her death, in 1942, with the title Profession for women and showed the writer’s
engagement for the feminist movement.
We may identify different stages regarding the feminist movement in a historical
context. She discussed the issue of work for women and her own relation with writing, in
order to make visible the barriers that may limit women’s emancipation and aces to wok. In
her act of writing she wants to reflect her purpose of rethinking the women’s role in society.
In her time the old beliefs and values that influenced the world were losing ground, and
people were affected by this change. The writer was aware of the destruction and annihilation
of the contemporary society. After the First World War, human nature changed in her writing.
The patriarchal society that made men rulers who had absolute power, was criticised
by her. In her family the father’s domination on his wife and children, led her to depression.
While her dislike for male’s domination was growing, she developed a strong admiration for
women. Fighting with her sister, Vanessa, against the patriarchal rule from their family,
Virginia Woolf realised the importance of female friendship and the power that they had
fighting against male domination. Realising that the patriarchal system needed to be defeated,
she started to study some biographies and literary works of women writers, such as: Jane
Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Barrette Browning and others.
She focused on the way that these women presented their displeasure regarding male’s
domination in literature. She realised that one of the main goals of female writers was killing
the female stereotype: the angel of the house, as Woolf called it. The way that feminine
writers were fighting against male domination was by maintaining their integrity and their
own identity. For their own identity to be created, women should have the courage to talk
about their own experiences, create their own identity and encourage writing in order to kill
the angel” and create an artist. She believed that society can be changed by women and at the

12
same time saved from self-destruction. As an alternative for authoritarian structures, Woolf
named a women society, a world of sympathy, as a characteristic that would have protected
them from emotional abuse. World Women Organization, National Union of Women’s
Suffrage Societies, Women Cooperative, were several feminist groups that had influenced
Woolf in her work. Her believes were considered the same as those of social feminist.
The feminist questions were actively represented in her writing, calling women to
express themselves in all professions open to humanity. Her major work analyses the
patriarchal England society, portraying in various contexts different types of women. She
came up with a female tradition by opening their eye to see the inferior status that they had in
society, and encouraged them to find their meaning in life. In this way, the modern and
normal life would be created. Trying to find an answer regarding the small number of female
writers, she highlights women’s lack of privacy, poverty and their minor status. Another
sensitive subject that she exposes is gender consciousness. Being threatened by the thought of
losing their power, men denigrated women, and so, women’s writing was marked by feelings
of fear and anger, and, on the other and, by the aggression of the male’s writing.
The women answer the demand of family life. Their actions and thoughts are mainly
centred on their husbands; the primordial activities were centred on raising children and on
the household duties. The attention was focused on their husbands. It was their duty to assure
the husband’s comfort, physical and also spiritual. Regarding the upper-middle class, the man
could ask of his family not to make requests that could intrude his work. Because of his
profession, he required special treatment. Educated husbands had unreasonable requests on
the attention and time of their wives. In her novels, Virginia Woolf gives a feeling of
authentic love between husband and wife, but it is spoil by the lack of communication specific
to the Victorian behaviour.
On the other hand, women had an inferior education and were intellectual
underestimate. They could even be embarrassed regarding this problem. The husbands
company was hold back, the wives search attention in other places. The ideal relationship in
the Victorian Era recommends chivalrous behaviour from men. The married women in
Woolf’s novels, for example Mrs Ramsay in To the Lighthouse and Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs
Dalloway are all the time surrounded by enthusiastic men who admire their beauty. Women
like Mrs Ramsay have the power to impress young men, the scholarly type, who cannot have
a friendly relationship with girls of the same age. It can be seen an attitude of patronizing
superiority regarding these young men, but the writer shows that, both men and women, get

13
away from demanding and difficult relationships. In Virginia Woolf’s novels the women’s
chaste love of mature or young knights seems to be rarely invaded.
In To the Lighthouse, Mrs Ramsay, and women like her, gives all their energy for their
family. Their thoughts regarding others, outside their own marriage, are directed to
matchmaking, to make new couples and eventual marriages, more or less opportune. In an
interior monologue, on their walk on the beach, we can discover Mr and Mrs Ramsey’s
thoughts regarding marriage. His dream is to have a house on the sand hills but he continues
with an interior observation, thinking that he could not afford this, since he is the father of
eight children: „But the father of eight children has no choice.”1 His wife supposes that he
reflects on how his live would have been if he had not married, writing better books. Mrs
Ramsay thinks tender of her husband, being grateful for his attempts to be lovely with her.
The married women, in Virginia Woolf’s novels, are mostly society women, the wives
of politicians or scholars. These women have a noticeable beauty; have appearance, being
middle age women. They have a good relation with their servants, and are seen at the best
parties and in full of people drawing – rooms. In the novel with the same name, Mrs
Dalloway represents the highest point in the social scale of the writer’s large portraits of
married women. Her parties, where the Prime Minister was present her magnificent furniture
and polished silver shows social position and wealth. She had no personal contact with the
household duties. A traditional part of the education of the middle-class women was
household work. Virginia Woolf herself, in a letter to a friend, gives advice regarding the
education of her daughter. She underlines the importance of teaching theoretical subjects and
household work to girls, regretting that her generation was neglected, even do being practical
was not hard, up to a point.
In Virginia Woolf’s novels, the women have the power of beauty. We can suppose the
fact that in her own background were many beautiful women, when she reveals uncertain
feelings regarding female beauty and its inference for those who possess it. In the Victorian
image of women, beauty was extremely important. For example, Mrs Ramsay is compared to
a Renaissance painting by one of her husband’s friend or to a Greek goddess. Her husband is
also enchanted by her beauty. The perceptive observer of Mrs Ramsay throughout the novel,
Lily Briscoe, thinks that: ’’Beauty was not everything. Beauty had its penalty – it came too
readily, came too completely. It stilled life – froze it. One forgot the little agitations; the flush,
the pallor some queer distinction, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognizable

1
Virginia, Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt, Brace and Company. London, 1927, p.43.

14
for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth that all
out under the cover of beauty.”2 The preoccupation for women’s beauty in Woolf’s novels
may be considered insignificant in her destiny.
The women answer the demand of family life. Their actions and thoughts are mainly
centred on their husbands; the primordial activities were centred on raising children and on
the household duties. The attention was focused on their husbands. It was their duty to assure
the husband’s comfort, physical and also spiritual. Regarding the upper-middle class, the man
could ask of his family not to make requests that could intrude his work. Because of his
profession, he required special treatment. Educated husbands had unreasonable requests on
the attention and time of their wives. In her novels, Virginia Woolf gives a feeling of
authentic love between husband and wife, but it is spoil by the lack of communication specific
to the Victorian behaviour.
On the other hand, women had an inferior education and were intellectual
underestimate. They could even be embarrassed regarding this problem. The husbands
company was hold back, the wives search attention in other places. The ideal relationship in
the Victorian Era recommends chivalrous behaviour from men. The married women in
Woolf’s novels, for example Mrs Ramsay in To the Lighthouse and Clarissa Dalloway in
Mrs Dalloway are all the time surrounded by enthusiastic men who admire their beauty.
Women like Mrs Ramsay have the power to impress young men, the scholarly type,
who cannot have a friendly relationship with girls of the same age. It can be seen an attitude
of patronizing superiority regarding these young men, but the writer shows that, both men
and women, get away from demanding and difficult relationships. In Virginia Woolf’s novels
the women’s chaste love of mature or young knights seems to be rarely invaded.
The married women, in Virginia Woolf’s novels, are mostly society women, the wives
of politicians or scholars. These women have a noticeable beauty; have appearance, being
middle age women. They have a good relation with their servants, and are seen at the best
parties and in full of people drawing – rooms. In the novel with the same name, Mrs
Dalloway represents the highest point in the social scale of the writer’s large portraits of
married women. Her parties, where the Prime Minister was present her magnificent furniture
and polished silver shows social position and wealth. She had no personal contact with the
household duties. A traditional part of the education of the middle- class women was
household work. Virginia Woolf herself, in a letter to a friend, gives advice regarding the

2
Virginia, Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt, Brace & Company. 1927, p. 165.

15
education of her daughter. She underlines the importance of teaching theoretical subjects and
household work to girls, regretting that her generation was neglected, even do being practical
was not hard, up to a point.
The women in Woolf’s novels are mothers too. They are treated with contradictory
feelings. Where is admiration, there is also protest, envy and resentment. The vague figure of
young women is in opposition to the powerful mother- figure, for example Mrs Ramsay and
her four daughters or as Lilly Briscoe in To the Lighthouse. These young girls are compared
to their mothers, not being good enough. Being only thirteen when her mother died, Woolf
herself never had an adult relationship with her. In Moments of Being we can find
unpublished autobiographical material that shows how the household work was in the
Stephen’s house.
A mother with eight children whom she had to educate, seven servants and in charge
of the household of such a big house, had little time to become confidential with one
particular child.
Victorian conventions included the separation of the public sphere from the public one
and the promovation of the pure and high moral values woman; image that spread out through
all Europe. This image was combined with notions referring women’s dignity and their roles
as wives and mothers. The rules that promoted men’s supremacy did not allow for women
civil rights. In the Victorian era, women’s status was many times seen as the picture of the
enormous difference between the United Kingdom’s power and its shocking conditions.
Eras’s symbol was Queen Victoria. In those times women’s rights were few. They could not
own properties, sue or vote.
The middle classes, at least, considered that women should stay at home, where they
belong, and to accomplish their role in the house, serve her husband and raise her children.
Regarding their rights as wives, they were limited. Once a woman got married all her rights
were given to her husband. The marriage gave the husband total control of all the couple’s
materials possessions: money, property and earnings. In this way he became the legal
representative of his wife at the same time, their owner. Marriage invalidated women’s right
to consent the sexual relation in the couple, and she had to be at her husband’s wish. Married
and single women had to endure inequalities in their marriages and as well in society, being
disadvantaged sexually and financially. The enormous differences between men and women
were visible. It was impossible for women to escape from their marriages and they had to
endure sexual violence, cruelty verbal abuse and infidelity.

16
 The concept of ”the father of the family” was very well implemented in the British
society. This concept gave the husband total power. The house duties were on the wives’
shoulders. Her place in the family was to obey and honour her husband. The ideal wife was
the one that sacrifices her for the others, the one that is patient and caring. This representation
is well represented in Coventry Patmore’s poem The Angel in the House:

“Man must be pleased; but him to please

Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
She casts her best, she flings herself...

She loves with love that cannot tire;

And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love springs higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone” 3

In her The Professions of Women, Virginia Woolf made a description of the angel:

“...immensely sympathetic, immensely charming, utterly unselfish. She excelled in the

difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily ... in short, she was so
constituted that she never had a mind but preferred to sympathize always with the
minds and wishes of others. Above all ... she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be
her chief beauty.”4

Due to their observation spirit and their feminine intuition, the work of the novelist’s
women of the time was fascinating for the middle- class women. At the beginning of the
feminism few women had the ambition to look their freedom outside their houses. The new
woman achieved many liberties and rights, by the end of the century. They could ride
bicycles, sign petitions wear bloomers. The Angel of the House theme was received in an
unfriendly way by the feminists of the time. Their aspirations were hold back by the rules and

3
Patmore, Coventry. The Angel in the House. JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. London,
1858, pp. 105-106.
4
Virginia, Woolf. The death of a moth and other essays. The Professions of Women. A Project Gutenberg
Australia eBook, October 2012. Available on:http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1203811h.html accesat la data de
16.06.2020.

17
norms regarding that particular theme, Virginia Woolf was very firm, claiming that a
woman’s writer main occupation was to kill the Angel in the House.
Woman’s role in the house was very well described in Isabella Beeton’s manual called
Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management in 1861. She compared a woman’s work in the
house to a commander of an army, using the term „the household general”. Once again, the
idea that the woman has to offer comfort and to accomplish all her family’s need was present.
Her readers were advised to supervise the servants, to have a "housekeeping account book"
where to note all the spending, organise dinners and parties. All these things were made to
bring reputation and fame to the husband. All the necessary details regarding the preparations
were given by Beeton. She also says clear that women’s main preoccupation and interest is to
raise well her children and to accomplish her household duties.

“After luncheon, morning calls and visits may be made and received.... Visits of
ceremony or courtesy ... are uniformly required after dining at a friend's house, or after
a ball, picnic, or any other party. These visits should be short, a stay of from fifteen to
twenty minutes being quite sufficient.”5

Until the middle of the 20th century the law regarding men and woman’s rights were
slowly processed. The property restrictions for women were varied. From losing all their
legally rights over their possessions and earnings, not having the right to open an account or
concluding a contract without the husband’s approval, to enduring domestic violence. If until
the 19th century in case of a separation between husbands, the children always were given to
raise to their father, once with the Custody of Infants Act in 1839 a major change for women
took place. The act permitted mothers to have access to their children. Things were to change
for women. Another important step for women it is represented by the Matrimonial Causes
Act in 1857 that permitted women to have access to divorce.
After more than twenty years, women were able to ask a separation on the reason of
cruelty and to ask their children’s custody. More than that, they could ask for protection
orders against their husbands. Another important amendment that brought a big change is the
Married Women’s Property Act in 1884. This amendment recognized woman’s independence
as an autonomy person do not belongs to her husband.

5
Isabella, Beeton. The Book of Household Management. Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, Warwick House, Salisbury
Square. London, 1906, p. 40.

18
 Regarding the ideal woman in the Victorian Era it is well known that she had to be
mannered and polite, pure and modest. This etiquette expanded to the point where women
could not talk about the wearing of the lingerie fearing that this kind of discussion could
gravitate around the anatomical details. If for men was permitted to have more partners in
their life, women were supposed to have sex only with their husbands. Many examples were
given in Victorian literature of fallen women- as they called those who had sexual contact
with someone else than the husband. In novels of the time these women had tragic ends. Sex
was a taboo subject, met with fear and embarrassment. For women, sexual relations were
about their duty as a wife and not about feelings and desires. Woman’s emotional fulfilment
was expected to come only from motherhood and domestic life, considering those things a
vocation. It was expected for a married woman to have children and a woman without
children was pitied. The most important example was Queen Victoria, nine children and
represented a model of respectability and femininity.
The women that were considered to be unclean (to have contagious diseases) were
forced to have a genital examination. Refusing, they were punished by prison. If the results
were positive and the woman was having a disease she was lock down in a hospital until she
was considered cured. The law that prevented the disease was applied only to women. They
were picked up and suspected of prostitution with or without evidences and obliged to an
examination. The examination was made by male policemen, inexpertly, painful and
humiliating.
Sometimes, in case of illness or injury, the husband was not able to work. In this case
the working class women had to earn and assure an incoming for the family. There were cases
were women had to work in heavy industry. They worked with their children in mines, in
agriculture and industrial factories and washerwoman. In the middle-class education spread
and few young women were able to hire in new fields: secretaries, cashiers or typists.
Working as a maid or cook was common but also a great competition for working in the better
paid and respectable houses. A respectable work for middle-class women was to work as a
telephone operator. Working as a teacher or governess was restricted for them. Doctoring,
nursing and midwifing were opened as professions in the 19th century. Women were most
accepted to work as a nurse as it was believed that the doctor profession was suitable for men
only.
Free time activities included traditional handicrafts, music and reading. Handicrafts
were donated by the upper –class women to charity. As the work hours continued to decline,
the free time activities increased. The workday was heading from nine hour to eight. A

19
number of holidays were created and so an annual vacation was had been set. As the religious
restrictions regarding activities on Sundays were fading, the seaside became accessible thanks
to cheap hotels the middle-class workers were able to go to the seaside. The fishing villages
were also an attraction. The recreating activities were present in all cities by the end of the
century. Some sports as: badminton and tennis were now allowed to women.
At the beginnings of the 19th century the physical activities were considered to be
harmful and improper for women. Their health was reserved only for giving birth. Once
again, the inequalities between men and women were reinforced by the physiological
differences. An anonymous writer claimed that: "women are, as a rule, physically smaller and
weaker than men; their brain is much lighter; and they are in every way unfitted for the same
amount of bodily or mental labour that men are able to undertake.”6.
The benefits of exercising were understood by the end of the century and a notable
evolution in physical culture for women took place. Articles regarding the physical health
were published, where girls were taught to change the old believes about diets and exercise
and to adopt the new regime, healthier. Popular sports for women inserted golf, cycling,
tennis and swimming and could be afford only by middle and upper- classes. Even so, cultural
conventions and rules were still available. The physical activity was justified: the British race
could be better improved by an athletic and healthy woman.
The Victorian fashion accentuated amplified dresses with volume. The silhouette
demanded a small waist that was obtained by squeezing the abdomen in a corset. The dresses
were detailed and full of details and weird. The corsets were harmful for women, restricting
breathing, compressing the thorax, causing poor circulation and even organ displacement. A
movement for reforming women’s clothes took place. A „divided skirt” was invented for
supporting women’s physical movement. The comfortable clothing was encouraged by
feminists by wearing the bloomers. The restrictive silhouette and the abandon of corset took
place once with the appearance of Coco Chanel.
As a promoter of modernism, the creator addressed her creations to young and trendy
women. Along with her, other designers introduced woman’s pants and this trend was
adopted. Among the countless barriers Virginia Woolf sees falling in Bloomsbury are those
traditionally associated with gender relations. It's not just the intuition of marriage it's the very
standard of heterosexuality that's called into question. Friends and even members of the
family experience disinhibited, defying, through homosexual practice, social conventions and

6
Women's Work: A Woman's Thoughts on Women's Rights. William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and
London, LONDON, 1876, p. 5.

20
trying to respond to inner impulses. Virginia Woolf's reaction is ambivalent. On the one hand,
the violation of conventions, his passion for the new arouses his enthusiasm. After all, they all
seem to be consistent with their own beginnings and needs.
On the other hand, there is also a sense of confusion and uncertainty. Despite enjoying
the intellectual independence gained, Woolf continues to struggle with doubts and creative
insecurity. The moments of maximum arousal alternate with those of depression and despair,
thus shaping the pattern in which he will sit, with small variations, the rest of his life.
The great transformations from the beginning of the 20th century, creative enthusiasm
in all fields, as well as the destructive momentum embodied by the two world wars,
profoundly shakes the illusion of order and balance of the 19th century. It's an effort that
inevitably puts the artist in a position that is simultaneously privileged and vulnerable. The
investigation of these tensions is – paradoxically – a much more realistic approach than that of
the realists who dominated the previous century, in that it seeks to reveal the way in which we
actually operate, on the basis of contradictory emotional and mental impulses, and not just as
a great result of social constraints. Two reference texts of the direction of the direction will
follow not only towards modernism but in particular towards feminism, Mrs Dalloway (1925)
and To the Lighthouse (1927). These novels clearly show that Virginia Woolf has found her
own voice and that despite that she approaches a style not necessarily easy, she is confident
enough in her art to practice it regardless of public response.
Increasing confidence in artistic forces is matched by an increased ability to control
their emotional turmoil. Her marriage to Leonard turned out not to be the suffocating
relationship he feared immediately after his marriage (fear that caused him, moreover, one of
the most serious and longest depressions), but a relationship of friendship and extraordinary
mutual respect. His support is essential to the writer both personally and artistically. Leonard
is the first reader of her texts, the most feared critic, but also the most reliable. Against this
background of relatively psychological comfort, Virginia confronts her sexuality more openly
than usual.
The years of hard work at Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse are also the years of
passionate connection to Vita Sackville-West. Virginia Woolf tackles subjects that, despite
the freedoms and libertinism practiced by members of the Bloomsbury Group, and despite the
artistic audacity of the modernists, remain controversial in the era. British society is still
deeply puritan. Sexuality in general, but especially sexuality in its "reverse" form (to use the
usual term of the period) is a taboo subject, and texts addressing such topics risk serious
repercussions, even of a criminal nature. Woolf manages to articulate clearly, but also subtle,

21
ideas related to sexuality, homoerotism, androgynies, etc. Two ideas are clearly shaped in the
novels: that of the role played by the social and cultural element in defining sexuality, and that
of the androgynous essence of the human personality. She represents one the most booming
works in feminism of the 1970s; in her works she defended issues such as homosexuality,
female sexual desire and transsexuality. Her work is seen as a first sample of "political
attitude," a writer with an acute awareness of the role of a coned-wielding woman in a society
"handled" by men. Virginia Woolf's literary and theoretical work thus played a central role in
the progressive development of feminism.
The colloquiums of the Bloomsbury circle, organized in Virginia Woolf's Gordon
Square house, decisively accelerated the feminist, socialist and pacifist ideas of pre-war
Europe. More cautious and nuanced, the English critic sits the role of the "Friday club," which
brought together Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Saxon Sydney Turner, Walter Lamb, Duncan
Grant, Roger Fry and Leonard Woolf, all young intellectuals who have come off the
Cambridge’s benches and debates are animated on the issue of war, cruelty, sexuality, wealth
and poverty, in the push of English society to overcome their immobility and cultural apathy
in order to acquire innovative ideas.
At a time when the typical English institution of clubs enshrined the social position,
prestige and freedom of men, for the silent rebellion of Bloomsburians is symptomatic of
maintaining a constructive dialogue with Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Annie Cole, Molly
MacCarthy or Vita Sackville-West, which projects on the male superiority the revelation of
what they feel and what they are incapable of thinking. The equality of women and men
within the group, as an awe of intellectualism par excellence, is a sign of the assumption of
the consciousness of modernity. In the lectures the writer held in 1928 at the girls' colleges,
Newnham and Girton, in Cambridge, the strength and irresistible humour of Virginia Woolf's
plea for the female cause is a step towards the women's liberation movement. She discusses a
woman's difficulties in asserting socially as a writer and reveals Virginia Woolf's courage to
say uncomfortable things about herself, to deal with herself, and to show herself to the free
and vulnerable world.
In the absence of documentary traces of women's presence in the process of political,
economic or cultural development, literary discourse, is one of the few sources in which
women have been able to obtain meaning, but only as fictional characters.
Virginia Woolf's modest question about the absence of writers from the history of universal
literature up to 1900 gives way to other similar interrogations: how to understand the absence
of a female heredity in literature? Why don't "literary critic," "classic literary," "literary

22
genius"? Where are the great authors and why are they not among the great names of the
literary tradition studied in schools and universities? Their absence from literature is
conditioned by objective facts (they did not exist, they did not write anything, or what they
wrote is not comparable to the works of the great male literary tradition), or were the criteria
of critical evaluation and reception not favourable to them to integrate them into the
production and reproduction of cultural values? Virginia Woolf reproaches men's passion for
money, the warlike impulses and aggression with which they have exceptionally established
themselves in the field of arts. From a desire to convince, Woolf stated that if Shakespeare
had a sister with equally brilliant writing skills, no line of his writings would have subsisted
the time to be integrated into universal values.
Woolf shows us that certain literary genres, including tragedy, epics and poetry, have
long been invincible territories for women, being "reconciled" only to less noble species, such
as novel, intimate diary, epistle or autobiography. Any woman who wants a career as a writer
has to take into account two things: money and a room of her own.
In this way, Woolf touches on one of the issues of equality of male and female cultural
opportunities. Unlike men, to whom their power, money or socialization as artists allows them
to get rid of the material and domestic constraints of everyday life, women are not entitled and
cannot fully detach themselves from their duties as daughters, mothers or wives, in order to be
merely the creator of spiritual goods.
Virginia Woolf stipulates well ahead of identity model theorists that the whole of male
professional identity is not destabilized by the conciliation of social and domestic roles, and
by virtue of their education, men do not conceive of investing their time and efforts in the
family to support the professional affirmation of their life partner. Women who decide to
pursue a career as a writer must perform professional and domestic functions, always having
to give up to be "for the other," so that they can afford the luxury of being "for themselves."
Lacks of access to education, social and economic dependence on men are the main causes of
women's absence from the culture process. The fact that they do not benefit from a literary
tradition is, however, converted into an advantage for female writers.
The desire to distinguish oneself, to write "other" than his predecessors and
contemporaries is the mark of that dreamlike, vague, loveless, without passions and without
sex, which characterizes the fictional universe of Virginia Woolf. Female creativity is
opposed to male egocentrism, and the notion of "think-past-through-our-mothers," essential to
Virginia Woolf's literary conception, is aimed at repairing, slightly psychoanalytically, the
lack of a female writers' tradition. In the search for women's spheres of influence in history,

23
Woolf discovers, above all, a lack of history, an absence and a silence. It follows from this
that what women have done in history has left no trace in the written documents. There is
thus, as Virginia Woolf writes, a lack of tradition in the ingenuous understanding of women's
history:

“One could not go to the map and say: Columbus was a woman; or take an apple and
remark: Newton discovered the law of universal gravity and Newton was a woman; or
look into the sky and say aeroplanes are flying overhead and aeroplanes were invented
by women. There is no mark on the wall to measure the precise height of a woman.
There are no yard measures, neatly divided into the fractions of an inch that one can
lay against the qualities of a good mother or the devotion of a daughter, or the fidelity
of a sister, or the capacity of a housekeeper.”7

From this desperate awareness of the insignificance of the "species" to which she
belongs is born the writer's conviction that relying on the support of "great men" is the most
absurd thing a woman can do. Virginia Woolf projects a vision of the androgynous future of
mankind. "The great spirit is androgynous" and constitutes the only chance of "renewal" of
human individuality through the fusion of rationality and intuition, between the male and the
female slopes. The androgynous theory of the future, as it is constructed by Virginia Woolf,
incorporates the sexual bipolarity of mankind into one and the same cultural endeavour,
saying that the masculine spirit is as imperfect as the feminine one.
Regarding the war, she demonstrates that fighting one evil with a greater one is
madness and denounces the responsibility of men for starting wars, saying that although both
sexes have the same instincts, the instinct to fight is the trait of the male and not the female.
Less trained and excluded from active life, women occupy a subordinate place even in family
relationships and this state of affairs, Woolf suggests, must be actively or passively combated
by refusing to support male arrogance and ambitions, declaring themselves "stateless", or, if
necessary, renounce the citizenship of the country of origin.
Since the state does nothing for the good of women, it has no right to ask them for a
contribution to its defence, for the political and ideological ambitions of large or small
countries are only the result of the men’s aggressive instincts who hold power. Virginia
Woolf's theory of war as a "grotesque male fiction," and patriotism, as a "vulgar emotion,"

7
Virginia, Woolf. A Room of One’s Own. Global Grey ebooks. 2018, pp. 67-68. Available on:
https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/room-of-ones-own-ebook.html Accesat la data de 16.06.2020, ora 01:31

24
leads discussions toward the education process, toward the causes that guide the configuration
of behavioural stereotypes in society. Building on political and religious considerations,
Woolf demonstrates that education is responsible for the offensive-destructive worldview.
Dozens of examples drawn from school textbooks and university lectures, literature,
the press and speeches given in the House of Lords show that the mentality of men is formed
by the idea of affirmation in life through the possession and exercise of power, and the price
of the "splendid Empire" created by men, is paid in particular, by women."
Since the establishment of the Arthur Fund for Education, noble and bourgeois
families in England have contributed annually to support educational institutions intended
exclusively for the intellectual and professional training of boys. The only profession
accessible to girls was marriage. Extraordinarily precise, Woolf dismantles the myth of
women's shadow influence. The role of instigating warlike actions, of master of the policy
made in alcove, hovers over the feminine reputation since the time of the Helen of Troy.
The English educational system (and not only) is responsible for the foundation of the
male warrior heroism against which, the behaviour of women, materially and matrimonially
dependent on men, could be established only by acts of adhesion. Consciously or not, women
must accept the views of men and agree with their decisions, flatter and flatter busy men,
soldiers, lawyers, ambassadors, eager for recreation after daily work, because that is the only
way they can access the "profession" that has been reserved for them.
Virginia Woolf's critical system is based on the connection between ideas, which
determines the behaviour of men and women in the relationship of social forces of a particular
era, and major historical events. The participation of women in the sequences of perpetuating
the mentality produced in colleges and universities is not located in a vague context, but
formulated in terms of a precise sociological analysis, from which it is apparent that female
acts of choice are influenced by the hierarchical structure of society. The fact that women
have continued to support the decisions of men spiritually and materially, even after their
access to paid work, is explained by the remuneration of the services provided by them with
very small amounts, by the preservation of the "profession" of marriage, in the institution in
which women's private services are free, and by the husband's income, incomparably higher
than that of the wife and, therefore, decisive when it comes to the causes, pleasures that
mysteriously turn to those preferred as husband.
The educational policy of the English state leads Virginia Woolf to the association of
its oppressive principles with the dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini. The division of a
nation's life into the "world of men" and "the world of women," as well as the belief that one

25
has the right, given by God or by Nature, to dictate to other human beings how to live, is the
same as the love of men to dictate whether it is expressed in English, German or Italian.
The effect of dividing society into a world of the sons of educated men, and a world of
the daughters of educated men, who work as wives, mothers, daughters, and are not paid for
their work, is felt in the absorption of women by the practical sphere. The same idea is the
basis of their appearance for poetic, spiritual and adventure, which has become the main
subject of many novels, and the eternal conception of theorists who have confirmed, with
"evidence," that by the law of nature, women are inferior to men.
The male emotion of domination is the result of its economic independence, but above
all, a fear of ridicule on the part of those around it. Domination is, as such, a relational
behaviour towards the authority of the spiritual ideal justified and enshrined by the system of
symbolic norms and roles. Integrated into the universal value plan, women's admiration for
the courage of men is a "remnant of the wilderness" and a result of the fact that, in the old
days, the lives of a woman and that of her children depended on her companion’s ability to
kill. Virginia Woolf's ideas in this brilliant analysis of the role of education, high culture and
mainstream culture in ensuring democratic opportunities for all, being repeated in the various
interpretations of feminism theorists. Containing theoretical problems regarding the
relationship between artistic creation and female existence, Virginia Woolf's essays were a
starting point for the efforts of researchers in the Anglo-American linguistic space to change
the conceptions of the "intangible values" of literature. Feminist theorists' reactions to
'disseminated' misogynistic images in the masterpieces of universal literature have been
converted into reflections on the relationship between politics and creation, which have led to
the rethinking of the object of literature and the reformulation of its history.

26
 1.2 Feminism in Virginia Woolf’s novels

Even if in our times beyond all other rights, women have the right to vote, they still
have to deal the misogynistic behaviours in a society where gender roles and prejudices are in
a continuous perpetuation. The feminist movement that took place at the beginning of the last
century has changed people’s perspective regarding life in general, but it did not succeed to
change centuries of stereotypes and limitations for women. It takes time to completely change
mentalities and it is important that both women and men to embrace the feminist ideas.
Femininity is not based on biology or intellect rather on highlighting some
fundamental differences between men and women. Both men and women personality is
shaped through the education and culture that they are exposed to. The feminist movement
results that took place at the beginning of the 20th century are concrete today: first of all this
movement was about changing perceptions and traditional norms and about changing the way
that humanity perceived femininity as less important than masculinity. But the most important
legacy that feminist movement left it is the capacity to doubt perceptions to a fundamental
level: human beings transcend biology and even if men and women are physically different
they all deserve equal chances. I propose that we imagine a world where, because we are
women, things could happen to us that could not have happened nor had a much lower
probability, if we were borne men. Of course and mutual is true.
Societies are so configured that they are to varying degrees of patriarchal societies.
Although some of the following experiences may be completely foreign to us individually,
they are not yet foreign to many new contemporary women. First, with current technology
(echography), women have fewer chances of being born in patriarchal communities, female
foetuses can be aborted not only because they are unwanted children, but also because they
are girls. When people in such communities did not have the help to find out the sex of the
child in the first months, sometimes they practice the killing of new-borns.
At the baptism ceremony, the procedure may differ if you're a girl. The boys are taken
to the altar, you're not. In most religions you can never officiating the service or speaking in
the holy house. In many popular beliefs you are considered further from God than the men.
For this reason, sometimes, you even have to completely cover your face by a stay hidden,
away from the eyes of men (except for the husband) and under no circumstances do you have
anything to look for in their society or in their discussions.
In the family you get a different education, you are taught to care for others, to
sacrifice yourself for them, to give up on their behalf, to be sensitive, to please, not to revolt.

27
You can get protection in exchange for care. In many cases, you don't even have access to
school.
If you have the chance to study, schools can be demixed, and you will acquire
specialized care skills, and there are forms or levels of learning that you do not have access to.
Or parents oblige you to abandon school after your first period, because they have to get you
married, obviously without your permission.
For a long time, in certain communities, and now, your husband becomes the family’s
head instead of your father. You can't dispose of your own assets, you can't sign contracts
without his consent, he also manages your wealth, he's often allowed to beat you, within
tolerable limits, and instead you can't raise your hand on him. In some communities, he can
divorce, he can repudiate you, but you don't have those rights. The man's infidelities are
overlooked; yours can destroy your reputation or cost you your life. Your husband or other
foreign men can rape you, and you hide it because you're afraid the others will accuse you of
provoking them. In a patriarchal world, you can't decide whether you have children or not,
how many you can grow, when the time is right to give birth. Either the tradition or the state
decides.
Tradition usually decides that this is your destiny and you have to follow it. If the
tradition is denied, then the state takes over this task and decides whether or not to have
children, whether or not you have access to abortion and birth control. Usually tradition, and
the state empowers mothers for raising children, and rarely, or not at all, fathers. Sometimes
the mother doesn't even have the right to ask for the establishment of paternity. If you are a
woman in such a world, then you know that your care work will be assigned to you. You're
going to cook, wash, clean up for the whole family, including your husband, every day.
Sometimes you're a housewife and that's your job, for which you won't have any income of
your own.
You're often not a housewife. You either work in your own household in the country,
or you have a job in the city. This situation does not spare the fact that you are the first
caregiver of the family. Raising children and household take time, so professionally you
progress harder than your male colleagues, unless you are forced to give up your studies or
career. If you manage to balance them, this balance alone costs you a lower salary, a lower
position in the hierarchy, lower professional prestige. And you see, no matter how free,
emancipated and advanced you are, men perform better in the world, and so you resign
yourself. Or, you realize that women often work in areas where incomes are lower. Or that
they're insignificant, because that's where women work. Or that a woman has to accept sexual

28
harassment to get or keep his job. Because sometimes their own income is not enough,
women with professions depend on their of the husbands' income. But you can be left by your
husband or partner, or not have one, and raise your children alone, with minimal state support
or without any help. Usually, in this case you are part of the poorest part of the population.
A mother with more children is the prototype of a poor adult. They are usually joined
by older members. For women the advantage is that even though they live worse and work
harder, they usually have a longer life. These women depend on the state, family or
community. You happen not to work (because you don't have access to jobs or because they
are poorly paid, that you can't live off them), you have to marry, and hope for the maintenance
offered by a man in exchange for housekeeping, raising children and sexual services. In any
of these situations, you become vulnerable. If you're young, others can take advantage of
selling you on the sex market, without your will, to become a sex slave. Other times, you sell
your own sexual service. The world is imbued with ideas, publications and advertisements
filled with sexy women, so that they are very available to be sexually consumed. The
spearhead of the trade with such needs is pornography.
If you open treatises on political theory, at least until the first half of the 20th century,
you almost can't find any women as authors of political ideas. The experiences of women are
neglected in the construction of theories about citizenship, representation, democracy, if not,
even explicitly. Great democratic thinkers have built models of citizenship and democracy
that exclude women. In other words, you live by the ideas, theories, laws and policies that
men do exclusively or almost exclusively, by their interests and style. And so, you perpetuate
a world of women's dependence on men instead of a world of autonomy and interdependence.
Of course, it is not only feminism that has reacted to the injustices of such a society. But
feminism has made it the main object of contesting. In some senses, feminist accents have
existed in the great ideologies of emancipations.
When Virginia Woolf analysed the transformations in British literary world, referring
to the novel in this cultural space over the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century,
she referred to a real esthetical revolution. Some of the readers, already initiated into a
number of aspects of modernism, thought in a sceptic way of this opinion. But the writer of
Mrs Dalloway insisted that only moments like War of the Two Roses could be as important as
the ascending and the recognition of the feminist prose- not very permissive otherwise- in the
British society of the time. And from this affirmation started at the beginning of the Victorian
Era, little time had passed until the evolution of the feminine writing started. Writers like
George Henry Lewes or Alfred Tennison, highlighted the same idea, because, from Jane

29
Austen, the road opener of the pre Victorian years, to George Eliot, through Bronte’s novels
and the experience of Elizabeth Gashkell, the feminine writers marked an extraordinary
flourishing era of the British prose.
Some critics even felt that, although, at some point in the British cultural space, there
was a tendency to consider Victorian prose somewhat out-dated, because of its so-called
sentimentality or clamed provincialism, it was precisely the characteristics of female writing
that had the gift of highlighting its true value and consecrating it, at least from certain
perspectives, as one of the defining aesthetic experiences for the evolution of all English
literature. For the complex process of transformation and elaboration of artistic formula that
took place in the field of the Victorian novel, can only be compared to the astonishing
evolution of the Elizabethan era of drama. And the work of the great writers of the time
represents, taken as a whole, the extraordinary widening of the thematic area, as well as a
progressive refinement of the means of expression, privileged moral observation, and the
emotions of the female characters, often ignored until then. Henry James considered her a
charming but not a profound author, reproaching her intuitions – even if she recognised their
validity – because they would have proved a simple vocation, but not the ability of a genuine,
artistically and complex.
Virginia Woolf’s conviction that human have changed was supported by the echoes
that Roger Fry's post-impressionist exhibition had at the time. But speaking of identifiable
changes in human nature, the British writer also considered a series of transformation suffered
by fiction itself, which is increasingly present, since the first decade of the 20th century,
which, moreover, she has also extensively analysed in her essays.
Fiction is no longer, from Virginia Woolf's point of view, "a critique of existence", but
rather a re‐creation of the true complexity of human experience, the narrative having to be
able to express the complicated and subtle sequence of all human experiences, paying
attention, of course, to the specific nuances and tonalities of their manifestation. The novelist's
art therefore tends to come closer to that of the painter’s, with the mention that, for Virginia
Woolf, the true painting, was no longer represented by the Dutch School, admired by George
Eliot, but in the new orientation of post-impressionism.
The aesthetic values to which the writer adheres prove to be those of the Bloomsbury
Group. For, starting from the theorizations of its members, it will also form a specific attitude
towards literature in general and towards the art of the novel in particular. It will not be too
surprising to her conviction on the subject of a literary work, which should no longer be
limited by any predetermined conception, as long as anything may to be part of literature.

30
However, such a conception has its dangers, not few. Some of them could not be avoided nit
even by Virginia Woolf. Between them, that of reproducing, at the level of the novel, even the
(more or less apparent) lack of form of existence in the outside world, in other words, the
chaos of which we should be saved of, at the artistic level, precisely from the writer's ability
to select and her ability to choose, from the multitude of possible subjects always at hand, just
what is really aesthetically relevant. Beyond these theoretical positions, Virginia Woolf's
prose turns out to be, on careful reading, much more traditional than we might expect.
Especially the beginning. Her prose is somehow similarly addressing the great themes that
pervade her work: the relationship between the individual and society, the difficult road of
self-discovery, loneliness, death.
Thus, Journey to The Sea (1915) or Night and Day (1919) remain novels drawn from
the good tradition of realism and relying heavily on the textual conventions that the author
mocked in the prose of her predecessors. It is only with Jacob's Room (1922) that we see a
development of the poetic side of Virginia Woolf's prose, along with a tendency towards
biting irony, but also learned, ironically, also from the technique of the great authors of the
Victorian era. Some attitudes of the characters are detached as if from the best pages of Emma
or Northanger Abbey, of the same Jane Austen.
From there comes Virginia Woolf's deep conviction that even in the seemingly trivial
or banal aspects of existence there is a meaning to be found that can best be exploited on a
poetic level. This also explains the use of images that transform the novels of its full maturity
into true extended metaphors, operating at the level of the whole text, as is the case with the
lighthouse of To the Lighthouse (1927) or the waves of The Waves, the text that appeared in
1931. You can see, only now, how the author's art has evolved, gradually but increasingly to a
practice of symbols, succeeding in this territory to overcome even their own theories. The
novel The Waves is focused on the great theme of the passage of time, with Virginia Woolf
trying to render the very image of the succession of days, months and seasons, following each
other like waves, and leading, in terms of the implicit parallel to the existence of the human
being, to the inevitable end. The most appropriate approach, however shocking it may seem,
must bear in mind the imaginary of Shakespeare's sonnets, moreover, the great model to
which Woolf has always reported.
Thus, in her very first novel, Journey to The Sea, published in 1915, there is a
fragment that undoubtedly announces the future specific technique of the writer. Clarissa
Dalloway, the one who will reappear, after ten years, in the great novel Mrs Dalloway, is
about to fall asleep, still under the influence of the pages of Pascal that she had read, but also

31
of her thoughts about her husband. But what will later become a full expression of the free
functioning of consciousness stops at the very point where everything could begin and turns
into an account of a dream experience, in a manner similar to that imposed by Jane Austen in
Mansfield Park.
And if, in her debut novel, Virginia Woolf let her characters fall asleep in order to be
able to forget about them and free themselves from any conventions or constraints, in later
great narrative constructs, the protagonists will have to stay awake precisely to be able to free
themselves. Obvious fact both in To the Lighthouse and especially in Mrs Dalloway – from
the beginning, from the famous paragraphs that impose the specific atmosphere, but also the
predilection technique of the novel from 1925:

“Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out
for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were about to
arrive. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway thought, what a morning – fresh as if
issued to children on a beach. What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always
seemed to her when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she
had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How
fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the
flap of a wave; the kiss of wave; chill and sharp yet (for an eighteen-year-old girl, as
she was then), solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that
something awful was about to happen.”8

The need for stylistic elaboration and the tendency to refine the means of expression –
which many pages of Night and Day almost stated – and which will be intuited with Jacob's
Room are perfectly illustrated, but also perfectly practiced in Mrs Dalloway, especially since,
here, the writer manages to restore the balance that herself needed, reporting to the traditional
novel and its values. Of course, in 1925, when Mrs Dalloway appeared, the flow of
consciousness was no longer a novelty in English literature, so that, now, for Virginia Woolf,
the problem was no longer to use an innovative technique, but the way of giving her, at the
level of her own creation, a truly personal dimension.
So, in this novel, the author clearly delineates the time and framework of the actions,
the characters are not at all numerous, and the relationships between them, although not

8
Virginia, Woolf. Mrs Dalloway. The Hogart Press. London. 1925, p. 4.

32
explained (or explained) from the very beginning, are clear enough not to induce confusion.
The thoughts or reactions of the protagonists are always individualized.
The result is a novel of truly remarkable clarity and the comparisons often made with
James Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses, they had not once considered this aspect. Virginia Woolf
is considering a few hours (not coincidentally, the book was originally called The Hours)
from one of the days when Clarissa Dalloway is concerned with organizing, in the smallest
details, one of her social event.
The events that mark the evolution of the narrative are undoubtedly events of
consciousness and no longer concern at all the level of the purely external existence of the
characters. Or, at most, focus on it only as a necessary pretext. The brilliant and carefree
appearance of Clarissa's existence will come to say a lot regarding the general meanings of
human life, but also to gradually reveal the disappointments, sorrows and failures that the
protagonist (and, with her, all the other characters) tries to hide under this mask of decorative
social events, but lacking a real consistency.
Septimus Smith, a veritable double of Clarissa, ends up committing suicide, Peter
Walsh, an ex-boyfriend, unexpectedly returns from India, and Clarissa Dalloway will
eventually be able to clarify her feelings towards Sally Seton, in a narrative always under the
sign of fragmentariness and bringing all this together in the unmistakable style of Virginia
Woof. The novelist is always perceptive to how it renders the forms of temporality and the
hypostases of space, the element that gives cohesion to the two dimensions being, of course,
human consciousness.
Narrative discourse is therefore organized, in principle, following two possibilities:
whether time seems fluid and lax, and the human personality perfectly stable and coherent, or
that the latter gives the feeling that it is under the sign of permanent transformation. While
time remains the unmodified or difficult to modify. So the author either undertakes an
incursion into the consciousness of several characters simultaneously in the same place, either
follows the flow of thoughts of a single character- especially of the protagonist- and travels, in
this way, different spaces and moments of human existence.
The implicit questions in Mrs Dalloway will therefore be of a metaphysical rather than
strictly psychological nature, and the answers, always multiple, are never explicitly stated, but
merely suggested. The characters, throughout the whole action – if we can still give the
traditional name of "action" to such a sequence of the moments that compose the novel-
hesitate between several possibilities for clarifying some interrogations such as: what is –
what can be – the nature of reality and what is the new relationship that external reality sets

33
with reality of human consciousness? What does "coherent human personality" mean and to
what extent is it still influenced by the surrounding universe? Joyce's goal was to isolate the
essential aspects of reality from all human attitudes and thus build self-sufficient world fully
independent values of the human’s existence as a receiver of consciousness.
Virginia Woolf tries not to exclude anything from her concerns and her area of
interest, at least in Mrs Dalloway. Hence his major themes: the nature of the human
personality and its relationship with time and death. Paradoxically, Woolf imposed herself
mainly through them, but, if we think about it, they were nothing new in the British prose
landscape. Katherine Mansfield had used them herself, and still in an exemplary way.
However, for Virginia Woolf it will no longer matter so much the quality of the existence’s
details, but the meditation on them, within a dual structured artistic approach. Firstly, human
existence is observed from an artistic perspective, and then, immediately, the results of the
observation are evaluated, at the aesthetic level, from all possible perspectives to be, and only
thus, put before the reader.
For in Mrs Dalloway, what the author asks of the reader is a sustained effort to look
deep, to perceive the truth hidden beyond the appearance of outer existence, as long as she
herself has always chosen to work by careful selection, and not by expanding the meanings.
Hence the hypnotic force, but also the unique atmosphere of this novel, a remarkable
expression of a deeply personal response given both to the long and brilliant tradition of
European prose and to all the challenges of the aesthetics of modernity.
Everything that is technical process in Virginia Wool’s prose is subsumed by a poetic
vision, associated with the attempt to penetrate the mystery of human relationships, in the
moments of climax reached by the novelist; to discover the areas of authenticity
uncontaminated by conventionalism.
The manner of illuminating and individuality from different angles, diving in the inner flow,
temporal overlaps, chronological discontinuity. What Virginia Woolf highlights behind each
of the characters, the communication that she is able to establish between, that penetrability
between human consciousness, what is happening, in her conception, at the level of deep
areas, are first and last, attempts to grasp the mystery of human being and expand the inner
reality. These artistic innovations are all incorporated into the novel To the Lighthouse.
The presentation of the outer reality in the texture of the characters is done through the
intercession of emotion. The author's confessions indicate some autobiographical sources of
the novel To the Lighthouse, which, she fears, might give a "sentimental" note to the book. Mr
Ramsay is the image of Virginia's father, Leslie Stephen. Mrs Ramsay, a central figure,

34
retains some traits of the mother lost in childhood. Mrs Ramsay is a mature, beautiful woman,
mother of eight - she is mysterious presence that dominates the novel and the destinies of
other characters, even after her death. The enigma of this calm, quiet woman keeps the eternal
feminine. Mrs Ramsay's femininity is the cohesion element of the family group and friends.
Mrs Ramsay sits in the window, or writes letters on the beach, and in all these daily pursuits,
she takes a fascination, surrounds itself with a spell felt by everyone around her, but never
explained. Mrs Ramsay has that specifically feminine intuitive force that allows her access to
the most vulnerable regions. Familiar to people and their sufferings, easily living through life,
Mrs Ramsay lives thousands of daily miracles. Mrs Ramsay succeeds to establish contact with
that area of profound authenticity.
The calming and purifying virtues, the permanent sacrifices, Virginia Woolf add the
gift of dissolving the shell of conventions and achieving the meeting between consciences.
Invested with an almost mythical value, Mrs Ramsay succeeds in the unification between
people, without any material intervention, and remains, even after death, a symbol of beauty
and a reintegrating force, creating human communion. Her posthumous presence brings
reconciliation between the tyrannical father and the rebellious teenagers; and also in the
shadow of Mrs Ramsay, benevolent ghost, the painter Lily Briscoe lives artistic revelation.
The cohesion work facilitated by Mrs Ramsay's personality also occurs in the time
plan. The walk to the lighthouse, promised to the youngest in the first part of the novel, takes
place, ten years later, after the death of the mother, but with the support of her protective
spirit. Cataclysm that didn't happen then, takes place now. The walk, finally obtained, updates
and extinguishes in James’ mind the grudge accumulated against the father and now the
painter, who, in the first part, was working on the portrait of Mrs Ramsay.
To the Lighthouse, like Mrs Dalloway, is a book that destroys the temporal scheme of
the traditional novel. Mrs Dalloway gives us "a London day", when Clarissa Dalloway,
intersects with that of Peter Walsh, Septimus Ward, etc., The first part of the novel To the
Lighthouse was limited to the unique evening spent by the Ramsay family and their friends in
the house of the Hebrides. In the second part, Time passes, time becomes amorphous, the
human element disappears. Nature (vegetable, animal) proliferates, invades the house on the
island.
Human events are mentioned in haste, in parentheses. Mrs Ramsay dies suddenly, one
of the boys is killed by an explosion during the war, and one of the girls dies from a birth.
This suspension of the human, during which time is marked only by the rhythmic light of the
Lighthouse and the relentless breath of the waves, points us to the last part. People are coming

35
back. Everything is now consumed in a single day, greatly amplified, because, in its space, the
waters of the memory brought by the inner flows of people, by the memory of the characters,
mastered Mrs Ramsay’s figure.
The present, before being fulfilled by walking to the Lighthouse, gives way to the
invasion of the past. From the perspective of the whole novel, the episode of amorphous time
seems to gain a meaning also attached to Mrs Ramsay's figure.
Element of stability in the first part, it saves the house from the "time swamp", which
quickly swallows the human. Her figure, now an apparition retransforms chaos into the
cosmos, restores the group of people abandoned by her natural person, her consistency for ten
years lost. In this way the episode entitled Time passes integrates into the structure of the
novel without disturbing that fluidity to which all the aesthetics of Virginia Woolf tend.
Between past and present, between one consciousness and another, between nature
and human, a perfect solution of continuity is obtained. Every moment absorbed emotions,
impressions, sensations consumed; the jump into the pass occurs on the jerks; without giving
any impression of rupture. And vice versa: the future is introduced, absorbs every moment.
The obsession with fluidity provides a justification for the inner monologue and, above all,
the dialogue between consciousness, that silent dialogue, that communication between
tunnels, theorized by Virginia Woolf in the pages of the journal.
The reflection of the painter Lily Briscoe, offers the explanation of some of the
techniques adopted by Virginia Woolf. The character’s monologue intertwines at the inner
level of consciousness, and the writer gets the profound communications she wanted. The
passages from one consciousness to another are recorded in the novel To the Lighthouse, finds
its culmination in the house on the island. From one consciousness to another the text slips
without roughness, offering, its quality a harmony obtained by overlapping the characters'
mind and the alternations of silent dialogue.
The inner duration becomes the level of authentic, spontaneous, code-restricted
experiences. External behaviour is that of artificial existence, fixed in rigid patterns.
Abstracting from the conventional shell, penetrating into the depths of the consciences of
those around them, the Virginia Woolf’s characters like their creator, discover a territory of
genuine and purities. Mrs Ramsay is one of the supreme beings bestowed with this privilege.
She alone intuits, in the presence of Tansley, prematurely deformed by tics and devoured by
ambition, the soul suffering and laughing at friendship and love. Only for her, her husband, a
tense and tense presence loses his repulsive teaching authority for children, becoming a man
troubled by uncertainty, as in the last episode of the book, during the marine walk, the

36
children will discover him. With this it is revealed one of the meanings of the inner plunge
characteristic of Woolf’s technique. The secret of human beings is revealed, the crust of
conventions is dissolved and areas of innocence appear. Mrs Ramsay, with her immense
compassionate power, knew how much fact-making people could be in their seemingly
differentiated manifestations, disputes, disagreements, prejudices, and how similar by the
need for solace and understanding.
Virginia Woolf moves every character from the light of one visual shine into the light
of another. The desire to broaden the area of knowledge of the human soul in its unpredictable
reactions that combine, succeed a mysterious movement, a desire common to a large and
otherwise heterogeneous group of writers, who imposed themselves in the period immediately
preceding and after the First World War. This desire is largely responsible for the entire
system of innovations brought to the novel's technique.
But to talk about Virginia Woolf's prose only in terminology dictated by the interest in
writing technique is to omit one of the terms of her creation, a creation that sees a strange and
characteristic fusion between intellectualism and seniority, between deliberate and laborious
construction, on the one hand, and poetic vision, on the other. Maybe we need to get closer to
Virginia Woolf's art in the spirit that poetry inspires. In the novel To the Lighthouse, as
Virginia Woolf imagined before she wrote it, the sound of the waves had to be heard from one
end to the other.
The outward and homogeneous time, marked, in Mrs Dalloway, by the sound of the
Big Ben bell. However, the one who organizes the whole epic-lyric substance is undoubtedly
the Lighthouse, a symbol that is denied, like so many poetic symbols, to an explanation that
will exhaust it. An element that absorbs spiritual energies and undoes the final catharsis, the
Lighthouse as a symbol, benefits from an imprecision that enhances its fascination.

37
 1.3 The flow of consciousness

The flow of consciousness is a technical narrative that gives the impression of a mind
at work, jumping from one observation, sensation or reflection to another without problems
and often without conventional transitions.
Although the flow of consciousness is commonly associated with the work of
novelists, including James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner, the method has also
been used effectively by writers of non-creative fiction and is often referred to as free writing.
The metaphor of the flow of consciousness was invented by the American philosopher and
psychologist William James in Principles of Psychology in 1890 and has been perpetuated to
this day in the modern fields of literature and psychology. Often used by creative writing
teachers as a means to get "creative flowing juices" for their students at the beginning of
classes, a stream of exercises of consciousness often writing to ground writers in
contemporarily, the importance of a particular topic or discourse.
Through her works, Virginia Woolf exerted a strong influence on the reconsideration
of the novel's possibilities and the role of the writer-woman in artistic life, experimenting with
both the flow of consciousness and the psychological and emotional motives of the characters.
In creative fiction, a stream of consciousness can be used by a narrator to convey thoughts or
feelings going on in a character's head, tricking a writer to convince the audience of the
authenticity of his or her thoughts trying to write in the story. These inner monologues of the
kind read and transfer thought more organically for the public, providing a direct glimpse into
the "inner works" of a character's mental landscape.
The lack of characteristic punctuation and transitions only promotes this idea of a free-
flowing prose, in which the reader and speaker jump just as from one topic to another, just as
a person would when reveries about a particular topic, might start talking about fantasy
movies, but end up discussing the fine points of medieval costumes, for example, without
problems and without transition. His cries explore the problem of time and memory,
perceived in the form of the continuous flow of consciousness in which everything swims like
a current, from which the "clip" emerges, everything spills into the "dynamics of the
moment". This theme is recurring in Virginia Woolf's novels, especially in Mrs Dalloway,
where the characters' lives unfold over the course of a single day.
Since 1920, the flow of consciousness technique in novel’s field made a very impressive
achievement, but did not form a literary genre. The flow of consciousness is a technical
narrative that gives the impression of a mind at work, jumping from one observation,

38
sensation or reflection to another without problems and often without conventional
transitions.
Starting, however, with Mrs Dalloway, the internalization of each sensation, the thinking of
each gesture acquires new valences. We witness a stylization of the cognitive and affective
register, the subconscious, the involuntary memory taking over the narrative space after
controlling, in a fictional plan, the vital space of the character. The primacy of action is
replaced by the primacy of pure sensation, of pure thinking, of purified feeling because, in
fact, along with instinctually, modesty, mystery, sentimentality, lyricism and subjectivity-
constants considered fundamental in feminine literary studies. Feminine literature represents,
first of all, an alternative to what until then was called literature. The support of the novel's
action is constituted by recalling the events of the past. This becomes an exercise in self-
knowledge and does not mean that the present is abandoned, on the contrary, is strengthened
by explaining certain feelings of the past, by rearranging them in a coherent sense. A
retrospective look could be made. The intrigue is also internalized, the place of animosity
between individuals being taken over by contemplation and reflection on the self and
existence. In the novel, time appears in two hypostases. The historical and objective time of
the narrative development that follows the chronological order of events. External events are
framed and measured by the chronological time, irreversible, regulated by the rhythm of the
Big Ben clock, a reminder of the ephemeral character of the present moment in relation to
eternity. The events measured by the chronological time take place over a relatively short
period of one day, starting with a morning in June, when Clarissa sets off on her journey
through London to buy flowers, and ending with the end of the mundane evening, which will
bring together in Richard Dalloway's house all the London good people. Time of inner
experience, subjective, manifested by the pure duration, which is found at the level of
authentic, spontaneous experiences, unconstrained by external constraints. This space of
dreaming and contemplation unfolds on much wider dimensions in the writing space,
realizing "a dilation of space". By evoking the inner thoughts of several actors, in this case,
Septimus, Clarissa, Rezia, Peter Walsh, Sally Seton, the limited time of the present is
completed with analyse very deep on the past, so that the time of history is ultimately spread
over the character’s lives.
In her works, she experienced the flow of consciousness with the psychological as
well as emotional motives of the characters. Virginia Woolf is an analyst of inner states, of
the enveloping of thoughts, of obsessions hero, leaving the omniscient narrator to penetrate
into the depths of the subconscious. She gives enough room to describe moments in hero's

39
life and transcribes their most intimate thoughts of the hero, relevant reactions and
perceptions. Narrator, being omniscient and omnipresent, knows the most
To the Lighthouse is a book that destroys the temporal scheme of the traditional novel.
There is not a chronological unfolding of the facts but an exposition that highlights the
memory. The events of the novel take place around the Ramsay family in Scotland
between1910-1920.
Mrs Ramsay is a special character of the novel because everyone loves her for her
beauty and intelligence and for the way she shapes the bonds between people, with an
inedited pleasure in marring them. Mr Ramsay, on the other hand, is intellectual and
egocentric, unable to communicate with the people around him and to confess to his wife how
much he loves her. He represents the absolute masculinity and manifests a permanent love,
being mostly hated by his children, especially by James, the youngest member of the family.
He is promised at the beginning of the novel a walk up to the Lighthouse by his mother, but
his father and Charles Tansley, an admirer of Mrs Ramsay's way of thinking shattered his
hopes with the repeated allegations of poor weather for such an expedition.
All characters take part in the discussion, which is the moment when the exploring of
the characters in depth takes place. Mrs Ramsey's figure comes off the group, contempt,
always having a word of understanding and appreciation for all those around her. The evening
ends with peace and serenity found by the family. Meanwhile, Mrs Ramsay moves into the
underworld, Prue, the beauty of the family, dies as a result of the complication of childbirth
and Andrew, the intelligent one, is killed in the war. Mr Ramsay is very affected by the death
of his wife, who broke up family and the links between its members. However, ten years later,
Mr Ramsay with his children, Lily Briscoe and Augustus Carmichael return to the island.
Virginia Woolf was the almost non-existent presence of dialogue, with the novel
focusing on the most hidden thoughts and feelings of the People. The power of children’s
emotions changes relationships between adults. She writes under the experimental zodiac,
placing on the surface the rather vaporous shadow of an action, often banal. As in a mirage,
the reader is drawn to the depth layers of the text, where, like the waves that strike the shore.
A scrutinizing look might intuit, reading his works, those mystifying kneading at any given
time.

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 II. Female characters between inner conflicts and tragic destinies

2.1 Consciousness, time and space in Virginia Woolf’s novels

Time in Woolf’s art is no longer a simple cliché, a linear unfolding from one point to
another, but, like human life, it is a force that cannot be mastered, it is the passage, to which is
added the intensity of the traces in the space of consciousness reaching obsessive forms.
The most eloquent example is given in the novel Mrs Dalloway by the repetition, at
relatively equal intervals, of the sequence: "Leaden circles dissolved in the air".9
The leitmotif occurs every time the Big Ben clock irrevocably and severely marks the
passage of time.
If we were to define the spatial-temporal representation of Virginia Woolf in the
novel Mrs Dalloway, what matters to her characters is only the moment, which partly
corresponds to the concept of unity, discovered in Proustian writing. There is seldom a before,
and less an after, the succession being practically annulled. Only the memory makes its place
in the consciousness of the characters, bringing from the depths memories of some past times,
of some fragments of existence. In Woolf’s novels being truly exists only when it has the
revelations we have analysed. The time of enchantment does not yet appear, but in the novel
The Waves, consciously or not, the British writer evokes that time of innocence that
automatically leads to the idea of a beneficial Proustian influence. This does not mean that the
time of Woolf’s innocence is identical with that of Proust. As a form they are identical, but as
a substance or as a naturalness we would be inclined to say that time in The Waves has a much
purer form, closer to the soul, than the constructed one, perhaps too psychological and
philosophical with which Proust’s introspection novel accustomed us. The natural that
signifies authenticity represents Virginia Woolf.
Characters cohesion of the consciences in the novel Mrs Dalloway or of those who
exist in To the Lighthouse consists in this stopping of becoming, in the ecstasy in which the
time of sensation is stronger than the time of the clock. In fact, the clock that marks the
passage is a human invention, a regulator that, contrary to all expectations, warns the being of
the moment. The negative and orderly function of the clock becomes beneficial, poetic.

9
Virginia, Woolf. Mrs Dalloway. The Hogart Press. London, 1925. p. 5.

41
 The obsession with time is a constant that cannot be neglected in the analysis of
Woolf’s introspection novel. In Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf finds an ingenious solution in
terms of the representation of time, creating what might be called compressed time, by the
image of a day in June or by certain days revived by affective memory, but without being
precisely located, for ending with the essence of time and moment. Time’s representation in
Virginia Woolf does not present in the novel Mrs Dalloway any expression that represents its
becoming or alteration. Everything is suspended in the characters’ consciousness who
immobilize the moment, of a perception, of the memory that does not allow another slit of
light to enter, but keeps it in its purity, even if it is painful. Compressed time means its
reduction not only to a day in June, but, moreover, to what is sedimented in the depths of
beings: a feeling, a look, a sound, a quality of light. In this context, reduction has a positive
value: it discovers the essence in a single fragment, because duration in consciousness
assimilates time in the same way as it incorporates its images of the world.
Time’s representation is progressive. If at the beginning of her creation we still
encounter traditional images of the two fundamental axes of existence, starting with Mrs
Dalloway Virginia Woolf completely changes her perspective. Time, for example, rather
speaks of sensation. The sensations’ force is strong in the consciousness of Woolf’s
characters. The sensation in Virginia Woolf becomes a universe itself. The British writer’s
originality proves to be unbeatable by the boldness of her vision, regarding the present,
present which is nothing but a simple presence that transforms from one moment to the other.
The difference in this case has a negative connotation; it is the erosion that undermines the
essence, life.
Time and space are the spirit’s representations, hinting in Woolf’s text attributes that
do not correspond to the language of exteriority, but to a much deeper one, of consciousness.
Here, in the space of consciousness, is born a vision that highlights the real that receives in the
introspection novel the meaning of life, of essence, to which the end of harmony will oppose,
inner peace and death. Time sometimes means death in the novel, because it causes the
rupture of communion with others, it breaks the moment, this seed of truth of the heroes’
intimate life in Mrs Dalloway.
Time’s representation is based on the vision it has thanks to memory. There is a deep
connection between memory and time and artists of all times have tried to unravel its secrets.
The novel of introspection is, by its nature, a novel of consciousness and a novel of memory.
Virginia Woolf's images, through their symbolic character, contain poetic structures of great

42
suggestive force: they constitute a true network of variables of interiority, of consciousness in
search of a meaning, of an original image.
Woolf’s poetic structure of the novels presents specific attributes for the act of
introspection and stands at the origin of the search for continuity of consciousness, despite
some inherent discontinuities. Forgetting also represents a component part of memory. The
tragic, although discreetly stated, is not only the essence of this representative writing, but of
the human being in general.
Virginia Woolf added her own vision regarding time and consciousness through her
novel, after the appearance of works, whose value and contribution in the analysis of
interiority and time cannot be questioned: by James Joyce, Henry James and others, whose
novel techniques contain, from the point of view of literary theory, analyses and, especially,
perspectives to which the British writer recognized the originality.
Unlike the traditional realist novel, Woolf’s introspective creation is distinguished by a
modern perspective that does not reduce memory to its primary function of recording the
phenomena of interiority and exteriority. Memory is more than a mere repository of time’s
traces through consciousness. Memory’s code is obviously marked by time. One of the
differences that can be noticed in the construction of the novel of introspection is the focus on
interiority, in the sense of representing the identity, and not the analysis of a system or of a
society. The group’s memory does not form the object of analytical attention, but of the
human’s being inner clarification that aspires to individuation in the act of self-knowledge and
of the world.
Breaking the code of succession is another innovation of the modernist discourse that
the novel of introspection practices naturally, because this kind of novel rejects the
conventions imposed by tradition. In a way, any mutation, any deviation from norms or codes
in the space of a literary genre is natural because the authentic literary artistic phenomenon is
based mainly on innovation. Memory represents for the human being a way to control and
observe time’s passing and it is disorderly movement. Human being perpetuation it is assured
by the invaluable richness of memory that masters, through knowledge, the flow of time. The
memory of Woolf’s characters seeks to preserve the substance, the reality of the past, beyond
the disordered flow that awakens images of anxiety and uncertainty. Past’s value increases
through memory’s value, through memories that sometimes beings’ dimensions and events
reach the dimensions of myth. The words "moment" and "life" are part of the obsessive
structures of the writer’s introspective discourse.

43
 The reality in Virginia Woolf's novel takes shape through memory, leaving in it only
those fragments that are at an equal distance between the event and its trace left as in a dream,
a trace unaltered by the anxiety caused by everyday life, but especially by passing. The
compressed moment of memory in this space stops, perpetuates itself. The moment becomes a
mythical eternity, vital for the existence of the subject.
The existence of passages in the novels Mrs Dalloway or The Waves may induce the
idea of a direct influence of Proust’s novel. The explanation of this idea already common in
literary criticism is based on the theory of reminiscence.
Memories invade beings who seem willing to descend into the past, in the centre of
fragments of time from which certain essences are fixed in the affective memory. In Mrs
Dalloway and To the Lighthouse we often witness scenes that seem to be drawn from Proust’s
writing. In reality, only the process is taken over, because the originality of the construction
belongs to Virginia Woolf.
Affective memory stores events, but the return to the surface of certain segments of
reality excludes the possibility of linearity, of the succession of life’s moments, these being
updated in the purity of their movement in the plane of consciousness that perceived them at a
certain moment of existence. Peter, Clarissa, Bernard, Lily Briscoe, sensitive souls perceive
and capture these privileged moments that they want to perpetuate.
The moments spent in the company of Sally Seton receive in Clarissa’s memory the
connotation of purity and freedom that her consciousness unfolds in their entirety. The
sensation in the introspection novel becomes the pretext and the support of an entire
imaginary adventure.
Connection between past and present, the sensation turns into enlightenment, into
vision. In Woolf’s novels with an obvious introspective touch, the term vision returns
insistently, attesting its value not only as an obsessive structure of discourse, but also as a
matrix necessary for the construction of the imaginary, which Woolfian consciousness
presents as a tensional force of interiority in the act, authentic knowledge of a fragment of
existence. The aspiration of the characters to find continuity beyond the discontinuity that
either the real or the memory that presents them has an obsessive character and at the same
time essential in self-discovery, in the sense of aspiration of the being to delimit the universe
dominated by its fundamental categories: space and time.
A specific feature of the Woolf’s introspection novel that differentiates it from the
Proust’s novel is the temptation of identity to dissolve in general, to melt into the immensity
of time and space. Personal history is integrated in the flow of time that each character feels in

44
a very special way, because the time of living in the utterance of the six characters becomes
poetic time. No obstacle, no closure resists the force of the youth that lives the moment. The
obsession with capturing continuity, with fixation through artistic life occupies an important
place in the structure of Woolf’s novels. The aspiration of the characters to find continuity
beyond the discontinuity that either the real or the memory presents, has an obsessive
character and at the same time essential in self-discovery, in the sense of aspiration of the
being to delimit the universe dominated by its fundamental categories: space and time.
A specific feature of the novel is the temptation of identity to dissolve in general, to
melt into the immensity of time and space. Personal history is integrated in the flow of time
that each character feels in a very special way, because the time of living in the utterance of
the six characters becomes poetic time. No obstacle, no closure can resists the force of the
youth that lives the moment.

2.2 From psychological strain to unbearable faith- Mrs Dalloway

Virginia Woolf, in her novel Mrs Dalloway, portraits a society woman. In this novel,
the action is limited to a single day in June. Clarissa Dalloway gives a party in the evening.
By surprise, Peter Walsh comes and calls upon her. The wife of Richard Dalloway, a
conservative member in the parliament, Clarissa is middle- aged woman, a fifty year old.
They live in a rich locality of London, Westminster. Clarissa’s love stories and experiences
are part of this novel, holding the centre of the stage. We will find her love story with Sally
Seton, Peter Walsh and Richard Dalloway. The love story with Peter was the most important
one from her life. Thinking of her past, of the town where she lived before marriage, she
remembers Peter. She loved him then and still loves him now. Throughout the novel,
memories of him keep coming to her mind. Clarissa’s relationship with Peter has been a
tensioned one. Her soul asks for privacy and independence of her own, but also wants to love
and to be loved. The constant tension in her soul between wanting love and personal freedom
was constant in her relationship with Peter.
She desires to maintain her virginity. As a result of a hostile social structure, where
women were humiliated and detested, she connects virginity with freedom. Peter’s portrait
shows a male tyrant who believes that he has the power over her, dictating her how to live,
what and how to do. Clarissa couldn’t accept these rules and she rejected him, marrying

45
Richard. She strongly believes that independence and permission are very important between
husbands. She had the need to be free with herself, not to answer in front of anyone. She had
those things with Richard, but not with Peter, who with she had to share everything.
With Peter she did not feel free, feared intimacy and did not have the need to share
feelings and thoughts. She felt attraction and fear at the same time. Her anxiety that Peter
would refuse to give her the freedom that she needed for her happiness, determined her not to
marry him.
Not being able to understand her emotional need, Peter thought that she was cold and
without feminine sympathy. He was a visionary that couldn’t fit the typical society of
London. He can see the insecurity, hypocrisy and the concern for material of his society. His
dream was to be a poet, being extremely interested in the world’s problems. Unlike him,
Clarissa own nothing but hosting parties and was not as creative as Peter: „She knew nothing;
no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now...Her only gift was knowing people
almost by instinct, she thought, walking on.” 10
Considerable characteristics of Clarissa Dalloway are representative for an upper class
wife, being very proud of her social status and very class conscious. She considers herself to
have the same position as the highest and respected members of society.
Her need of passion is compensated by the parties that she gives and she seeks the
warmth offered by other people. She oscillates between her need of independence and her
need of love. Seeing only the world’s beauty and brilliance, she can’t see the inner troubled
society. In Peter’s eyes, Clarissa represents the insecurity and the hypocrisy of the London
society. Being sarcastic, he always reproached her that only for having a high status she
would marry a Prime Minister.
Regarding Clarissa’s relationship with her husband did not turn out to be a successful
one. Through Clarissa’s marital relationship, the writer shows that a happy relationship and
mutual understanding is not necessary achieved through marriage. The feeling of freedom that
Richard gave her was the opposite of the possessiveness and dominance offered by Peter.
Choosing stability over passion, she married Richard. She gives Richard virtues that he does
not possess, in an attempt to convince herself that her marriage is a total success: „So she
would still find herself arguing...still making out that she had been right- and she had too- not
to marry him...she was convinced; though she had borne about her for years like an arrow
sticking in her heart the grief, the anguish….”11

10
Virginia, Woolf. Mrs Dalloway.The Hogart Press. London, 1925. p. 8.
11
ibidem,, pp. 7-8.

46
 Clarissa not either seems to concentrate on her husband’s political involvement or to
anything that’s going on outside her world. Her identity is defined through her marriage with
Richard and the men she involved with. She sees herself only as her husband’s wife, fact that
can show her fragile identity and the lack of happiness and fulfilment in her life. A way to
achieve self-fulfilment and self-esteem is by giving her parties:

(...) an offering; to combine, to create; but to whom? An offering for the sake
of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the
slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled
Armenians and Turks, loved success; hate discomfort, must be liked; talked
oceans of nonsense; and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did
not know.12

Her complete association with being a wife, her lack of compassion and class
consciousness, shows that she is a typical Victorian upper class woman. Because of the
pressure of society, Clarissa’s critical way on thinking about her shows that she may be more
than just a successful husband’s wife. Her ability to see through people, her involvement in
the society she lives in shows that even she might not have a broad general knowledge, she is
an intelligent woman. Her universe may be considered her house. Everything that happens
there. Life happens in her distinct world, the domestic world of her house. She leaves the
house only at the very beginning of the novel, in order to buy flowers for her party.
When she talks about her married life she suggests, by comparing herself to a nun, that
there is no sexual relation anymore between her husband and her. She had a sexual desire
when she talks about women that belong to the past. She remembers having felt a sexual
desire while thinking about women. Clarissa’s negation of marital duties may be considered a
protest against the role of a married woman. This portrait of Clarissa’s sexuality may be
considered controversial, taking in consideration the time that the novel was written in. It is
known that there was a law that sanctioned homosexual actions four decades before the novel
was written. But not only her sexual desire regarding women differentiates Clarissa from the
typical wives, her life in a superficial world makes her play a superficial role most of the time.
Surprisingly, at a quick look, sometimes it may be noticed that she can be more than that,
showing that she has profundity. Septimus’ suicide made her leave her party and think about

12
Ibidem, p. 105.

47
death as an act of resistance, considering life a duty and our obligation to live to the end. She
identifies with this situation feeling like him, understanding his choice that he had escape this
life, thing that was not possible for her, because ”(...) She must go back to them. (...) She felt
somehow very like him – the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had
done it; thrown it away (...) But she must go back. She must assemble.” 13
Regarding Clarissa’s love for Sally Seton, we may consider it the most passionate and
intense feeling she will experience. This kind of relationship is described by Virginia Woolf
as a pure one, different from the feelings that one may have for a man, protective and
disinterested:

“The strange thing on looking back, was the purity, the integrity, of her feeling for
Sally. It was not like one’s feeling for a man. It was completely disinterested, and
besides, it had quality which could only exist between women, between women just
grown up. It was protective, on her side; sprang from a sense of being in league
together (…)”14

Sally Seton was against the patriarchal society. She declared herself as a woman and
asked for the same rights as men. Clarissa’s inspiration to read and think outside the walls of
her town was Sally. They dreamt about changing the world, putting an end to private
property. Their relationship was a gift compared to a diamond, expanded to infinity, a
revelation, something beyond words. The authorial patriarchal voice has been broken by
Clarissa’s union with a woman.
Clarissa’s attraction for Sally was also suffocated by the restraint of society. Their
dream was not accepted by limited minds. There was a pressure for resigning, and people like
Sally were not accepted for society. Social rules and constrains stopped her from continuing
her relationship with Sally. Her denial and acceptance of these rules may be seen in her
reaction to the thought of a woman being pregnant before marriage. Sally Seton was also
forced to bear the patriarchal rules, marrying a rich man and resigning to the role of mother.
The only female identity accepted by the society was that of conventional wife and mother.
Sally Seton’s existence in Clarissa’s mind as a figure throughout the novel is revived when
she appears, older but still familiar. Years have passed by, but for Sally, Clarissa still
represents a blessing, even bigger than her sons or husband. In her youth, she had no

13
Virginia, Woolf. Mrs Dalloway. The Hogart Press. London, 1925. pp. 159-160.
14
Ibidem, p. 30.

48
constraint and now, as an adult, she is still extravagant. The two girls who once planned to
change the world have now a destiny they once thought to be a disaster, being both married.
They both have fought society’s restrains to a point; even Sally was more reticent than
Clarissa. She escapes from her hopelessness over communicating with people by taking
refuge in her garden. Her believe that the biggest contribution to society was a meaningful
communication, make her still have hope. Clarissa’s most magnificent moment of her entire
life was that when Sally kissed her on the lips, offering her a flower, at Burton.
Their love would never have been allowed to grow, considering by society’s rules that
women destiny was to marry and become mothers. Rediscovering Clarissa and seeing the
kind of live she had chosen, makes Sally feel quite distant and confused. Their kiss
represented a deep and true moment of passion that could have made them break the restrains
chain of English society, but in the end the restrains succeed.
Miss Kilman is presented as a woman who had resentment for the world. Suspected to
have sympathy for the Germans, she lost her job as a school-teacher when the war came.
Feeling that she had been cheated by the whole world, she wanted to revenge. She looked for
consolation in religion, as a choice of despair. Her consolation did not came from here,
because of her atrocious hate and she felt that she would have been victorious just by
embarrassing Clarissa, because she represents those who know nothing about her needs and
suffering. Her hate against Clarissa represents the hate against a product of the patriarchal.
Beyond the need to harm Clarissa’s body, she felt the need to defeat her soul. These feelings
made her behave like a man, aggressive, wearing manly clothes and repressing her femininity.
The portrait of Elizabeth Dalloway represents one of Virginia Woolf’s daughter
figures and their battle in achieving individuality. At the same time, she appears as another
portrait of an unconventional woman. The writer presents Elizabeth as a figure of capability,
independence and affirmation.
In Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis, Elizabeth Abel characterizes
Elizabeth as hard to define. Her minor role in the novel contradicts her connotation as a
character with potential and success. She evolves from an identity inherited from her mother
and also from her tutor, to a point of independence and self-discovery. This development of
her evolution in the novel it actually means her self-discovery. Elizabeth’s story can be
considered a subplot. Even fragmentary and incomplete, her story outside the main plot,
provides her release from roles that others have around her, and also represents a different
version than that of her mother. Clarissa’s story revision makes her sexual orientation
arguable at the conclusion. The evolutional mother-daughter stories, past and present, go

49
along with images that contrast Clarissa’s aging with the rising beauty of her daughter. The
contradiction between her and her mother stands in the fact that Elizabeth personifies the
beginning of possibilities, while for Clarissa everything comes closer to the end. From Peter
Walsh’s perspective, who represents a patriarchal character, her lack of experience and her
youth represent an insufficiency are these virtues that make her a very powerful figure. Peter’s
belief that she cannot have the same feelings as they have may be considered as a negation of
her psychological ability, considering the fact that him and Clarissa had more experiences and
feelings at the same age.
Elizabeth’s relation with her mother gives a whole perspective to this daughter figure.
If Clarissa may be understood as being empathetic and able to experience an emotional
connection, referring to the death of Septimus Warren Smith, regarding her own daughter she
does not presents this kind of capacity, considering her impenetrable and mysterious.
Elizabeth resists Clarissa’s efforts to control her and to make her loyal, and so she
escapes the demands which would have dragged her into the same patriarchal society that
shaped her mother. In the novel’s earlier reference, Virginia Woolf draws attention to
Elizabeth’s free nature by her indifference for her mother. Clarissa introduces her daughter
through a cynical declaration of maternal control, saying how „her own daughter, her
Elizabeth”15, has no interests on the things that make a woman known. Clarissa’s attempt to
subordinate her daughter can be observed throughout the novel, considering her a child, this
behaviour being observed even by Peter Walsh.
In her portrait as a daughter figure, Clarissa’s vision, Miss Kilman and Peter’s vision
of Elizabeth, have an outstanding place. The barriers that she has to pass in her attempt to find
her individuality are underlined in a subtle way by the writer. For her to escape her mother’s
attempts to control her and the passive attitude which represented her in these relationships,
she must free herself from her mother and her tutor.
This young woman portrayal is presented by the writer not only from the narrator’s
point of view but also from others characters viewpoint, presenting a closer perspective of
Miss Kilman and Clarissa. A captivating passage illustrating Elizabeth is one that presents her
as a growing flower, a mysterious figure unlike the regular faces of the English ladies:

“Was it that some Mongol had been wrecked on the coast of Norfolk (as Mrs
Hilbert said), had mixed with the Dalloway ladies(...). For the Dalloway ladies,

15
Virginia, Woolf. Mrs Dalloway. The Hogart Press. London, 1925, p. 10.

50
 in general, were fair-haired; blue eyed: Elizabeth, on the contrary, was dark:
had Chinese eyes in a pale face; an Oriental mystery; was gentle, considerate,
still. As a child, she had had a perfect sense of humour; but not at seventeen,
why, Clarissa could not in the least understand, she had become very serious;
like a hyacinth sheathed in glossy green, with buds just tinted, a hyacinth
which has had no sun.”16

This beautiful description gives us a suggestion to understand Elizabeth. In the first

place, the notable illustration of her as a result of a past imprudence, emphasize even more the
differences and distance between her and her mother. The idea that the ladies from Clarissa’s
family had mixed with a foreign man is full of outrageous meaning and disobeying behaviour.
Offering these connotations, the writer gives to Elizabeth a whole different space, totally
distinct from the dictatorial rules of society which were so unfavourable to emotional freedom
and sexual desire, convicting women to be virtuous and to have no sexual pleasure.
Presenting Elizabeth as a „hyacinth sheathed in glossy green”17, Virginia Woolf gives
us an image of Elizabeth’s flourishing sexuality, but also a subtle suggestion of her purity and
virginity. Also, her comparison to a flower may be associated to her mother’s sexual
orientation. Furthermore, the hyacinth’s sheath may represent her virginity and the absence of
the sun can express her sexual innocence. Whatever way this captivating description is
interpreted, as well as the later illustration of Elizabeth, gives us a clear image of the fact that
her sexuality is undecided. This position places her in a direction of self-discovery instead of
the predestined one that implies marriage as an obligation.
Exploring the relationship with her mother, gives us the chance to discover other
suggestions of Elizabeth’s possibly lesbian orientation. Clarissa’s frustration to her daughter’s
indifference, make her react firmly to Elizabeth’s nearness to her tutor. The reaction may
come from her suppressed feelings and also from the sensation of rejection, seeing Mrs
Kilman taking away her special place in her daughter’s life. Considering the fact that Clarissa
thinks about Elizabeth’s blushes as a sexual excitement, comparing her own inexperienced
reaction to Sally, it may be considered that this extreme disapproval for Miss Kilman
represents in a way her own repressed sexuality against this woman. Also, Clarissa’s reaction,
from her motherly point of view regarding her daughter’s physical evolution, it may represent
her own awareness of her aging process and the inevitable separation. It can awake memories

16
Virginia, Woolf. Mrs Dalloway. The Hogart Press. London, 1925pp. 105-106.
17
Virginia, Woolf. Mrs Dalloway. The Hogart Press. London, p. 106.

51
of her own repressed sexuality and her femininity problems, unfulfilled desires and
limitations. Her judgemental interpretation of Elizabeth and Miss Kilman’s relation can be
interpreted as an act of psychological separation.
On the other hand, Miss Kilman’s obvious wish to dominate and have Elizabeth
cannot be neglected. There is a difference between the sexual identity that Clarissa demands
from Elizabeth, by her own perception of the two women’s relationship, and how Elizabeth
herself understands and experiences this relationship. The possibility for Elizabeth to express
her own sexual inclination is ignored, when Clarissa defines Mrs Kilman as a seducer and
completely gives a sexual identity to her daughter.
The writer’s illustration of Elizabeth’s relationship with her tutor, it is not the same as
Clarissa’s one. If Clarissa has an impulsive conclusion regarding this relationship, as it was
mentioned above, Elizabeth later leaves behind her tutor, feeling suffocated and willing to
free herself from this woman. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth’s sexual orientation remains
uncertain, as we have her mother’s believes that she may be in love with Miss Kilman and
Elizabeth’s own recognition and enthusiastic reaction to her interpretation as a sexual object
by some pedestrians in London.
The writer illustrates at the end of the novel Elizabeth’s attitude to favour her father’s
attention and admiration over her suitor’s one. Clarissa’s suppositions concerning Miss
Kilman, this last character’s evident desires combined with the upper atypical images, make
us see Elizabeth as a possible successor of her mother’s lesbian inclination and further more
as a heterosexual character that now begin to accept, recognize and gently respond to her
structure of being an object of desire for the men’s look. After Elizabeth liberates herself from
the pressing relationships with Clarissa and Doris Kilman, she completely discovered her
consciousness. Her thoughts are coming out loud for the first time during the novel, when she
interacts with her tutor. To match this change of perspective, Woolf changes her syntax:
taking on a simple expression, the sentence structure loses its refinement. This ingenuity of
this viewpoint shows Elizabeth’s flourishing self-knowledge, ambition and her understanding
for the world around her: ’’Elizabeth had never thought about the poor. They lived with
everything they wanted (...).”18
During Elizabeth’s confidential discussion with Mrs Kilman, this one tries to influence
and control her. Even so, Elizabeth’s reaction is a quite one which demonstrates her desire to
free herself from her tutor’s influence and to declare her individuality and autonomy. She is

18
Virginia, Woolf. Mrs Dalloway. The Hogart Press. London, 1925, p. 112.

52
described sitting in silence ’’like some dumb creature”19, this image expressing her identity,
up to this point not representing anything else than solitude. Her characterization as a ’’dumb”
is part of a greater motif in Woolf’s fiction, where her daughter figures are described as
reserved or unable to speak well. She must release herself from the society of those who
characterise her as being ’’dumb” or unable to speak and quite, as these terms and all their
meanings are used indicating Elizabeth throughout the novel. In this way it is established a
deficit identity on her.
Although her previous description as ’’gentle, considerate, still”20 words that express
not only silence, but laziness and passivity, she takes of these characteristics in her release
from Miss Kilman. At the end of their tea break, Elizabeth free herself from her tutor. In this
way, she passes to a new territory of freedom, with all its sweetness. By taking this step, she
frees herself from this unjust relationship and finds her meaning. Even Mrs Kilman thinks that
Elizabeth’s leaving meant Clarissa’s victory, the truth was that the one who have won, was
Elizabeth. This scene is important through its meaning and represents the young girl’s
symbolic reborn. With her leaving in the new journey, the writer describes the pressure of her
youth and beauty, the qualities that restrict her subjectivity and autonomy. Instead of
representing values, her young and beauty go against her by connecting her with a world of
silliness that she wants to escape from.
She instantly connects this social context, the parties with her mother. This world
offers her nothing but superficiality, foolishness and the feeling that she is nothing else than
an object. Her description of this form of living shows her discernment, maturity and more
than that, her wisdom. The passage that describes Elizabeth’s moment of incertitude while
waiting the bus, offers us her visual portrait that underlines her mystery, with her exotic face,
beautiful sculpted shoulders, once her mother said, and her calm and undisturbed attitude. By
getting on the bus, she gets away from the patriarchal rules of society, and in this way she
may be considered the firs daughter figure that achieved that.
During her travel, Clarissa’s and Miss Killman’s voices disturb and at the same time,
inspire her. She moves behind these voices in a try to achieve her own identity in a future that
is all about her. Her tutor’s voice inspires her in imagining different choices of professions.
Mrs Killman told her that there are various possibilities in choosing a profession for the
women of her generation. More than that, she could be a doctor or maybe a farmer, Mrs
Kilman’s advice offering a starting point for her, and so she may explore her own ambitions.

19
Virginia, Woolf. Mrs Dalloway. The Hogart Press. London, 1925 p. 114.
20
Ibidem, p. 106.

53
In this important mental image of determination, she thinks of the Strand and Somerset House
as liminal places that permit her to see her future, a future without limits.
If her tutor’s voice comes in her mind as an encouragement, in opposition we are
presented Clarissa’s voice, and even do Elisabeth fights with, she fails in controlling it. Her
mother’s voice represents a call for family duty, for respecting the social codes. Those two
voices, one of encouragement and the other of obedience, represent the post –war mentality
versus the patriarchal mentality. In Elizabeth’s mind is more than a fight against those two
voices, but is a struggle with her own doubts. In this way, Virginia Woolf implies the fact
that for Elizabeth the way of self-realization interferes not just with the rules of society but
also with their own believes and value systems, implementing to the women the idea of not
doing anything else than becoming as their mothers.
The writer’s description of the girl’s thought shows that her ambitions are strong and
marks her vision as a revelation. But this moment can only happen when Elizabeth may reach
a high level of consciousness, being alone. This expedition outside her family’s traditional
domain can be interpreted as Elizabeth’s evolution from the rules of her parents’ generation.
At the end of this journey, the author describes the tumult of the streets ,the noise that
Elizabeth liked, the sun that have been covered by the clouds that are compared to gods, the
gardens. The episode is closed by presenting Elizabeth in a short and beautiful paragraph:
’’Calmly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted Westminster omnibus.”21 The use of
Elizabeth’s full name at the end of this journey may be interpreted as a validation of her
access into womanhood.
If the final scene from the novel focuses on Clarissa’s party, Virginia Woolf shortly
illustrates other character’s observation on Elizabeth. Sally Seton and Ellie Henderson notice
with surprise her maturity and beauty. Sally and Peter share the same opinion about her, one
that is more ambiguous. They find Elizabeth different from her mother and they affirm her
evolution beyond the Victorian restraints and moral beliefs that turned Clarissa into a society
wife.

21
Virginia, Woolf. Mrs Dalloway. The Hogart Press. London, 1925, p. 119.

54
 2.3 Art, beauty and reality as subjective means of perseveration- To the Lighthouse

Written in 1927, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse seems to debate the Victorian
patriarchal rules, questioning the differences between men and women’s roles in society. The
two distinctive roles that men and women have in society are debated in the novel. Putting the
intellect above feelings, the rigidity and egocentricity are representative behaviours for the
masculine world. The feminine world, presented by contrast, is represented by curiosity,
passion, but above all, understanding and compromise. Mixing the characteristics of these two
worlds, was prevent by the patriarchal society, and by this attitude was discouraged the
construction of a new and modern society. This creation of a new world means the appearance
of a new order, an order that permits equality between men and women and balances the
feminine emotion with the masculine intellect.
The conventional and obedient female of the patriarchal society is represented in the
novel by Mrs Ramsay. Human relationships and emotion represents her. On the other side, the
atypical character in the novel that fights against gender division is Lily Briscoe. Virginia
Woolf presents Mrs Ramsay’s life and relationships to men as a statement to the female
values, their power to create harmony and to offer it, that also characterize her as well. The
writer presents Lily’s life and relationship to men characters and to Mrs Ramsay as an attempt
to show women how important is to welcome their femininity, choosing whatever role they
want to choose in their lives and not at least, to work with their femininity. Woolf’s attempt to
combine the masculine and feminine qualities, as having the same importance, is represented
through the examination of these two female characters. This would have had the role, for
both men and women, to help them to accomplish their meaning in life. The novel highlights
the questions about women’s sexuality and their role in the family. The inner conflict that
men’s world can create for women it is illustrated by the writer.
Based on middle-class Victorian rules, Ramsay’s marriage represents the patriarchal
marriage in the novel. The Ramsay family is presented as a typical Victorian family. The
attention is focused on Mr and Mrs Ramsay. The adult intellectual exchange it is not allowed
in this marriage. Mrs Ramsay is overwhelm by her husband’s needs and consumed by his
world. Badly damaged by her limited education, she was used to be intellectually inferior. She
is observed as the angel of the house, being representative for the popular Victorian woman
who normally is devoted and obedient to her husband. She is charming, unselfish and
sympathetic, spends time with her husband, influences her children, takes care of the house

55
and entertains guests, even if she desires to have her own time. It must be mentioned the fact
that she does not have the first name, but only her husband’s name, which I consider to be an
extremely important fact in the definition of her identity. A bound between the spaces of the
house and Mrs Ramsey may be observed, remarking that she modifies her behaviour
according to the room that she is in. In the drawing room, a private space, it is revealed her
inner life. She thinks serious about her duties of Victorian wife.

“There might be some simpler way, some less laborious way, she sighed. When she looked in
the glass and saw her hair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought, possibly she might have
managed things better—her husband; money; his books. But for her own part she would never
for a single second regret her decision, evade difficulties, or slur over duties.”22

Mrs Ramsay’s actions (who was knitting in the room) and her thoughts were different.
In spite of her appearance of a good mother and wife, at a closer look it may be observed her
deeper believes, the believes that she would not seem to have. Surprisingly, she asks herself if
her marriage is worthy. As she sees her grey hair in the window, she realizes that she took
care of everyone but her. Notable is how, after realizing that she has aged, her thoughts go to
her husband’s needs. In this way, Mrs Ramsay avoids the succeeding and deep thoughts that
represent the thoughts of a modern woman, and retires in her wife and mother duties. She
constrains herself to be at peace with her choices and pass over the difficulties. When she
becomes aware of the fact that her choices have situated her in the role of a housewife, she
refuses to accept these regrets and to question her situation. Even if she accepts her role, she
imagines her life out of it. Those thoughts express contradictory desires, wanting to accept her
life and also imagining her life as a modern woman. As she understands the possibilities
around her, the Victorian rules and values bump into the modern ones.
In the novel, Mrs Ramsay plays different roles, according to the situation that she is in.
At the dinner, she must play the role of a perfect hostess, entertaining and serving her guests.
In the reading room, she can afford to have some moments of her own. In this room, she does
not read, sooner she takes a rest or a nap. Both Mr Ramsay and Mrs Ramsay come frequently
in this room and her rest in interrupted by her husband’s need of attention.
Considered to have no value in this male world, she had to bear all kind of situations,
and her attempts to fulfil her husband create her inner conflict. If in the centre we find Mrs
Ramsay, the focalization passes from her to other characters.

22
Virginia, Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt, Brace & Company. London, 1927, p. 9.

56
 In her husband’s eyes, she represents the banal woman and wife, with no education
and not very clever. At a point, he even asks himself if his wife understands what she was
reading. This attitude represents the patriarchal dominance. Disregarding all these, he sees his
wife extremely beautiful. Insincerity is obvious in their relationship. If Mrs Ramsay questions
herself regarding her husband’s intelligence, Mr Ramsay sees himself being extremely
intelligent and aspires to achieve Shakespeare’s level. He does not question the contrasting
relation of social, meaning the differences between husband’s role and wife’s role in society.
Still, the writer presents the fact that the order in the familial space has kept back women from
involving in daily activities, as education, work and travel. This is how the writer illustrates
the economic conditions and the way that both, men and women were affected by and
responded to. The continuous contrast between Mr and Mrs Ramsay is representative for the
situation. Both husbands are aware and accept their marriage limits, wanting in the same time
to maintain some barriers.
As a representation for women in the patriarchal society, Mrs Ramsay has the same
preoccupations and interests. She finds pleasure in arranging marriages, imagining how the
fulfilment in one’s life means comes from being married. When she tries to marry Lily with
Mr Bankes and fails, instantly thinks of Lily as unfeminine. For her, femininity means
nothing else than being married and having children, and so she feels sorry for Mr Bankes for
not being married. Considering herself beyond the masculine intelligence, and make them feel
superior, she manages to please them. Her satisfaction comes when they feel delighted of her
admiration. In a sarcastic way, we notice that men need women’s admiration and appreciation
to feel proud. Virginia Woolf analyses gender and the men’s power in society. She
investigates people’s construction and the way that society and culture limit their normal
behaviour, actions and speech. Occasionally, Mrs Ramsay appear as a glorify interpretation of
woman, presented as the angel of the house. Her inner monologue presents that a free and
individualistic woman tries to free herself from all rules and patterns, questioning herself
about male and female roles.
Considering herself part of the world, Mrs Ramsay accepts life as it is, with all its
uncertainty. She does not fight against its course. She is creative and caring, reflecting ability
and stability. Knitting for the boy that takes care of the lighthouse, even he belongs to the
lower class, giving back her husband’s trust in his own powers and making him trust her,
reflects her natural instinct of helping others. She compares appearances to a whale coming
out to the surface of the sea while beneath the surface there remains another reality that is

57
unfathomably deep. Mrs Ramsay is aware of the fact that there is a something that links us all,
being an intuitive person regarding everything around her:

She was silent always. She knew then-she knew without having learnt. Her simplicity
fathomed what clever people falsified. Her singleness of mind made her drop plumb
like a stone, alight exact as a bird, gave her, naturally, this swoop and fall of the spirit
upon truth which delighted, eased, sustained.23

When her thoughts are exposed to the reader once again it is underlined her intuition.
She is able to feel her own emotions and feelings, and others too, once she comes out of her
shadow. Regarding her relation to other characters in the novel, she has the power to attract
and to give them the satisfaction of being around her. She is friendly and respectful to her
guests. Somehow she reflects around her a light that can be observed by those around her.
Lily Briscoe thinks that she is unlike others, unique, warm and protective. As well, Charles
Tansley is extremely proud for ’’walking with a beautiful woman’’24 for the first time in his
life. If Mrs Dalloway is a society woman and hostess, Mrs Ramsay has this power of creating
something that makes other characters feel integrated.
If I would make a comparison, I would say that she possess this power of creating
harmony between human being. A good example would be the dinner party, when everyone
feels a sense of union and similarity. They enjoy the pleasant atmosphere; feel the affection of
life being relieved of its boredom. The unifying force for them, it is Mrs Ramsay through her
try to keep this sense of harmony. Coming out of the room ’’a sort of disintegration sets in;
they wavered about, went different ways (…)’’25. If no intuitive answer had been from her,
she would not have had the chance to create this harmony. And so, if snobbish and egoistical
attitude is adopted, life becomes boring. We may consider this harmony as an intuitive
response to the reality, only after we gave up the appearances. Mrs Ramsay’s way of bringing
together is in a way intuitive and comes not from other needs, but from her own.
Beyond the appearances, Mrs Ramsay considers that people are far away from what
they want to seem: “Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now
and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by” 26

23
Virginia, Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt, Brace & Company. London, 1927, p. 29.
24
Ibidem, p. 16.
25
Ibidem, p. 103.
26
Virginia, Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt, Brace & Company, London, 1927, p. 59.

58
 If life may seem irrational, behind this appearance people like Mrs Ramsay are able to
see the rationality. When James and Cam cannot sleep because of the pig’s head, she covers
the pig’s head round her shawl. And so, she finds a way to conciliate both of them. This
charming personality gives her the possibility to change the unpleasant situations by creating
harmony.
Because in life, when such contradictory attitudes result in misjudgement and people
do not face each other, they will always persecute themselves. As a permanent situation
throughout the novel, she is created to have constant patience. A clear description of her
beauty has not been made; even all characters see her beauty. Her life is one of agreement
through which she is able to change the worst in the best. Her death brings a state of
disorientation for all family. Destruction and desolation describe the best her death. She is
compared to a link that had been cut: ’’(…) the link that usually bound things together had
been cut, and they floated up here, down here, off, anyhow. How aimless it was, how chaotic,
how unreal it was, she thought, looking at her empty coffee cup. Mrs Ramsay was dead;’’27
The centre of the family that kept all of them united, disappeared. Her death brought
the family’s split. But her influence could be felt even now. In her minds, she was still alive.
By telling others that the truth meaning of life may be discovered through sensibility and
intuition, she may be compared to a lighthouse for them. As a lighthouse guides people when
they are lost, in the same way her values are important.
Thinking of humanity’s problems, Mrs Ramsay tries to reduce other’s pain. She is a
passionate observer of life, being sensitive and caring. She takes Mr Tansley out when he
feels alone. In her company, Tansley is honourable and appreciates her beauty:

(…) for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; a man digging in a
drain stopped digging and looked at her, let his arm fall down and looked at her; for the first
time in his life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; felt the wind and the cyclamen and
the violets for he was walking with a beautiful woman.28

Mrs Ramsay does not have animosity against anybody, being caring and not having
the desire to impress others and so she is liked by everybody. Even so, this kind of attitude,
once made a lady to accuse her of manipulating people by making them do as she wishes.

27
Ibidem, p. 137.
28
Ibidem, p. 16.

59
Regarding her children, she tries not to make life hard for them. In people’s personality, there
are some parts that are not shown because society would not accept. Society’s rules oblige
them to act, speak and show only what it is permitted. There are consequences if the rules are
not respected. In the same way, children are also the society’s product and this is what Mrs
Ramsay means when she says that children do not forget. They imitate what they see. When
children go to bed, she feels relieved. This moment gives her the opportunity to be with
herself, to feel herself in silence and so ’’Her horizon seemed to her limitless.’’29
If Mr Ramsay’s personality is based on shame and secrecy, she is totally unlike him.
She associates her conscious thinking with factual reality. Conscious acts are the product of
environment. But these do help us in catching the moment of being. This moment of being
provides us the passage through which a character can discover his true self. Self is limitless
and no one can see it.
For Mrs Ramsay, her pure solitude moments are compared to eternity. In order to have
these kinds of moments, it is necessary to let go all the false attitudes and behaviours imposed
by the patriarchal system. For achieving this deep and perfect moment of solitude, all spiritual
self needs must come out, free of the reality imposed by society that had excluded all links
with eternity. The different needs of soul and body may create an inner fight. Body and soul
go by different rules. Unlike body, the spirit has no laws of time and space. Both of them can
create one unity of being. In this solitude moment Mrs Ramsay protects and feels herself. She
looked at her life as at something private, something that she cannot share, not even with her
family. A real moment of peace, when she loses all the false aspect of her personality. The
real happiness can be achieved rather through intuition than by intellect. She believes that
every moment that life gives us is important. She sees life’s importance and mean differently
from her husband. Mr Ramsay attributes life importance to serious things, like mathematics
and philosophy. He wants the scholarship for James and it is not satisfied with his son’s work.
Their marriage is a happy one, based on mutual respect, even if they have different opinion
and mentality. They do not dictate one each other, even if they have different points of view.
Some parts of their personalities are hidden, even if they, apparently, have an intimate
relation. Mr Ramsay gives himself exaggerated value. Mrs Ramsay energizes other characters
through her expansive character. For other characters she represents a comfort zone when
they feel worried. Appearances are not important to her and through her intuition she is

29
Virginia, Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt, Brace and Company. London, 1927, p. 59.

60
capable to see beneath the surface. All the important ingredients of life are spread by her:
respect, love and sympathy.
If compare Mrs Ramsay’s character to today’s world, I can see that it has lost the
importance. Modern life has lost meanings and values. The philosophies spread all around,
our days theories have failed to offer humanity a true value to follow.
In the novel, even if he considers himself to be a philosopher, Mr Ramsay does not
know the true meaning of life, it is confused and egocentric. He forgot that the small and
everyday things matter the most. Not resisting the flow of life, it is a deep belief of Mrs
Ramsay. True things that matter in life are those that help us to release ourselves of the
society’s chains that takes us away from the true meaning. Mrs Ramsay may be considered a
symbol of the free spirit.
Considered to be the Angel of the House, Mrs Ramsay dies in the novel, fact that
highlights the reader’s believes in a new era and a new world.
Apart from Mrs Ramsay, one important and excellent character is represented by Lily
Briscoe. This character experiences a change, from the first part of the novel, to the third part.
Presented as a single woman that has a profession and facing society’s conventions and rules,
the first part of the novel presents her own struggle. A hard- working and focused artist, she
visits the Ramsay’s summer house for improving her art of painting. Love for art, made her
give up marriage, sex and children. Her painting reappears through the whole novel. She
wishes to paint Mrs Ramsay’s portrait in a unique and different way. She tries to hold the
attention on the visual reality observed by her in the island. Her reality represents the desire
for Mrs Ramsay. For her, reality is in a continuous change. For Lily, painting represents a
way of accomplishing her own reality. She searches the truth, her own truth and so, she
returns after eleven years to the island in order to find her own vision. Lily is in an endless
search for finding the truth reality. In her struggle, she tries to match life to philosophy. The
fluidity of the waves in her painting suggests the transition from reality to the creative
process. This process makes her loose the sense of reality and the entire world seems to have
dissolved around her.
If I may compare Mrs Ramsay to Lily, I would say that unlike Mrs Ramsay, who
always tries to find something around her to hold on, Lily constantly fights and makes efforts.
She aspires to capture in her painting the reality of life that it may be found through intuition
trying to get beyond the reality that we all perceive. Lily manages to capture the reality rather
in her paintings than in words.

61
 Virginia Woolf sketches the passing of those ten years, in the middle of the novel, and
captures the Ramsay family, pointing the decline of their house. Even if she does not actually
show how they had interacted over those years, the writer illustrates their falling as a family.
Without actually looking like her, Lily tries to capture in her paint the spirit of Mrs Ramsay,
her nature and not necessary her physical form. If Mrs Ramsay cannot accept the fact that a
woman could be unmarried, having the pleasure to match people, Lily was not immune to this
attitude. In Mrs Ramsay’s eyes, Lily’s perfect match was Mrs Bankes. If in her perception,
there was no other type of relation between men and women; Lily’s relation to Mrs Bankes
exposes an interesting non- sexual and caring bound between a man and a woman. Even so,
Lily knows the things regarding a woman’s behaviour in the company of a man. In spite of
her existence to Mrs Ramsay’s life style, she spends time with the Ramsay family and their
guests. The roles impose by the society, that force her to behave conforming to the gender
roles, are different of her own believes that are those of a free and new woman.
To underline the two women’s thoughts about each other, Virginia Woolf reveals their
thoughts foe example the moment when Lily, rests her head in Mrs Ramsay’s lap:

(…) she would urge her own exemption from the universal law; plead for it; she liked to be
alone; she liked to be herself; she was not made for that; and so have to meet a serious stare
from eyes of unparalleled depth, and confront Mrs Ramsay’s simple certainty (and she was
childlike now) that her dear Lily, her little Brisk, was a fool. Then she remembered, she had
laid her head on Mrs Ramsay’s lap and laughed and laughed and laughed, laughed almost
hysterically at the thought of Mrs Ramsay presiding with immutable calm over destinies
which she completely failed to understand. 30

The quote highlights the confrontation between the Victorian rules and values and the
modern ones. Being aware of their gender roles, Lily and Mrs Ramsay criticize one each
other. When Lily laughs at Mrs Ramsay for her extremely calm behaviour over the destinies
that she could not understand, Mrs Ramsay imagines that Lily sees her unworthy.
Lily’s behaviour in terms of manner does not correspond to their age of a grown up
woman in the novel. She does not accept Mrs Ramsay’s role in the norms imposed by the
Victorian standards and her life choices. Even so, the social control and spaces let the reader
know her behaviour. In this case, Lily’s behaviour is conform to the gender roles that society
requires, knowing the behaviour that she must have in some spaces but still not being able to

30
Virginia, Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt, Brace & Company, London, 1927, p. 48.

62
adapt it to the Victorian demands. Her thoughts are those of a new woman and reveal the new
values and ideals, dramatically different from those of Mrs Ramsay’s. A suitable example
would be the different opinions that Lily and Mrs Ramsay have regarding marriage.
Imagining Mrs Ramsay as a matchmaker, Lily laughs and thinks how she must believe that
every unmarried woman’s dream is to have a family. This behaviour is considered by Mrs
Ramsay childish and not suitable for a lady. Still, Lily feels that she is not made to have a
family or to get married.
“Woolf thus manages to bring both perspectives into the woman’s room in a Victorian
house while she keeps them utterly apart, so no open conflicts occur, only a mutual
assessment revealing their inner distance from each other.”31 In a way, the passage highlights
even if the two women think differently, they have something in common: the will to be as
they are.
Society’s rules, during the Victorian Era, are expressed in the novel by the two
feminine characters. Virginia Woolf manages to show that even in those oppressing times for
women, they have desires that are not similar to those imposed by the society. She realizes
this through inner monologue and not through conflicts. Through her values and behaviour,
Lily manages make Mrs Ramsay to have contradictory thoughts regarding her values.
Lily’s behaviour in certain circumstances highlights her resistance to society’s rules.
While listening to Charles Tansley who was saying that “Women can’t write, women can’t
paint.”32 , she thinks at his affirmations which again underline the woman’s helplessness in
those times.
Even if she chooses not to continue the conversation, she feels that she must entertain
him, wanting to show that she knows how to behave.

Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him, could she not see, as in an X-ray photograph,
the ribs, and thigh bones of the young man’s desire to impress himself, lying in the mist of
flesh—that thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to break into
conversation? [. . .] why should I help him to relieve himself? There is a code of behaviour,
she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the
woman, whatever her own occupation may be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so

31
Thais, Rutledge. Woolf’s Feminine Spaces and the New Woman in To the Lighthouse: The Cases of Mrs
Ramsay and Lily Briscoe. p. 19, Available on: https://muse.jhu.edu./article/752373 accesat la data de
13.06.2020, ora 20:30.
32
Virginia, Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt, Brace &Company, London, 1927, p. 81.

63
 that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to
assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected(…)33

Lily chooses to act according to the rules, but her thoughts are different. She does not
responds or support his point of view. If the situation would have been different and Mrs
Ramsay had been instead of her, she would have pass over his impoliteness. Lily ignores
Tansley and remarks his egocentricity and chooses to ignore him. She is aware that a woman
should respect good behaviour rules but she refuses to respect that when she feels that her
identity is not respected. The rules that impose women to act, think and feel according to
society’s rules are refused by Lily. ”But Lily’s rejection of those values have been delivered
in ways that make them readable for both feminist readers and more tradition novel readers
because Woolf’s scenes leave to the reader the question of who is right—there is no
confrontation, no balance for and against her acts, but simply the questions asked by both
women and answered only by Lily.”34
In the ending of the novel, the readers are presented the house after Mrs Ramsay’s
death. In this period of time, Lily becomes a mature woman. She returns to the house with all
members of the family, feeling strange at the view of the desolate space. She does not feel
attached any more to the house, thing that comes in contrast to what she felt ten years later,
when she loved with that place and family. Still in love with Mrs Ramsay, she follows her
own rules and not those from the house that had offered her comfort. She finds the things and
events that had happened strange and chaotic. During the visit, Lily’s behaviour is totally
different from ten years ago. Now she clearly reflects the new woman that she had become,
one that acts mannerly and respectfully to those around her. We may observe the two opposite
worlds even in this part of the novel. The Victorian self- centred man meets the modern
woman. The few times when she runs into Mr Ramsay, Lily observes his need to be in the
centre of attention, but she ignores him and refuses to have the same attitude as Mrs Ramsay.
Much older now and weaker, Mr Ramsay passes her in the kitchen in a need of attention and
sympathy. But now Lily ignores him, pretending that that she drinks coffee from her empty
cup. Her reaction is not disrespectful, rather a simple observation that there was not a real
need to have a conversation with him. With Mrs Ramsay around her, Lily would have had

33
Virginia, Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt, Brace & Company. London, 1927. p. 85.
34
Thais, Rutledge. Woolf’s Feminine Spaces and the New Woman in To the
Lighthouse: The Cases of Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe. p. 21. Available on:
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/752373 accesat la data de 14. 06.2020, ora 20: 35

64
another reaction ten years ago. She would have had to show gender respect and to initiate a
conversation with him. Now she tries to avoid him, getting out of the house. She has their
perspectives now and sees things differently. In a comparison to Mrs Ramsay, who would
engage in a conversation, Lily chooses to leave the room and to express her identity and
independence going to paint. Now she does what she wishes to do. Her choice highlights the
new woman she had become, the woman that does not have to serve anyone. Noticing her
attitude, Mr Ramsay goes outside but Lily tries to keep her away from her private space where
she creates.

She set her clean canvas firmly upon the easel, as a barrier, frail, but she hoped sufficiently
substantial to ward off Mr Ramsay and his exactness. [. . .] he permeated, he prevailed, he
imposed himself. He changed everything. [. . .] But he’ll be down on me in a moment,
demanding—something she felt she could not give him.35

She feels mad that Mrs Ramsay stood next to this king of man but at the same time she
understand that the social rules and the way that most women were raised, did not give her
another possibility. Still painting, she thinks that he lost Mrs Ramsay and feels sorry for him.
In spite of that, Lily talks to Mr Ramsay and surprisingly they seem to flirt. Mr Ramsay is
complimented by Lily for his boots and ultimately feels ashamed. This may be considered the
moment when Mr Ramsay realizes that in order to be with a new woman he must change his
views and strict rules and to see women not as they have to be but for what they really are.
Lily’s character in the novel and in the Ramsay house may be interpreted as the homecoming
of a new era not only for women but for society too. I say not only for women thinking at the
fact that the affected ones will be men, too. In this new Era, in order to have women’s love,
sympathy or desire, they will have to act differently.
When the novel starts, the writer presents the spaces that somehow represent Lily’s
and Mrs Ramsay’s behaviour and character. The satisfaction that the Victorian rules give to
Mrs Ramsay represents her decision to be the angel in the house. Certain behaviours nominate
her as receptive to the modern women’s possibilities that is why she is intrigued by the one
that represents the arrival of this new Era, Lily. Mrs Ramsay’s death signifies the way that
Virginia Woolf kills the angel of the house to underline women’s need to choose their own
way in life, making their own decisions. Mrs Ramsay could have this space only in her short
moments of contemplation.

35
Virginia, Woolf. To the lighthouse. Harcourt, Brace & Company. London, 1927, p. 140.

65
 CONCLUSIONS

The reason for choosing this theme for the bachelor's thesis was the extraordinary
impact that the novels of the British writer Virginia Woolf had on women’s evolution and, I
would dare say, also on society. This research paper main theme was to present and expose
woman’s condition in a patriarchal society and Virginia Woolf’s the huge role in supporting
the feminist movement and women’s rights. Feminism, as an organised social movement it’s
a natural product of the Modern Era. Many historical documents show that the fundamental
change in woman’s condition has been possible by changing the old structures and admitting
equal rights for all citizens, of all ethnics, sex or religious believes. During the 19th century
necessary conditions had been created for spreading throughout the world women’s
aspirations to obtain economical, political and juridical rights. This movement can be called
the most proper "women's emancipation movement", a constituent part of those social
orientations which aimed at modernization and democratization of public life. Such a name
expresses the most faithfully the true content of the much controversial term "feminism"
Feminism is the support for women's rights. The term feminism is spread in the middle
of the 19th century in Europe. From a historical point of view, feminism began as part of the
European Enlightenment discourse. In Western societies, feminist movements are over 300
years old. They initially demonstrated by publishing papers protesting against the
consideration of women as a subordinate category, as a minority.
Long before the second wave of feminism or the Second World War, Virginia Woolf
sustained the idea that the basis for transformative social change could be women’s
experience in women’s movement. Her famous novel, discussed in my work, bring a note of
novelty in the literature. Topics covered include: feminism, complex family relationships,
gender fluidity, and the effects of war on the human psyche. Virginia Woolf's texts are still
studied today by specialists - whether we are talking about those in the field of literature or
those in the medical field - due to the depth and mystery that abounds. His life certainly
played a major role in writing these major works of universal literature.
While her dislike for male’s domination was growing, she developed a strong
admiration for women. Fighting with her sister, Vanessa, against the patriarchal rules from
their family, Virginia Woolf realised the importance of female friendship and the power that
they had fighting against male domination. Realising that the patriarchal system needed to be
defeated, she started to study some biographies and literary works of women writers, such as:
66
Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Barrette Browning and others. She focused on the
way that these women presented their displeasure regarding male’s domination in literature.
She realised that one of the main goals of female writers was killing the female stereotype: the
angel of the house, as Woolf called it. The way that feminine writers were fighting against
male domination was by maintaining their integrity and their own identity. For their own
identity to be created, women should have the courage to talk about their own experiences,
create their own identity and encourage writing in order to kill the angel” and create an artist.
She believed that society can be changed by women and at the same time saved from
self-destruction. As an alternative for authoritarian structures, Woolf named a women society,
a world of sympathy, as a characteristic that would have protected them from emotional
abuse. World Women Organization, National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, Women
Cooperative, were several feminist groups that had influenced Woolf in her work. Her
believes were considered the same as those of social feminist. The feminist questions were
actively represented in her writing, calling women to express themselves in all professions
open to humanity. Her major work analyses the patriarchal England society, portraying in
various contexts different types of women. She came up with a female tradition by opening
their eyes to see the inferior status that they had in society, and encouraged them to find their
meaning in life. In this way, the modern and normal life would be created. Trying to find an
answer regarding the small number of female writers, she highlights women’s lack of privacy,
poverty and their minor status. Another sensitive subject that she exposes is gender
consciousness. Being threatened by the thought of losing their power, men denigrated women,
and so, women’s writing was marked by feelings of fear and anger, and, on the other and, by
the aggression of the male’s writing.
The female characters in her works, Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, Clarissa
Dalloway and Mrs Ramsay, grew up in the Victorian period, when feminism was not
something common, rather presented in literature. The inexperience and the invaluable role of
the woman are permanently captured in the mentioned novels. We are masterfully presented
their struggle against limitations, attempts to motivate them and to find their purpose. Women
had a lower education than men, which is why they were underestimated even by their
husbands. Mrs Ramsay and Mrs Dalloway, although at first glance they might be categorized
as belonging to the type of woman representative for the patriarchal society, are surprising in
their depth and freedom of thought. Virginia Woolf manages to create an epic thread based
largely on the thoughts of the characters and not on their seemingly insignificant actions. In

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fact, the essence of the characters is no different from that of ordinary people who are not the
subject of a short story.
Virginia Woolf imposed herself in universal literature as an important representative
of the modernist current in the early twentieth century, taking the novel from realism based on
external detail to the depths of human consciousness. Virginia Woolf belonged to a generation
with significant innovations in literary discourse, distinguishing herself by using the technique
of inner monologue and the representation of the stream of consciousness. She addresses, in
her writings, the issue of time and memory, does not focus on intrigue, but develops the
technique of flow of consciousness.
Through this brief presentation of certain aspects regarding both the work and the life
of the writer Virginia Woolf, I tried to present the contribution she made to the world, both
through her writings and her actions but also the reasons why I opted for such theme.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Cambridge University Press.

Cambridge, 2013.
2. WOOLF, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. The Hogart Press. London, 1925.
3. WOOLF, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt, Brace & Company. London.
1927.
4. COVENTRY, Patmore. The Angel in the House. John W. Parker and son, West
Strand. London, 1858.
5. WOOLF, Virginia. The death of a moth and other essays. The Professions of
Women. A Project Gutenberg Australia eBook, October 2012.
6. BEETON, Isabella. The Book of Household Management. Ward, Lock & Co.,
Limited, Warwick House, Salisbury Square. London, 1906.
7. Women's Work: A Woman's Thoughts on Women's Rights. William Blackwood and
Sons Edinburgh and London, LONDON, 1876.
8. WOOLF, Viginia. A Room of One’s Own. Global Grey ebooks. London, 2018.
9. ABEL, Elizabeth. Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis. University
of Chicago Press, 1989.
10. THAIS, Rutledge. Woolf’s Feminine Spaces and the New Woman in To the
Lighthouse: The Cases of Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe

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