Faculty of philology department of english philology viktorija mi

manliness in their girlish hearts. (9) 
(28) Had she not in her veins the blood of that very noble, if slightly mythical, Italian 
house, whose daughters … had lisped so wildly, and all her wit and her bearing and 
her temper came from them. (11) 
(29) Like some queen who, finding her people gathered in the hall, looks down upon 
them, descends among them, acknowledges their tributes silently, and accepts their 
devotion and their prostration before her … she went down. (95) 
It seems to me that in the passages, a clear association is made between Mrs Ramsay and the 
kind of sentimental, luxurious, and a bit exaggerated image of a Victorian woman (this can be seen 
from the extracts in bold). Is this done purposefully? Undeniably, Woolf aimed to show that the 
protagonist of the novel is a morally strong determined person who clearly understands her 
importance in her house and thus, in a way feels responsible for her family, guests, friends, and all 
the people she meets. In much of Woolf’s prose the subjective impressions about characters emerge 
even though the narrative is performed by a narrator who is distinct from the characters and who 
brings into light different aspects of the characters’ personalities: Mrs Ramsay, as we can see from 
the examples above, is seen both as a caring mother and a proud queen, a fragile woman and a 
strong responsible housewife, an ordinary woman and an almost mystical figure of light, hope, and 
power. Here I adhere to Erich Auerbach (1968:536) describes Woolf’s style of depicting characters 
in the following words: “The essential characteristic of the technique represented by Virginia Woolf 
is that we are given not merely one person whose consciousness (that is, the impressions it 
receives) is rendered but many persons, with frequent shifts from one to another”. 
Indeed, all the evidence provided above lead us to the logical conclusion that in her fiction, 
the modernist writer Woolf did not simply show the way people act or think. Instead, by the means 
of spatial and temporal delimitations she provided her readers with a convincing picture of the 
depth of human mind changing because of external experience that human faces. I agree with 
Stevenson (1998:103) who claimed that the writer “used the memory as a certain seamstress to cut 
and reshape sections taken out of the ordinary, sequential passage of time”. In her novels, the 
reader sees how an ordinary trip, family dinner, or a party can serve as a support for character’s 
reflections upon their past, which usually lead to a better understanding of oneself and of the outer 

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world. Unexpected encounters and planned gatherings provoke Woolf’s characters to analyze one 
another and ask the following questions: Who am I? What am I doing here? What does this or that 
event mean? Indeed, the way Woolf answers to these questions through her characters’ lips can be 
better understood only after having overviewed her fiction based on the conception of time.