Quotes on V. Woolf

A choreography for Woolf’s fiction inevitably develops from the rhythm of broken sequence. Those characters who join the dance create a new and constantly shifting pattern, sustained and nourished, I would argue, by a succession of interruptions. To be open to life in Woolf’s fictional world is to remain open to an aesthetic of disjunction situated at the heart of human interplay. Thos who allow the often-random intrusion of others to reshape their lives emerge at times heroically. Those who voice distaste for interruption fall back, invariably it seems into self-supporting insularity...

The confident Mr. Bankes in TTL prefers dining alone to enduring the discomfort of “interruptions” at Mrs. Ramsay’s dinner table. Mrs. Ramsay, in turn, derives most pleasure from those moments when, free of other people, she can simply “be herself, by herself.” Alone, free of attachments, she employs her imagination to transcend “the fret, the hurry, the stir” of a persistently impinging world. (Ruotolo 2)

…witness her strenuous effort to resist seduction by Mrs. Ramsay’s “party round a table.” The promise of wholeness, designed to oppose “fluidity out there,” inviteswhat has already been described as architecture of closure. (Ruotolo 11)

[some] question the assumption that Mrs. Ramsay represented an ideal sort of woman. (maybe Mrs. Ramsay’s character is a result of Woolf’s personal need for order) Restating earlier assumptions that the novel’s chief purpose was “to capture and render stable and permanent the essence of Mrs. Ramsay,” critics continue to affirm its elbration of marital love while applauding Mrs. Ramsay’s role of center of the family, “the foundation of social life” in the worlds of one commentator. It follows that the problem lies in with those like Lily whoe will to experiment threatens unanimity. Unable to respond to Mr. Ramsay’s plea for sympathy – “it is to her immense discredit sexually” – Lily is marked as the deficient one. To regard Lily as the...