by Jennifer Hudock

Created on: July 14, 2008   Last Updated: August 16, 2011

Mr. Ramsay & Mrs. Woolf

When it came to writing fiction and critical essays, Virginia Woolf was very much like the Modern artists of her time. She was experimental by nature, and her refreshing approach to literature and critical analysis changed the face of the literary world before the end of her time. Like the Modern artist, Woolf took mundane, boring and overused plotlines and characters and put a new spin on them so that they easily stood apart from her predecessors in the literary world. While one might think such a task would make the characters and stories seem outlandish and bizarre, her attempts seemed to have had the opposite effect. Take for instance the character Mr. Ramsay. In Woolf's 1927 novel To the Lighthouse, Mr. Ramsay exemplifies the author's ideas that experience and willingness to stretch beyond the contemporary mold are each essential to the creation of truly realistic characters.

Woolf explored her ideas for character development in her essay Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown. On page 71, she stressed that "[W]hen human relations change there is as the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature" (71). It is necessary for survival in the real world for these changes to be recognized and addressed, but Woolf believed it needed to go one step further, into the literary world as well. Woolf used the example of conversation between two people she encountered on a train ride to demonstrate how easily character can be developed through simple observation. She described Mrs Brown to her readers, "There was something pinched about hera look of suffering, of apprehension, and, in addition, she was extremely small" (72). Her observation and imagination led her on to believe that Mrs Brown "has no one to support her"(72), that she is perhaps "deserted or been left a widow, years ago, she had led and anxious and harried life, bringing up an only son" (72). She surmised all of this within a matter of seconds after sitting down on the train and noticing her own discomfort among the other passengers.
It was with this same sense of abandon and intrigue that Woolf introduced her readers to the character of Mr. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse. Mr. Ramsay first appeared in chapter one of the novel, and through the perception of the Ramsay's son James. The family discussed a trip to the lighthouse, and Mrs. Ramsay told her son that they would go if everything was fine, but it would have to be early. Immediately, Mr. Ramsay spoke up to dodge

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