Silent Conversations

"For that reason, knowing what was before them--love and ambition and
being wretched alone in dreary places--she had often the feeling,
Why must they grow up and lose it all?" (60).

Points for Reflection

"The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection" (1929), pp.221-25

1. Why might Woolf choose for the narrator to reflect on what she sees in the reflection mirror instead of what she could look at directly, unmediated by a reflective surface?
2. Why does the narrator think it so dangerous to place looking-glasses on the walls of rooms?  Is the imaginative experience she proceeds to have more saddening than inspiring?
3. To what sort of living thing does the narrator liken those lights that “come pirouetting across the floor” of Isabella’s drawing-room?
4. Which seems more alive and kinetic to the narrator, the indoors or outdoors?
5. Which comparison is more flattering, linking a woman in her 50s to an “upright aster” or a “tremulous convolvulus” (222)?  Why?
6. What is the “truth” which actively refutes the attempt to liken Isabella Tyson to either “Traveller’s Joy” (clematis vitalba) or convolvulus cneorum (also know as “Silverbush”)?
7. What is the “packet of marble tablets” it takes our narrator a moment to decipher when they interrupt her reverie, altering the composition of the room she inhabits? Do they provide pertinent information about Isabella’s unspoken thoughts?
8. With what tool does the narrator imagine opening Isabella Tyson, as if she were an oyster?
9. What characterizes Isabella’s “profounder state of being” (224), according to the third-person, limited narrator?
10. How does Isabella’s growing image in the mirror differ from that of the other figure who appeared in the mirror earlier?

"The Window"

1. Through free indirect discourse, the narrative reveals quickly that Mr. Ramsay believes himself dedicated to what is true and factual (4). Mrs. Ramsay assumes something similar (95). Does the rest of "The Window" support this view of Mr. Ramsay?
2. Mrs. Ramsay concludes that her opinionated children create differences for the sake of argumentation "when people, heaven knows, were different enough with that" (8). Does Mrs. Ramsay successfully do the opposite--does she ignore differences and, whenever possible, try to find common ground among those in her personal circle?
3. Consider Mrs. Ramsay's reflections on marriage, including those concerning Mr. Carmichael, the possible union of William Bankes and Lily Briscoe, the lovers Minta Doyle and Paul Rayley, and her husband and herself. Why does Mrs. Ramsay consistently identify marriage as the salve for life's ills?
4. Consider Mrs. Ramsay's occasional thoughts about and encounters with the Fine Arts. Does she appreciate the Arts?
5. Recall Woolf’s observation in A Room of One’s Own (1928; 1929) that women have for centuries “reflect[ed] the figure of man at twice its natural size” (35).  Does Mrs. Ramsay serve this purpose for all the males in this novel? Do any other women serve this role?
6. Are all our characters equally likely to pigeonhole one another? [Naomi P]
7. Examine the various encounters between the following pairs: Mr. Bankes and Lily Briscoe, Lily Briscoe and Mrs. Ramsay, and Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay? Which of these exchanges rest heavily on spoken words, and which rely more heavily on assumptions, intimations, and non-verbal forms of communication?
8. Many of those who know Mrs. Ramsay wonder "What was there behind it--her beauty and splendor?" (28). Does “The Window” reveal what lies behind Mrs. Ramsay's constitutional reserve and simplicity?
9. Mr. Ramsay angrily, if silently, accuses his wife of "telling lies" whenever she gives her children hope (31). Is his a just criticism? Does Mrs. Ramsay consistently lie to others and herself, or is she more in touch with truth/reality than is her husband? [Shefali M]
10. What lies beneath/behind Mr. Ramsay’s thought that “‘the father of eight children has no choice’” (44)?
11. Why does Lily paint?  What does she hope to achieve?
12. Does the novel provide an explanation for why Mr. Ramsay chooses to chant lines from Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854) as he walks about the terrace and lawn?
13. What array of roles does the ocean serve across this novel?
14. Do the novel’s female characters appreciate their male counterparts more than they deprecate them?  Do they value men more than they value their own sex?
15. What attitude towards religion and God begins to emerge across “The Window” as we run into various characters’ thoughts (direct and indirect) on the subject?
16. Are Lily and Mrs. Ramsay equally free to be themselves—something which Woolf claims, in A Room of One’s Own, is more important than anything else (111)?
17. Does the group dinner prove the waste of time that Mr. Bankes anticipates it will be (89)?
18. How does the dinner party respond to Mrs. Ramsay’s passion about “the iniquity of the English dairy system” (103)?
19. why does Mrs. Ramsay not accompany Paul, Minta, and Prue to the beach (117).  Does Woolf define the “something” which holds her back before Part One, “The Window,” ends?
20. In what way does Mrs. Ramsay “triumph” at the close of “The Window”?
    

The End of Dinner (1913)
Jules Alexandre Grun

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu