Abstract
The aptness of Woolfs terms to the history of To the Lighthouse criticism is apparent now that we seem to have passed through the Age of Destroying, in which Mr Ramsay is said to be the butt of malicious satire and Mrs Ramsay a saintly lady with a lamp, into the Age of Understanding, in which we are less able to sum up and make linear: Mrs Ramsay has become a Madonna with feet of clay and Mr Ramsay a tormented, ornery, but ultimately lovable and noble creature. Likewise, judgements on the character of Leslie Stephen are beginning to move from outright condemnation of him as an old wretch to some attempt to understand him, while the sanctification of Julia Stephen is now yielding to more sceptical appraisals. Careful scholarship is also beginning to cast a cool eye on the portraits Virginia Woolf drew of her father, portraits that seem to have been accepted as the whole truth by a number of Woolf scholars and readers.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1987 Jane Marcus
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bicknell, J.W. (1987). Mr Ramsay was Young Once. In: Marcus, J. (eds) Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18480-4_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18480-4_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-39398-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-18480-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)