Mrs. Ramsay is a mother in every fiber of her being. Motherhood is her occupation, her personal life, her hobby and her passion. And in motherhood, Mrs. Ramsay is an expert. And although motherhood is not frequently valued as a prestigious, viable career choice, people who knew Mrs. Ramsay recognized her uncanny talent for it, even to go as far as to say that she made it into an art form.
In fact, almost everyone who knew Mrs. Ramsay absolutely adored her. The way she smoothly controlled the household, was always extremely hospitable, endlessly attentive to her husband, beautiful, too, and, of course, especially, her expert care of her children. Here Mrs. Ramsay was perfection, an angel, and a goddess. In nearly every characters account of admiration for her throughout the novel, no matter how many times the character admires her, Mrs. Ramsays majesty is related to her identity as a mother.
It takes a very discerning reader to actually find any aspect of Mrs. Ramsays character that is not related to her identity as a mother, but if one looks carefully it is definitely in there. Virginia Woolf wrote it in, intentionally I think, to illustrate a point. Her point, or at least one of them, is that when a woman assumes the role of a mother she is seen as larger than life, and not just through the eyes of her children.
The Mother is a powerful figure, a symbol that everyone can relate to whether theyve had a good or bad one, or none at all; the influence is undeniable. The powerful role that a mother fills is often translated, in others perception of the woman, into a powerful or outstanding character of the woman herself, which may or may not be fitting, but is not a judgment necessarily based on the womans actual character attributes and defects.
As the very first, and all-powerful figure in a new human beings life, the mother symbolizes to the infant every thing that the world contains. In early infancy babies cannot distinguish between self and mother; when this important cognitive development takes place in a childs life around the age of two, the mothers status in the infants mind shifts from that of everything-the-world-contains to God/ess. It is my belief that people do not grasp a full understanding of their mothers as mere mortals until they reach adulthood and become autonomous. Thus, from infancy to young adulthood, the critical time period in which people are developing their personalities, the mother is distorted into a giant.
By the time an individual has reached young adulthood, although they may have arrived at somewhat of an understanding of their own mother as a real human being, their symbolic association of mothers with giants still has a firm grip in their subconscious minds. Whether the mother is viewed subconsciously as a good giant or a bad giant depend on the individuals childhood experience. This is not to say that one persons terrible childhood equates to that person hating women who are mothers, or another persons terrific childhood accounting for that persons idolizing mothers, but rather that mothers larger-than-life symbolism tends to create polar extremes in viewpoints of them
In one of Charles Tansleys accounts of admiration for Mrs. Ramsay, the scene in which Charles and Mrs. Ramsay walk into town to run some errands, they happen upon a man posting an advertisement for the circus. Mrs. Ramsay is the type of mother (and in the economic position) who brings her children to the circus. Of course she does this; she assumes everyone does. But Charles childhood was not like that. Charles then feels rather rattled at the idea of all that Mrs. Ramsay does for her children, that he was deprived of as a child. He feels …[something] that excited him and disturbed him for reasons he could not give. (p.11)
And then, his brain makes the connection, she is the most beautiful person he has ever seen. Her superior, angelic, attentive mothering has led him to assign the judgment, not, She is the best mother I have ever met, but, she is the most beautiful person he has ever seen. This judgment is not based on her character alone, or really even on her actual mothering (although she does excel at this), but on his own internal reality of what a mother is.
If Charles Tansley is in awe of Mrs. Ramsey, for Lily Briscoe, the woman is even more of a source of celestial mystery. She puts her awe in perspective in the beginning of the novel when she recognizes that she has this incredible urge to fling herself at Mrs. Ramsays knee and exclaim, Im in love with you, but then realizes it is not Mrs. Ramsay that she is actually in love with, it is the world Mrs. Ramsay has created, through her expert mothering, for her children.
So she revises her statement to be, Im in love with this, all this. For Lily Briscoe, like Charles Tansley though, it is recollection of her own home life (her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road…. p. 19) that bring about this sentiment. Lily has a truly childlike wonder and love of Mrs. Ramsay. She thinks, Fifty pairs of eyes are not enough to get around that one woman with. (p.198) Just like a childs worship of their mother, Lily is truly fascinated.
Of Mrs. Ramsays character aside from motherhood there is not a huge amount, but throughout the novel Virginia Woolf peppered little bits of information that reveal Mrs. Ramsay as human, and kind of petty in fact. For instance, when we do get to go inside Mrs. Ramsays consciousness we notice that she usually has some catty remark. First she decides that Lilys Chinese eyes will never allow her to find a man, and then when she sees Lily with William Banks, that only a clever man (as clever as she perhaps?) will be able to see that Lilys charm is her Chinese eyes.
Also Mrs. Ramsay continuously takes the liberty to sum up peoples lives, and has the nerve to be the judge of their success. This she does not keep to herself, either. Speaking of Mr. Carmichael, He should have been a great philosopher said Mrs. Ramsay [to Charles Tansley], but he had made an unfortunate marriage. (p.10) As for Mrs. Ramsays philanthropy, even she herself recognizes that she is no social scientist, investigating ways to alleviate the social problem, but a selfish humanitarian, committing random useless acts of charity to assuage a guilty conscience.
If indeed it was Virginia Woolfs intention to show Mrs. Ramsay, the beloved central character of the novel, with a somewhat petty side to her, and the point that she was trying to make with this is that when women choose motherhood they give up the opportunity to gain a solid foundation of autonomy and self knowledge that comes from being treated as who you simply are and what youve really made of your life, for a pristine position on the maternal pedestal, it would be very compatible with Woolfs assertion in A Room of Ones Own that women can be mothers or they can be writers but they cannot be both.
If a mothers person is defined only by who she is in relation to others rather than who she just is, she is powerless. She will have no sense of autonomy, or even of self, qualities a writer (or any working woman) must have if she is going to find a voice to create literature or anything else productive.