s. Ramsay's merest attempts at civil household conversation, even though he is almost avid about the make-believe emotional life found in books:
Their eyes met for a second; but they did not want to speak to each other. They had nothing to say, but something seemed, nevertheless, to go from him to her. It was the life, it was the power of it, it was the tremendous humour, she knew, that made him slap his thighs. Don't interrupt me, he seemed to be saying, don't say anything; just sit there. And he went on reading (Woolf, To the Lighthouse 119).
This brief moment in the novel is typical of the nexus of character and narrative structure, for the portrait of family life that Woolf so to speak paints is nothing short of social commentary by way of narrative fiction. There seems a delicacy about the Ramsays that prevents their ever thoroughly addressing the subject of their feelings, and what is felt--the emotional experience of life--is at the core of narrative being. Emotion is both craved and denied by the characters, and the cross-purposes result in an absence of access to any emotion--good or bad.
He wanted something--wanted the thing she always found it so difficult to give him; wanted her to tell him that she loved him. And that, no, she could not do. He found talking so much easier than she did. He could say things--she never could. So naturally it was always he that said the things, and then for some reason he would mind this suddenly, and would reproach her. A heartless woman he called her; she never told him that she loved him. But-it was not so--it was not so. It was only that she could never say what she felt (Woolf, To the Lighthouse 123).
Mrs. Ramsay has made her husband's life work possible, facilitated it, and played the role of a dutiful helpmate completely. Yet she cannot express love, and there is a bleakness about her life with her family. In a sense, this reserve about overt-expression of f...