Abstract

Virginia Woolf declares she was "obsessed" with her mother's presence. Though Julia Stephen died when Woolf was only thirteen, Woolf spent years negotiating her mother's astonishing influence, culminating in her novel To the Lighthouse. How does one square Woolf's obsession with her Victorian mother considering Woolf's progressive and feminist ideologies? I argue that Mrs. Ramsay--and by extension Julia Stephen--mediated time for their children as a byproduct of their role as maternal caregivers. This mediation is presented as an atmospheric quality or ambience as well as an intervention between subjective experiences and objective measures of time. The measurement and psychology of time were prominent subjects of inquiry during Virginia Woolf's lifetime (1882-1941). Debates in the public sphere centered on Henri Bergson's theory of durée, Albert Einstein's space-time continuum, and other philosophical forays into the nature and experience of time. Among others, scholars Jesse Matz and Paul Sheehan have noted the role of time in To the Lighthouse. Written in 1927, Woolf's landmark novel telescopes into memories of her mother, and situates Woolf in the milieu of modernist deliberations on time. Considering the central role of time in To the Lighthouse and reaffirming that Woolf's memories of the maternal actions and temporality of Julia Stephen are the urtext from which Mrs. Ramsay is drawn, this reading examines familiar scenes with a maternal temporal lens, and offers a new way to understand Julia Stephen's obsessive and sometimes suffocating presence in Woolf's later life.

Degree

MA

College and Department

Humanities; English

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2024-04-25

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd13654

Keywords

time, temporality, Virginia Woolf, motherhood, subjective, objective, Julia Stephen

Language

english

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