Mrs. Ramsay's Emotional Experiences

Virginia Woolf is not only a famous British female writer, a pioneer of feministliterary criticism, but also one of the representatives of the stream-of-consciousnessnovels. She is known as the pioneer of the modernism and feminism of the twentiethcentury. With lots of innovations in language, she attempts to apply the technique of thestream of consciousness in novels and tries to describe subconsciousness in the mind ofpeople. This novel, To the Lighthouse, noted for its prominent technique of the stream ofconsciousness, was an autobiographical novel and gained French Prix Femina Prize in1928. It is regarded as a milestone in English literature. With the clue of "to thelighthouse" throughout the book, mainly based on Virginia Woolf's childhood, To theLighthouse is filled with endless and erratic flow stream of consciousness. Without theunconstrained fluctuation's plot, it describes the life clips of the Ramsays and severalguests before and after the first world war. The two characters—Mrs. Ramsay and Mr.Ramsay are incarnated from Woolf's mother and father respectively. Critics have beingstudied it from different perspectives since its publication in1927, including feminism,symbolism, et cetera. Within all the characters, the character—Mrs. Ramsay has beenconstantly concerned and disputed.This thesis is an analysis of Mrs. Ramsay's mental activities' language from theperspective of interpersonal function, which is one of the three metafunctions in thesystemic-functional grammar. The interpersonal function plays the role of reflectingthe interaction between the addresser and addressee by their language, conveying theaddresser's status, attitude, motivation, and establishing social relationships with others.And it is mainly realized through mood system and modality system. But this thesisfocuses on modality. With qualitative and quantitative methods combined, adopting theanalytical procedures of stylistics: description—interpretation—evaluation, the presentthesis intends to analyze the emotional experiences of Mrs. Ramsay in this novel from three sections. By comparing and discussing different modality expressions, throughthe comparison of the number, the modality value and the targets of different kinds ofmodal operators or modal adjuncts, especially the analysis of the modal operator withhigh modality value—must, with median modality value should, would, will, with lowmodality value could, and modal adverbs never, perhaps, the present thesis aims atreflecting the protagonist's complicated mental activities, displaying the characteristicsand psychological changes of the character hidden in the seemingly chaotic structure ofthe novel, explaining the roles she plays in the family or outside and finally revealingthe theme of this novel. In the end, the thesis lists research findings: one the one hand,Mrs. Ramsay is typical of a good wife and good mother in the age of Victoria; on theother hand, she is a new feminine image with independent thoughts. Based on thelimited reading materials of the thesis's author, there is not similar research about thisnovel. Therefore, this thesis hopes to help readers better understand and appreciate thenovel in this way, meanwhile, provide a new perspective for interpreting the stream ofconsciousness novel.