Mrs. Ramsay Character Analysis in To the Lighthouse

Beautiful, charming, and nurturing, Mrs. Ramsey holds the Ramsay family together as she holds together every social context she enters by her charisma and instinct for putting people at ease. Mrs. Ramsay also holds To the Lighthouse together, for the novel’s shape is structured around her: her perspective dominates Chapter 1 and, even after she dies in Chapter 2, Mrs. Ramsay remains central in Chapter 3 as the surviving Ramsays manage their grief and Lily revisits her memories of Mrs. Ramsay and makes peace with her ghost. For her own part, Mrs. Ramsay exalts in the beauty of the world and, though she insists she is no thinker, frequently reflects on the nature of time and human experience. An eager matchmaker, Mrs. Ramsay is also, as Lily sees, an artist who can make out of the fleeting moment “something permanent”

Mrs. Ramsay Quotes in To the Lighthouse

The To the Lighthouse quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Ramsay or refer to Mrs. Ramsay. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude towards herself which no woman could fail to find agreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential…

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Page Number and Citation: 6

Explanation and Analysis:

…it was only in silence, looking up from their plates, after she had spoken so severely about Charles Tansley, that her daughters—Prue, Nancy, Rose—could sport with infidel ideas which they had brewed for themselves of a life different from hers; in Paris, perhaps; a wilder life; not always taking care of some man or other; for there was in all their minds a mute questioning of deference and chivalry, of the Bank of England and the Indian Empire, of ringed fingers and lace, though to them all there was something in this of the essence of beauty, which called out the manliness in their girlish hearts, and made them, as they sat at table beneath their mother’s eyes, honour her strange severity, her extreme courtesy…

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Page Number and Citation: 6-7

Explanation and Analysis:

…the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, ‘I am guarding you—I am your support’, but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephemeral as a rainbow…

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Page Number and Citation: 15-16

Explanation and Analysis:

For always, [Mr. Bankes] thought, there was something incongruous to be worked into the harmony of [Mrs. Ramsay’s] face. She clapped a deer-stalker’s hat on her head; she ran across the lawn in galoshes to snatch a child from mischief. So that if it was her beauty merely that one thought of, one must remember the quivering thing, the living thing…and work it into the picture.

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Page Number and Citation: 29

Explanation and Analysis:

The extraordinary irrationality of [Mrs. Ramsay’s] remark, the folly of women’s minds enraged [Mr. Ramsay]. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now she flew in the face of facts, made his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies.

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Page Number and Citation: 31

Explanation and Analysis:

To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people’s feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilsation so wantonly, so brutally, was to [Mrs. Ramsay] so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked.

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Page Number and Citation: 32

Explanation and Analysis:

All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, [Mrs. Ramsay] supposed.

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Page Number and Citation: 62

Explanation and Analysis:

It partook, [Mrs. Ramsay] felt, carefully helping Mr. Bankes to a specially tender piece, of eternity; as she had already felt about something different once before that afternoon; there is a coherence in things, a stability; something, she meant, is immune from change, and shines out (she glanced at the window with its ripple of reflected lights) in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby; so that again tonight she had the feeling she had had once today already, of peace, of rest. Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that remains for ever after. This would remain.

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Page Number and Citation: 105

Explanation and Analysis:

And then there it was, suddenly entire shaped in [Mrs. Ramsay’s] hands, beautiful and reasonable, clear and complete, the essence sucked out of life and held rounded here—the sonnet.

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Page Number and Citation: 121

Explanation and Analysis:

Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to make of the moment something permanent)—this was of the nature of a revelation.

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Page Number and Citation: 161

Explanation and Analysis:

One wanted fifty pairs of eyes to see with, [Lily] reflected. Fifty pairs of eyes were not enough to get round that one woman with, she thought. Among them, must be one that was stone blind to [Mrs. Ramsay’s] beauty.

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Page Number and Citation: 198

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Mrs. Ramsay Character Timeline in To the Lighthouse

The timeline below shows where the character Mrs. Ramsay appears in To the Lighthouse. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

The novel opens in a summerhouse on the Isle of Skye with Mrs. Ramsay , Mr. Ramsay, their little son James (who is cutting pictures from a magazine), and... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay thinks how “odious” Charles Tansley is, but also how she chastises her children for teasing... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay reflects on Tansley’s self-absorption, which is what makes the children hate him. She remembers having... (full context)

On their way off to town, Mrs. Ramsay asked the stoned Mr. Carmichael if he wanted anything, then flattered Tansley during the walk... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay exclaimed at a circus tent and Tansley awkwardly confided to her that he had never... (full context)

Passing the quay where a bunch of artists are gathered painting, Mrs. Ramsay marveled at the beauty of the view then reflected that “since Mr. Paunceforte had been... (full context)

Waiting downstairs as Mrs. Ramsay visited one of the houses in town, Tansley realized “she was the most beautiful person... (full context)

...James,” and though he inwardly attempts to make his voice sound nice “in deference to Mrs. Ramsay ,” she thinks him an “odious little man” to keep saying what he says. (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay attempts to comfort James by reminding him there is still a chance the weather the... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay is suddenly alarmed to hear the sound of waves unaccompanied by the rhythms of human... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay realizes Mr. Ramsay has shaken off Mr. Tansley, ending their conversation. She listens for “some... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay has been knitting a stocking for the Lighthouse keeper’s tubercular boy and, hoping to finish... (full context)

The perspective zooms out to consider Mrs. Ramsay ’s beauty, recounting people’s curiosity about her as a person living behind “an uncomparable beauty”... (full context)

As Mr. Ramsay approaches the window on his march round and round the lawn, Mrs. Ramsay can see right away that her husband is in anguish, “all his vanity, all his... (full context)

Hearing that Mrs. Ramsay is trying to finish the stocking in case they go to the Lighthouse the next... (full context)

...though now it sounds to him “changed” and he hums it, then drops it altogether. Mrs. Ramsay smiles, listening. The vague shape of his wife and child at the window “fortified him... (full context)

...Ramsay’s] emotion” which interrupted “the perfect simplicity and good sense of his relationship with [ Mrs. Ramsay ]” and draws his mother’s attention away from him. James feels his parents’ chit-chat as... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay feels in perfect sync with Mr. Ramsay as he walks away, though the joy of... (full context)

Mr. Carmichael trudges by in his slippers outside just as Mrs. Ramsay is painfully considering “the inadequacy of human relationships, that the most perfect was flawed” and... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay considers Mr. Carmichael who has been coming to the summerhouse every summer for years and... (full context)

Mr. Ramsay passes the window just as Mrs. Ramsay reads about the Fisherman reluctantly going out to sea, thinking ‘it is not right’ and... (full context)

...“the father of eight children has no choice—,” Mr. Ramsay turns back to look at Mrs. Ramsay and James. He admits he is “for the most part happy,” in his family, in... (full context)

Standing on the lawn with Mr. Ramsay striding about and Mrs. Ramsay reading at the window, Mr. Bankes and Lily discuss the Ramsays. Mr. Bankes laments that... (full context)

Before answering, Lily considers Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay , feeling it is only possible to discuss them when they are out of sight... (full context)

Then, as Lily is about to answer Mr. Bankes with a criticism of Mrs. Ramsay , she notices that Bankes is gazing at Mrs. Ramsay in utter “rapture,” “love that... (full context)

...opinion that women can neither paint nor write. She remembers she was going to criticize Mrs. Ramsay , and looks up to try to discern the specificity of Mrs. Ramsay’s person within... (full context)

...the abstraction and shadows and Lily explains that it is both “of” and “not of” Mrs. Ramsay and James, talking about the painting in terms of form. To her delight, Mr. Bankes... (full context)

...races by Lily, Mr. Bankes, and Mr. Ramsay on the lawn and only stops after Mrs. Ramsay calls to her twice to send her to ask Mildred the cook if Andrew, Minta... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay tries and fails to remember if Nancy had gone along with Andrew, Minta, and Paul.... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay looks at James and wishes he and Cam could stay their age forever. She thinks... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay does not think she is a pessimist, “only she thought life--…Life: she thought but she... (full context)

With James gone, Mrs. Ramsay relishes being alone. Her whole being “shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself,... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay ’s mind cycles loosely through snippets of phrases, but when it suddenly alights on the... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay as always emerges from solitude by “reluctantly…laying hold of some…sound, some sight.” She looks at... (full context)

Mr. Ramsay, all the while, is admiring Mrs. Ramsay ’s beauty but resolving not to interrupt her, despite feeling injured by her distance. Then,... (full context)

Walking together, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay chat affectionately about the household and children, Mrs. Ramsay suppressing her worry about the cost... (full context)

Walking on arm in arm, Mrs. Ramsay sees the Lighthouse and, not liking to be reminded that she had “let herself sit... (full context)

...that, “if he could not share her thoughts…he would be off,” but wants to assure Mrs. Ramsay before he goes that she needn’t worry about Andrew out walking and that he himself... (full context)

“Poor little place,” murmurs Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay is annoyed, thinking he is always just “phrase-making,” saying “the most melancholy things” and seeming... (full context)

Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay continue walking and she thinks fondly about how strong her husband is, how he is... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay catches sight of Lily and Mr. Bankes walking on the lawn and it occurs to... (full context)

As she and Mr. Bankes come upon Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay watching Prue and Jasper playing catch on the lawn, Lily thinks “so that is marriage”... (full context)

...to actually propose, he is now eager to tell about it and wants to tell Mrs. Ramsay as he feels she’s “made him” do it by filling him with confidence in himself.... (full context)

Prue replies to Mrs. Ramsay that she thinks Nancy did go on the walk. (full context)

Finishing up dressing for dinner in her bedroom with Jasper and Rose, Mrs. Ramsay tries to push aside an inward fear that something bad has happened to Nancy, Andrew,... (full context)

Observing how carefully and seriously Rose chooses her mother’s necklace for her, Mrs. Ramsay tries to think back to her own childhood, “some quite speechless feeling that one had... (full context)

Then, her outfit complete, Mrs. Ramsay invites the children to escort her downstairs. Catching sight of the rooks again outside the... (full context)

Entering the hall, Mrs. Ramsay discovers Nancy, Paul, Minta, and Andrew returned, and immediately feels “much more annoyed with them... (full context)

Sitting down at the head of the dinner table, Mrs. Ramsay is suddenly overcome with fatigue and hopelessness. “But what have I done with my life?”... (full context)

Watching Mrs. Ramsay , Lily notes that, asking Mr. Bankes about the letters, Mrs. Ramsay goes from looking... (full context)

Mr. Tansley resents Mrs. Ramsay ’s yoking him into small talk about letters and resolves “not…to be condescended to by... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay is meanwhile asking Mr. Bankes all about the Manning family from whom he’s received a... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay has to turn away for a moment to consult with a servant and, left hanging,... (full context)

Overhearing Mrs. Ramsay and Mr. Bankes’ expressions of etiquette, Mr. Tansley, having never spoken “this language” of etiquette,... (full context)

Yet, seeing within Mrs. Ramsay ’s quick glance an immense desperation imploring Lily to help her with Mr. Tansley, Lily... (full context)

Disappointed to find Mr. Bankes has lost interest in discussing the Mannings, Mrs. Ramsay feels “something lacking.” Overcome by “the disagreeableness of life,” Mr. Bankes feels likewise. They turn... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay hopes Mr. Ramsay will say something characteristically wise and make the subject of the fishing... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay gets up to light the candles, pitying Mr. Carmichael for having to suffer Mr. Ramsay’s... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay admires Rose’s arrangement of the fruit bowl, which looks to her like “a trophy” from... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay lights the candles and the light turns the indoors into stable, orderly ground and the... (full context)

...that he enjoyed teasing her, made friends by acting “even more ignorant than she was.” Mrs. Ramsay knows all about her husband’s affection for Minta and all voluptuous tomboys like her. She... (full context)

As he starts to explain the cause for their delay, Mrs. Ramsay can tell just from Paul’s using the word ‘we’ that he and Minta are engaged.... (full context)

Mr. Bankes finds the beef delicious and praises Mrs. Ramsay , feeling, once again, that she is remarkable, wonderful, an object of “reverence.” Mrs. Ramsay... (full context)

As Mrs. Ramsay talks, Lily observes how she is at once “childlike” and “frightening,” how she always gets... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay , talking about milk in England, sees Lily’s distance (as Lily thinks about love) and... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay feels suddenly that everything is, “for no special reason,” right and good in the moment,... (full context)

...the men argue about literature and Mr. Tansley aggressively flaunts his opinion to assert himself, Mrs. Ramsay feels her eyes effortlessly unveil the speakers, like light moving underwater so that the fish... (full context)

As the men argue about literature’s endurance and legacy, Mrs. Ramsay can see that, while Mr. Bankes is unperturbed in his “integrity,” Mr. Ramsay is starting... (full context)

When offered a piece of fruit, Mrs. Ramsay declines it and realizes she has been unconsciously guarding the beautifully composed fruit bowl, hoping... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay looks at all of her children and, seeing they are titillated by some mysterious joke,... (full context)

Dinner is done and Mrs. Ramsay swells with affection for everyone, even Mr. Tansley. She hears everyone’s voices “as at a... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay waits for a moment on the threshold “in a scene which was vanishing even as... (full context)

Lily observes that as soon as Mrs. Ramsay leaves, “a sort of disintegration set in.” She notes that Mrs. Ramsay is always rushing... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay goes slowly on the stairs, wanting to be still amidst “that clatter” in order to... (full context)

Seeing the furniture on the landing that she’s inherited from her parents, Mrs. Ramsay thinks how “[a]ll that will be revived again in the lives of Paul and Minta... (full context)

Entering the nursery, Mrs. Ramsay is annoyed to find James and Cam still awake, arguing about the pig skull on... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay descends downstairs and finds Minta, Paul, Lily and Prue planning to go watch waves on... (full context)

Entering the sitting room in which Mr. Ramsay sits reading, Mrs. Ramsay feels “she had to come here to get something she wanted.” What she wants has... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay observes that Mr. Ramsay is absorbed reading a book by Sir Walter Scott, which she... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay sits knitting and feels herself “sinking deeper” towards something she wanted, still not knowing what... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay begins reading feeling she is “swinging herself” from line to line. Mr. Ramsay reads Scott... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay puts down her book and searches for things to say to Mr. Ramsay. They are... (full context)

Mrs. Ramsay feels from Mr. Ramsay’s look that he wants her to tell him she loves him.... (full context)

...Mr. Ramsay reaches his arms out in the hallway on a dark morning and, since Mrs. Ramsay has died suddenly the previous night, his arms “remained empty.” (full context)

...flowers for herself from the garden. She has heard rumors about the family’s deaths. Seeing Mrs. Ramsay ’s old gray cloak, Mrs. McNab recalls a memory of her walking up the drive... (full context)

...Mr. Ramsay’s imposing presence, Lily thinks angrily that he only knows how to take, while Mrs. Ramsay had always given. She, Lily, will be forced to give, she thinks and, after inwardly... (full context)

...summerhouse ten years before. She recalls skipping stones on the sea with Mr. Tansley while Mrs. Ramsay sat on a beach rock writing letters and, by the power of her soul, making... (full context)

...She reflects that there has been no “great revelation,” only “little daily miracles.” She compares Mrs. Ramsay ’s “making of the moment something permanent” to her own project as a painter. Both... (full context)

...recounting the reality of Paul and Minta’s failed marriage and her own unmarried life to Mrs. Ramsay , who had been such an eager matchmaker. She wants to tell Mrs. Ramsay that... (full context)

Lily remembers how Mrs. Ramsay had planned to set her up with Mr. Bankes. Inside parentheses, Lily remembers feeling the... (full context)

Thinking back to Mr. Bankes’ great admiration for Mrs. Ramsay ’s beauty, Lily considers beauty’s “penalty” which is that “it came too readily…too completely.” Beauty... (full context)

...say so much that she would have no clear thing to say. She feels that Mrs. Ramsay has gone from being a harmless ghost to being something that “wrung the heart.” Lily... (full context)

...roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape” and Mrs. Ramsay would return. She calls Mrs. Ramsay’s name aloud, crying. (full context)

Still crying Mrs. Ramsay ’s name in anguish, Lily thinks how silly she must look and is glad Mr.... (full context)

...remembers Mr. Ramsay dashing his hopes about going to the Lighthouse as a child and Mrs. Ramsay ’s attention being deflected away from James towards his father. He thinks back to his... (full context)

...way of knowing people…the outline, not the detail.” She recalls how he had never liked Mrs. Ramsay . (full context)

Lily thinks back on Mrs. Ramsay , on her idiosyncrasies and unique character. She thinks how Mrs. Ramsay differed both from... (full context)

Lily considers Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay ’s marriage and feels like she can remember their courtship, which she never witnessed. She... (full context)

...“moving underneath with extreme speed.” Somebody in the house sits down at the window where Mrs. Ramsay had once sat and Lily thinks, painting again, that the goal is to feel that... (full context)

...into despair. But the despair, then, “became part of ordinary experience” and Lily feels that Mrs. Ramsay sits knitting in the chair. Lily goes to the edge of the lawn still holding... (full context)

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Mrs. Ramsay Character Analysis

Mrs. Ramsay Quotes in To the Lighthouse

Mrs. Ramsay Character Timeline in To the Lighthouse

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