Helen, Christine, Geoffrey Lily Briscoe Helen, Christine, Geoffrey

Who Is She? Ramsays’ family friend. Invited to spend time with the family along with William Bankes. “They had rooms in the village, and so walking in, walking out, parting late on door-mats” (18). Character based on Virginia Woolf’s sister.

Profession Young, unmarried painter. “Women can’t paint, women can’t write... ” (48). “She remembered, all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure, that she had her work” (84).

Age and Physical Characteristics “With her little Chinese eyes and her puckered-up face, she would never marry; one could not take her painting very seriously” (17). --unmarried, physically unattractive. “But that any other eyes should see the residue of her thirty-three years” (52). --thirty-three years old

Likes / Dislikes Likes: painting, independence, Mr. Bankes “She liked to be alone; she liked to be herself” (50). Dislikes: marriage, creative restrictions “she would urge her own exemption from the universal law….she was not made for that” (50).

Motivations / Behavior Insecurity/concern about her work “It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad! She could have done it differently of course; the colour could have been thinned and faded; the shapes etherealised” (48).

Motivations / Behavior, cont. Deep thinking “ So that is marriage, Lily thought [while watching the Ramsays], a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball” (72). “It was love...but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world” (47).

Relationships William Bankes “William Bankes, she did not [shoo away], as she would have done had it been Mr. Tansley, Paul Rayley, Minta Doyle, or practically anybody else, turn her canvas upon the grass, but let it stand. William Bankes stood beside her” (18). supportive and platonic relationship with William Bankes Charles Tansley “He was really, Lily Briscoe thought, in spite of his eyes, but then look at his nose, look at his hands, the most uncharming human being she had ever met” (86). Disagrees with Tansley’s misogynistic viewpoints

Relationships (2) Mr. Ramsay “For who could be deceived by [Mr. Ramsay]? He asked you quite openly to flatter him, to admire him, his little dodges deceived nobody. What she disliked was his narrowness, his blindness, she said, looking after him” (46). Thinks Mr. Ramsay is arrogant Mrs. Ramsay “Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsay’s knee” (51). Lily’s character is an antithesis to Mrs. Ramsay

Symbol