On Virginia's Apparent X-Ray Vision.

Since I have nothing else to post about tonight, I feel I ought to mention what I feel to be a startling revelation in the matter of Virginia Woolf’s writing.

I’m coming quite close to the end of To the Lighthouse now and a trip to the eponymous structure is finally happening. Mr Ramsay is sitting in the boat being his usual demanding, controlling, yet essentially insecure self. Sitting in the bow are his two youngest children, Cam and James, who are now teenagers.

We hear the flow of thoughts in the minds of all three at different points, just as earlier we heard the flow of thoughts in Lily Briscoe’s mind, and before that the flow of thoughts in Mrs Ramsay’s mind and the minds of several relatively minor characters. And what’s particularly interesting is that a good many of these thoughts represent the kind of odd things which go through people’s minds but which they never externalise into speech. And they all seem perfectly credible to me, which is what makes the book so insightful.

I am left, therefore, to consider the conclusion that Virginia Woolf must have had a most remarkable faculty. She must have had some sort of preternatural ability to pick up not only what people said and what they revealed with the various aspects of body language, but also what was going on in the privacy of their minds. This is both impressive and a little scary in equal measure, and even allowing for the fact that the Ramsay’s and their entourage were based closely on Woolf’s own family and friends, it’s a most extraordinary skill.