61).
At the same time she also seems submissive and rarely express her own opinions. She seems to feel the need of relying on her husband's opinions, as this is the way a devoted Victorian woman would act. Throughout the novel she is constantly taking an unrealistic view of herself by being in the background of her husband, and she fails to go beyond the traditional female role in society as a wife and mother. As a result, Mrs. Ramsay loses her independence and she feels that her husband's mind is "like a raised hand shadowing her mind" (Woolf, 2000, p.184). Mrs. Ramsay also believes that men deserve her protection and this is because they rule the world: "Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valor, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude towards herself which no woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential; which an old woman could take from a young man without loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl-pray Heaven it was none of her daughters!-who did not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones!" (Woolf, 2000, p.13).
Although Mrs. Ramsay affirms her husband's and other men's tower of strength and she tries to please her husband by telling him what he wants to hear, Mrs. Ramsay is too complex a character to simply be seen under the light of traditional Victorian women. She repeatedly mentions that men need women's protection and when Mr. Ramsay tells her that he is a failure and needs her sympathy and reassurance, she tells him to put implicit faith in her. So she does seems to go beyond definition of a typical Victorian women at times and act out the strong role in her relationship.
In comparison to Mrs. Ramsay, Lily Briscoe is anything but traditional.
