ABSTRACT
Virginia Woolf's life and work align with most of the elements of the modernist ideal type as defined so far except for two differences from the men-she had no systematic Christian education, and, while she had her share of difficulties with sexuality and love, they were not engendered by Christian sexual morality. Woolf also had a gnawing sense of shame about sex that was shaped indirectly by Christian sexual morality. In Woolf's secular world Mrs. Ramsay performs her non-Christian miracle by bringing people together at a dinner party and forming shape out of chaos, and the other. Woolf was less preoccupied with anti-Christian views than the men and more muted in hurling insults. Woolf's ambivalence about Christianity becomes evident at the end of Bax's sermon that had begun with fulminating anger. The most important feature of the modernist ideal type, a dialectic of fragmentation and unification, is prominent in Woolf's life and work and abundantly evident.
