ABSTRACT
It is a truth universally acknowledged that in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Ramsay exemplifies the ideal Victorian woman as the Angel in the House or perfect domestic goddess while Mr. Ramsay epitomizes the controlling tyranny expected of the Victorian patriarch. This chapter connects Woolf's exploration of aesthetics through the painter, Lily Briscoe, to the traditional sublime. Complicating approaches to intersubjectivity and the sublime that rely on an "object", it argues that Woolf creates a transcendent, intersubjective experience between women in order to explore the possibility of a feminist future by coming to terms with the women who participated in a patriarchal past. Woolf's use of free indirect discourse exposes individual thoughts to the reader and as a result, shows the communal component in perceiving different identities and subjectivities. The merger of subjectivity and objectivity in Lily's artistic production, especially regarding the representation of Mrs. Ramsay, complicates the potential for intersubjectivity.
