ABSTRACT
There is a beautiful passage in Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse in which Mrs. Ramsay is faced with the challenge of pacifying two of her children who have different perceptions of the world. The skull of a ram has been nailed to the children’s bedroom wall as a decoration (perhaps in the spirit of Woolf’s contemporary Georgia O’Keeffe, who found those skulls beautiful). Cam, Mrs. Ramsay’s fierce and imaginative little girl, finds the skull terrifying, won’t sleep with it in the room, and wants it taken down. James, her little boy, resembles his father in his rigid, blue-eyed, philosopher’s integrity, his ruthless determination to face up to the terrible truth of things. He insists that the skull remain where it is: he will not allow a mere girl to evade the harsh light of reality.
