• What is missing in conventional novels?
According to Virginia Woolf in conventional novels the reader cannot find what he or she seeks because "life or spirit, truth or reality, this, the essential thing has moved off". That is the reason why the novelist criticizes novels that are defined as "ill-fitting vestments". Novels seem also not to be the production of writer's will but the result of the constriction of a tyrant that makes the writer to provide a plot, comedy, tragedy, love interest and an air of probability putting everything together impeccably.
• How does Virginia Woolf describe life?
Virginia Woolf describes life as deeply different from the way in which it is described in novels. It is "a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end" therefore it is continuous flow of perceptions.
• What does Woolf mean by "the life of Monday or Tuesday"?
With the expression Virginia Woolf means the every-day life because it is truer than the fictional life of the parties or of the feast.
• What is the task of the novelist and how should fiction be written?
The task of the novelist is to describe the true life, what readers want to read without being influenced by the "tyrant". He has to write what he choose not what he must, base his work upon his feelings not upon conventions. Novels therefore should have no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style.
• Can you see any similarity between Woolf's ideas about fiction and Monet's impressionist painting?
Woolf's ideas about fiction have some common points with Monet's impressionist painting; for instance both are in conflict with the generally accepted conventions of their time. In addition both believe the task of the artist/novelist is not to describe life as something symmetric and orderly, but as complex and haloed.