1. What is missing in conventional novels?

In conventional novels miss the need to look for that thing that is essential for living, in fact this essential thing is called life or spirit, truth or reality. Therefore Virginia Woolf wants to explain how past novels are empty of emotion, are empty of spirit, while putting these features inside her novels and in her works is the most important thing to do in her opinion.

2. How does Virginia Woolf describe life?

She describes life comparing life to how to do a novel. The traditional way to write a novel was to provide a plot, to provide a comedy, tragedy and love interest even if the writer disagreed. In this way Virginia Woolf shows how life sometimes is not like we expect or how we want it; life is not perfect, it is full of impressions: "trivial, fantastic, evanescent or engraved with the sharpness of steel". Life is a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

3. What does Woolf mean by "the life of Monday or Tuesday"?

Maybe Virginia Woolf means that the life passes and changes everyday, and what is important is to take those important things for life from the past, and to learn from the past to create the future. In this way Woolf represents one of the most relevant features of Modernism.

4. What is the task of the novelist and how should fiction be written?

In Virginia Woolf opinion the task of the novelist is to convey this varying of life, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, to show that even if everything is complex or difficult may be faced. Fiction should be written without be forced to write it, the novelist has to put inside fiction his/her emotions, his/her thoughts because if novelists don't to that, they would narrate stories far away from what the true reality is.