The extract isa taken from Modern Ficion in The Common Reader, First Series a critical essey by Virginia Woolf published in 1925. This extract is about the way the novelist were constricted to write something they didn't feel. On the contrary modern novelists are more free and can put themserves into their novel.

The extract is arranged into two sequences. The fist sequence's function is to present the way novel were written in the past and that novelists weren't free.

The second sequence is a way to express Virginia Woolf's view of life and her idea about the novelist's task.

The traditional novelist had to provide to his tyrant a novel that reflect his wishes and the trend of the time. He was oppressed by the conventions and he could only create a life of fantasy because in the real life mind is not regular ordered. Real life has many facets and Virginia Woolf's idea is that the novelist's task is to record together all of them.