At the beginning the narrator presents the figure of Mrs Ramsay. She is characterized by terms meaning force, fecundity and pragmatism: rain of energy; a column of spray; burning and illuminating; this delicious fecundity; this fountain and spray of life; confident upright; her competence assured him; she did not like to feel finer than her husband; not being able to tell him the truth. Mrs Ramsey is a positive and warm figure, and she has strength and she us a point of reference and finally she has effect in what surrounded.

Besides the narrator describes Mr Ramsey too. He is different from his wife, because he is insecure and a failure: he wanted sympathy; he was a failure, he said; to be assured of hi genius…warmed and soothed…his barrennes made fertile; he must be assured that he too lived in the heart of life.

In a second part of the extract Mrs and Mr Ramsey are presented by their son James. He understands his parents relation ship, therefore everybody can understand that.

He is rigid on his mother knees, but he is only nine months. He thinks his mother strong , because she knows the way to face life: all her strength. After that there the narrator describes Mrs Ramsey: her laugh; her pose; her competence. She is serene, well-balanced and a sign of life. While Mr Ramsey is weak, insecure and sterile. The arid scimitar of the male…demanding sympathy and not for a second should he find himself without her. Besides Virginia Woolf makes a reference to T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, because there is a contraposition between fertility and sterility which Mrs and Mr Ramsey are symbols.

Mrs Ramsey security and Mr Ramsey insecurity represent the alternation between light and darkness which are aspects of life.

In addition the narrator describes Mrs Ramsey like a spring: tree; rosy-flowered; blowing. That means she is considered like life. While Mr Ramsey is: plunged. That means he is like a pain.

In the third part of the extract there is Mr Ramsey’s point of view.

After the speech Mr Ramsey he feels happiness and security: filled with her words; satisfied; humble; restored; renewed. In addition he feels himself submit and depending by her wife ( humble) and also he can begin another live (renewed).

In the following part there is the point of view of the Mrs Ramsey.

After the speech she feels herself sad and exhaustion, because she knows her husband has some problem and she leads him: Mrs Ramsey seemed to fold herself together; fell in exhaustion upon itself; the rapture of successful creation. Besides she is tired by heir relation ship, because he takes her all the energy: so that she had only strength enough to move her finger; in exquisite abandonment to exhaustion; while there throbbed through her, like the pulse in a spring.

Subsequently she has anxiety: to give to each that solace which two different notes, one high, one low, struck together; Mrs Ramsey felt and only exhausted in body. Mrs Ramsey’s anxiety is because she is more intelligent, she has more control and she knows more than her husband. Therefore she does not want to feel him inferior: to feel finer than her husband; could not bear not being entirely sure, when she spoke to him, of the truth of what she said. As a matter of fact she is worried about people could say: for then people said he depended on her. Besides she is afraid to say the truth: Mrs Ramsey has written a book and people could not read his book, therefore he is insecure and she is not happy and the relation ship is ruined: not being able to tell him the truth being afraid for instance; all this diminished the entire joy.

Finally Mrs Ramsey represents positive aspects of life and the point of reference of the fiction. Therefore she represents the symbol of the lighthouse. Besides Mr Ramsey wants to be the best, but he can have Mrs Ramsey’s fecundity and energy, therefore he stresses her wife and absorbs her energies.