Mrs. Ramsay represents much of what is good about the Victorian period. She is a good wife and mother, supporting her family with her love and concern. In a scene near the end of "The Window" (pages 114-115) she diplomatically solves an argument between James and Cam. A boar's skull has been nailed to their nursery wall and the shadows cast by its horns scare Cam and she wants it removed. However, James insists that the skull not be touched. Mrs. Ramsay needs to placate both of them.
"'Well then,' she said, 'we will cover it up' and...she quickly took her own shawl off and wound it round the skull, round and round and round, and then she came back to Cam and laid her head almost flat on the pillow beside Cam's and said how lovely it looked now; how the fairies would love it; it was like a bird's nest; it was like a beautiful mountain...until she sat upright and saw that Cam was asleep. Now, she whispered, crossing over to his bed, James must go to sleep too, for see, she said, the boar's skull was still there; they had done just what he wanted."
Mrs. Ramsay has taken a situation that could have escalated into a fight between siblings, solved it, and brought peace. Her solution, however, is a cover-up, depicting another aspect of the Victorian character. In his book The Victorian Frame of Mind, Walter E Houghton describes this aspect as "an unfortunate strain of hypocrisy" wherein the Victorians "concealed or suppressed their true convictions...[and] sacrificed sincerity to propriety....They refused to look at life candidly. They shut their eyes to whatever was ugly or unpleasant and pretended it didn't exist" (394-395).
Mrs. Ramsay's solution is, in fact, evasion. She has hidden the skull and given it an acceptable appearance, but the skull is still there. The trouble with covering up a problem is that the problem remains and can develop into something worse. We can understand this by viewing the skull and shawl as symbols when Woolf describes them in the "Time Passes" section.
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