Writing of the life of Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1927, Virginia Woolf observed that “there are some stories which have to be retold by each generation, not that we have anything new to add to them, but because of some queer quality in them which makes them not only Shelley’s story but our own.” This has proved true for the lives of any number of great men and women over the past few centuries: it …showed first 75 words of 5719 total…

…showed last 75 words of 5719 total…has a second dimension of sensibility. Virginia Woolf pictures the character of Mr. Ramsay as an authentic human being; he has a second-dimension that allows him to have both evil and sincere attributes. She does not write about either a very humble and generous man or a very insolent and cruel man; instead, Woolf gives the readers a real character with both traits that allow readers to understand the foibles of characters like Mr. Ramsay.