[Vwoolf] in the hands of the Lord

[Jeremy Hawthorn]

Here's a basic question about a well-known passage from /To the 
Lighthouse/. Passage first:

Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with 
her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at -- that 
light, for example. And it would lift up on it some little phrase or 
other which had been lying in her mind like that --"Children don't 
forget, children don't forget" -- which she would repeat and begin 
adding to it, It will end, it will end, she said. It will come, it will 
come, when suddenly she added, We are in the hands of the Lord.
     But instantly she was annoyed with herself for saying that. Who had 
said it? Not she; she had been trapped into saying something she did not 
mean.
. . .
     What brought her to say that: "We are in the hands of the Lord?" 
she wondered. The insincerity slipping in among the truths roused her, 
annoyed her. She returned to her knitting again. How could any Lord have 
made this world? she asked.

Now the question. Are we to assume that Mrs Ramsay actually speaks these 
words out loud, or are the "saying" and the "asking" purely mental 
operations? For a long while I have assumed that it is the latter, that 
Mrs Ramsay speaks these words to herself, silently. But now I am less sure.

Any thoughts?

Jeremy H


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