Elizabeth is kind of the perfect example of a teenage daughter portrayed in media. She’s beautiful, doesn’t talk much to people she doesn’t know or like, and she defies her mother and the conventions of her family. Elizabeth takes that bus ride down the Strand ind defiance to all her predecessors who would never have gone to such a place, much less enjoyed it the way Elizabeth does.<\/p>\n
But what intrigues me most is that, both with Miss Kilman and with Clarissa, the reader has several points where they’re not sure whose thoughts are whose.<\/p>\n
For example, from page 135: “What could she be thinking? Every man fell in love with her, and she was really awfully bored. For it was beginning. Her mother could see that–the compliments were beginning. That she did not care more about it–for instance for her clothes–some times worried Clarissa, but perhaps it was all well with tall those puppies and guinea pigs about having distemper, and it gave her a charm. And now there was this odd friendship with Miss Kilman. Well, thought Clarissa about three o’clock in the morning, reading Baron Marbot for she could not sleep, it proves she has a heart.”<\/p>\n
Her we transition seamlessly from what Elizabeth is thinking to what Elizabeth is thinking about her mother, to what her mother is thinking that Elizabeth could have no knowledge of. There are many, many examples of this in this part of the book, including the scene with Miss Kilman.<\/p>\n
For example, from page 130, “Elizabeth rather wondered whether Miss Kilman could be hungry. It was her way of eating eating with intensity, then looking, again and again, at a plate of sugared cakes on the table next to them; then, when a lady and a child sat down and the child took the cake, could Miss Kilman really mind it? Yes, Miss Kilman did mind it. She had wanted that cake–the pink one. The pleasure of eating was almost the only pure pleasure left her, and then to be baffled even in that!”<\/p>\n
Again is this seamless transition between what Elizabeth thinks and what Miss Kilman thinks. While there are many examples of this in the text with other characters, such as between Clarissa and Hugh, I think it is most prominent with Elizabeth, as every single time we are in her head it’s almost a constant back and forth between her and someone else’s thoughts, even if that someone else isn’t even in the room with her.<\/p>\n
I think this has a lot to do with adolescence because even though young people rebel against their parents, they are still very malleable in terms of ways of thinking. I think this shows that Elizabeth hasn’t developed a firm way of thought yet, and Woolf demonstrates that by having authority figures’ thoughts butt in.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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