more on Tansley, Lily, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, etc.

You and Niki have another great discussion going here, Jason. If anyone wants to write about Lily, your comments suggest an approach to start with. Those interested in this question of the masculine and feminine aesthetic might want to look at Showalter et al on Room of One's Own (see Room page), as well as Toril Moi's 1985 essay on Woolf, Pamela Caughie's 1991 book, and, more recently, Jane Goldman's work from 1998. Some critics tend to take a view similar to the one you articulate here. Some question whether Woolf's supposedly "androgynous" vision was really a kind of sex-neutral vision of the artist or whether it was more female-centered. Some critics ask us to question these very binaries such as masculine/feminine.

Also, when we look at Charles Tansley, on the one hand he is very sexist, saying that women can't paint or write, yet on the other, he is someone who grew up in poverty and has difficulty feeling comfortable among the privileged leisure class. Tansley makes us uncomfortable, as he does Lily Briscoe. The text also provokes discomfort as we question the blindness of the privileged toward the origins of Tansley (as well as the ridicule for his appearance and his "little" atheism etc). Another way to explore Tansley and Lily would be in Tansley's "little" atheism (an atheistic stance borne of class resentment perhaps rather than keen philosophical or religious questioning)and in Lily's aesthetic. Lily finds something in her painting--not religion, but perhaps, as you say, something spiritual. Tansley marries and winds up making public addresses where he lectures people on what they should do, and Lily finds his self-righteousness laughable.

Do Lily's reactions to Tansley in "The Window" and in "The Lighthouse" echo Mrs. Dalloway's reactions to Miss Kilman, another reformer, or Bradshaw? ("Conversion" links them.) Does Tansley seem at all like those gypsies in Orlando who would kill Orlando because they suspect that s/he does not share their beliefs? (Another example of the "Conversion" problem.) I wonder what other people in the class think about this running thread in Woolf's work.