Finally, the temporary unity wrought of disparate people and forces at the picnic, the ordered but necessarily transient sense of community and communication that exists between the aloof Hirst, the romantic and temperamental Evelyn, the prissy Mrs.
The great scene in which Rachel, Hewet, and the other picnic goers direct the frenzied ants’ movements in God-like implacability (134) seems to presage Lily Briscoe similarly ordering and disordering the microworld of insects by “rais a little mountain for the ants to climb over” (197), “reduc them to a frenzy of indecision by this interference in their cosmogony” (197-198). When Woolf describes Ridley, the classical scholar and poet, as similar to “a commander surveying a field of battle, or a martyr watching the flames lick his toes” (98), one cannot help but think of the domineering, self-pitying intellectual nature of Mr. Many parallels exist between this, Woolf’s apprentice novel, and her later, mature works, at the level of character, scene, and style. Originally entitled “Melymbrosia,” the work underwent a number of technical and thematic changes during its long gestation, as Woolf pruned away autobiographical parallels and struggled to find a voice and style that would balance social critique and a nuanced portrayal of the vicissitudes of consciousness. Virginia Woolf began her first novel sometime during the summer of 1906 or the fall of 1907, and did not finish it until nearly nine years later in the first year of World War I on March 26, 1915.
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