Given the length at which To the Lighthouse dwells on the everyday thoughts of its characters, it comes as a brutal shock to read in the grim second section that:
Mr. Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs. Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.
Mrs. Ramsay’s death, note, is not even dignified with a main clause. This death, recounted en passant as a way of explaining why Mr. Ramsay’s arms were not filled in their usual way, is all the more arresting for the brevity with which it is dealt. But how could it be any other way in a novel the business of which is to inhabit and explore the thoughts of (living) characters?