“And she
smiled, pocketing her shilling, and the all peering inquisitive eyes seemed
blotted out, and the passing generations – the pavement was crowded with
bistling middle-class people – vanished, like leaves, to be trodden under, to
be soaked and steeped and made mould of by that eternal spring…. ‘Poor old
woman’, said Rezia Warren Smith, waiting to cross (82)”.
Everyone who is
passing by this woman (Rezia and Peter Walsh) feel sorry for her. They see her
tattered clothing and her frail body and their automatic reaction is sympathy.
But the ironic idea that Woolf is getting across is that the old woman is
actually the only truly happy person. She is enlightened, and knows the true
meaning of life, unlike the rest of the park dwellers. The woman herself has sympathy
for the people passing by, because she knows that she is the the enlightened
one, for the woman is singing a song of happy realization. Woolf shows that one
should not judge on someone’s appearances. She also shows characterization of the society by showing the judgmental and ignorant ideas of the people.
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