1. “Mrs.

Ramsay, who had been sitting loosely, folding her son in her arm, braced herself,
and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort, and at once to pour erect into the air a
rain of energy, a column of spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her
energies were being fused into force, burning and illuminating (quietly though she sat, taking
up her stocking again), and into this delicious fecundity, this fountain and spray of life, the
fatal sterility of the male plunged itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare.”

2. “This process of forming a stable identity and sense of self-worth is shown in To the
Lighthouse to be particularly hard for a woman. The model of identity that is proposed for
women, and which is perfectly exemplified in Mrs Ramsay, is to be always willing to
sacrifice their own self in the interests of others. For example, Mrs Ramsay postpones her
desire to work for the poor and the sick and to take up the battle for decent hospitals and
sanitation until her children are grown up (which as it happens is too late). Moreover, the
psychological effects of this model of womanhood can be disastrous, because the rule which
says always take other people's interests more seriously than your own may suggest that their
lives are in fact worth more than your own. Therefore, self-sacrifice can destroy a sense of
self-worth. Even Mrs Ramsay, who is universally adored for her womanly qualities, can
wonder secretly, 'What have I done with my life?', having at least temporarily no sense of
substantial achievement.”

3. “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue
taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in
slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was
always Lolita.”

4. “Recent commentary on Lolita has also made much of Nabokov's allegedly masculine
‘authorial narcissism.’ Voicing her antipathy, Virginia Blum detects in Nabokov's strategies a
desire for “mastery” over his readers, the desire to “assimilate us in his solipsism” and
“swallow us whole.” (Blum, 1995: 205) Several decades ago Alfred Appel, Jr., convincingly
demonstrated, in his introduction to The Annotated Lolita, that by creating a sense of “the
novel-as-gameboard,” Nabokov distances Lolita's readers from Humbert's narcissistic vision
and undermines his claims (Apel 1970). More recently, Julia Kristeva has lauded Nabokov's
reflexive strategies for exposing “the essential polymorphism of writing,” which she defines
with a phrase familiar to students of Nabokov's style as a process of “ongoing
metamorphosis” (Kristeva, 1991: 33).”

Appel, Alfred, Jr. 1970. “Introduction,” The Annotated Lolita. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Blum, Virginia L., 1995. Hide and Seek: The Child between Psychoanalysis and Fiction.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Kristeva, Julia. 1991. Strangers to Ourselves, trans. Leon S. Roudriez. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1991).
Read closely the four paragraphs presented in the document entitled ‘Text 2’ and focus on the
following tasks:

1. Identify the paragraphs that you think are written in an academic style. Why are they
‘academic’ texts?
2. Who do you think is the target audience for each paragraph?
3. What do you think is the purpose of each text?
4. Can you notice any similarities or differences in the way these paragraphs are
structured?
5. Are there any similarities or differences at the level of lexical choices and grammatical
structures? Exemplify and justify your answers.

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