Mrs Ramsay might be argued to have characteristics which she believes to be positive but others believe to be constraining or negative characteristics. Chief amongst these, one might consider her domestic role. The Edwardian context of the novel saw women often defined by the roles as mothers and wives. The opening of the novel sees Mrs Ramsay in this context as a mother looking after Paul who clearly resents his father (he dreams of harming him) while venerating his mother. However, while one might view this role of protective and nurturing matriach positively, in her essay 'Professions for Women' (published in 'The Death of the Moth' and other essays) writes of how it is the job of the artist to 'kill the angel of the house' as this ideal of feminine domesticity is called. Mrs Ramsay might be considered to be constraint by her domestic role and is unambitious in her attempts to express herself, unlike Lilly Briscoe, for example, who might be taken as a modern woman who seeks throughout the novel to articulate her own vision of the world through her painting. In 'Professions for Women' Woolf certainly espouses the idea that the modern woman should be a good deal more like Lily Briscoe than like Mrs Ramsay who sacrifices her own intellectual life in order to fulfil the needs of her husband while he intellectually strives to make advances in philosophy. This subservience and lack of personal intellectual drive seem to be two of her more obvious negative characteristics.