Abstract
In her last novel, Between the Acts, as well as in her unpublished essay, "Anon", Virginia Woolf was more than before pursuing her lifelong theme of the anonymous author and the form of creation supported and completed by the audience. So Miss La Trobe, whose pageant is central to the novel, remains anonymous and solitary throughout. Her pageant is solely performed by the villagers themselves. Most of the audience are also the village inhabitants and each of them tries to find meanings in the pageant. Above all, Lucy Swithin, who is over seventy, goes so far as to have a contact with Miss La Trobe, concealing herself in the bushes. In fact, as her habit of reading an Outline of History indicates, Lucy is not only one of the audience but also a reader who replaces the audience at a certain point in the history of English Literature, according to Woolfs "Anon". Besides, Lucy has two special powers given only to the old woman. One of them is that while reading her history book, she makes full use of her imagination and "increases the bounds of the moment" by reconstructing the past and future. Thus, she is able to transcend the limits of time and space freely. At the end of the novel, she incorporates "the re-created world" of La Trobe into her book by this ability. The other power is that she can see through the silent world of the mysterious pictures connected with the bottom of the lily pond. Though the world annihilates every being, it is also the source of every creation. Lucy sees La Trobe pass through the world (the pond) before the artist accomplishes her new creation. This makes the old woman almost a sub-creator of La Trobe's new play after all.
