Oliver Bacon, the jeweller, is really the only developed character in the short story "The Duchess and the Jeweller" by Virginia Woolf. The author uses the indirect stream-of consciousness technique as well as her own words to depicts the enterprising merchant as a many-sided man: He is both ambitious and sympathetic. The jeweller is highly arrogant and ambitious. His strutting smugness is evident through the animal metaphors used to portray him-from his physical bearing ("his …showed first 75 words of 458 total…

…showed last 75 words of 458 total…At the end of the story, when "again he was a little boy in the alley where they sold dogs on Sunday" we recognize the fundamental human nature of need and desires, and grant Bacon absolution for his failings. In a nutshell, Oliver Bacon's character is described vividly by the stream-of-consciousness technique together with Woolf's words. From a little boy to a successful jeweller, his life can be regarded as a mixture of ambition sentimentality.