Who is Rose in the novel The Years?

Rose is the youngest Partiger daughter. As a ten-year-old, she sneaks out of the house by herself, and a man exposes himself to her—a sexual threat she doesn't forget. Later, as an unmarried spinster considered a little odd, she gets involved in the Woman's Suffragist cause—one in which women were getting increasingly militant in their demand for the vote in early twentieth century England. In 1911, she is arrested for throwing a brick, and by 1914, she is in prison.
Rose is one in a long line of characters in Woolf's novels who strike out on their own and choose a feminist, single lifestyle. Throughout her novels, and in this one in particular, Woolf explores the plight of women in her society, both as it was at the time of her childhood in the 1880s and 1890s and up through the present day. Rose represents an extreme in the narrow spectrum of choices open to women: she does not choose the conventional route of marriage and family but strikes out in her own militant direction. Woolf admires this choice on the one hand but also shows that a woman who makes this choice is likely to be looked down upon and misunderstood by her society. In Rose's case, she is punished by the state for advocating for a right we now take for granted.