To the Lighthouse

Similarly to “Mrs. Dalloway”, the protagonist of the book is a middle-aged woman and her familial relationships living in the time of the Great War. Virginia Woolf  once again returned to the subject of aging, making the main protagonist of the novel a middle class middle-aged woman, to an extent paralleling the most important poem of the modernist era - “The Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, a piece that exploits similar themes, such as becoming old, failure or references to Shakespeare. The plot of “To the Lighthouse” is formed of the thoughts of main protagonists: Mrs Ramsay, her children and husband and her friends, like Lily Briscoe, who is the painter of the picture of Mrs Ramsay, employing stream of consciousness as the technique of depicting the reality. The family was “not rich, and it was a wonder how they managed to contrive it all. Eight children!” (271)  The style of the narration, however, seems to be, so to say, more organized, as the story is divided into three parts with sub-chapters and the thoughts of the heroes are probably less difficult to follow. Both books express the states of a consciousness - “Mrs. Dalloway” in a state of excitement, and “To the Lighthouse”, in a state of tranquility that provides a reader with a mood allowing one to ponder on the nature of art. Worth noticing is also the fact that “Mrs. Dalloway” concentrates on the life of citizens of London, while “To the Lighthouse” is set in a remote village.

The wish of going to the Lighthouse serves as the triggering point of the storyline. The Lighthouse is a perfect metaphor of a dream or one's longings that in this case becomes even something more – a symbol of achieving, or not, fulfillment. The book thus vividly explores the theme of the struggle of the sexes, as we have Mr Ramsay who does not allow his children and wife to reach the Lighthouse. At one point the narrator finally asserts that “the folly of women's minds enraged him”. (277) There is also Mr Tansley saying all the way through the story that women are not able to write nor paint.  All these facts enable the reader to take a glance on the difficulties and restraints that were put on women of the early 20th century. It suggests that they were oppressed by the masculine power and had to fight for the rights to fulfill their dreams, not only about being an angel in the house but their dreams of creating art, for instance. What is more, Mr Tansley being a pretender to a university post renounces the possibility that women could be artists exposing the fact that women were restrained in every direction. The strains of being a mother are unbearable: “Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, halfway down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.” (275) And that melancholy was caused only by the mere fact that a stocking was too short for James, on e of the sons of Mrs Ramsay. Also, dreams of creating art, getting a university degree, having peaceful family life, in short dreams of the adult life are juxtaposed with simplicity of children' dreams whose only wish is to get to the Lighthouse or wander across the fields.

Virignia Woolf as usually offers the reader some musings on the evanescent nature of life. Most of the voices in “To the Lighthouse” ponder on withering yet the most fascinating quote should be one of Mr Ramsay's, whose musing go as follows: “And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr Ramsay ironically, staring at the hedge). What, indeed, if you look from a mountain-top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boots will outlast Shakespeare. His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still. (He looked into the darkness, into the intricacy of the twigs.)” (279) This long quote renders the brooding poetic mysticism of Mr Ramsay, perfectly showing the peculiar style of Woolf. This fragment could be said of exploiting T.S. Eliot's concept of objective correlative. Plot in its traditional sense has been reduced to minimum, yielding the emotional and mental sphere with primacy and the objects that the hero looks at correlate with his own thoughts. Thanks to that technique the output resembles more a long prose poem or even a philosophical treatise than a novel, also. And the main axiom of this treatise is the fact that all withers and decays, Mrs Ramsay and two of her children would die, the characters of the novel frequently mention that they shall perish alone... Even art, in the eyes of the the ancient poets capable of delivering man from oblivion, for a 20th century man does not possess this power of saving one from being forgotten somewhere in the wasteland of ages. Yet the paintress of the novel does not give up from her task as she is led by the vision of painting the portrait of Mrs Ramsay. And this is the way to self-fulfillment, to the Lighthouse, to the source of light, after all, trodden by an artist.

It has just been admitted that art should not be considered as a means of deliverance from oblivion. The same man who asserted that would later continue his rather pessimistic outlook: “If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does progress of civilisation depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now than in the time of Pharaohs? Is the lot of the average human being, however, he asked himself, the criterion by which we judge the measure of civilisation? Possibly not. Possibly the greatest good requires the existence of a slave class. The liftman in the tube is an eternal necessity. The thought was distasteful to him.” (284) Mr Ramsay imposes the question of the importance of art for the general shape of civilisation and the importance of art for an individual human. In his consideration, it may be of a dubious influence for society but as Lily Briscoe proves it, art must be treated as a concept of the highest importance for the individual: “She would have snatched her picture off the easel, but she said to herself, One must. She braced herself to stand the awful trial of someone looking at the picture. One must, she said, one must.” (289) And if art changes a life of one man or woman, it definitely changes the society.

According to the novel, women are in possession of a special kind of wisdom outstanding all the treasures of intellect gathered through the ages. Lily Briscoe would say of Mrs Ramsay that: “(...) in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them out would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public.” (289) It seems that the painter is in love with Mrs Ramsay and in this respect, “To the Lighthouse” investigates a homosexual theme which was perhaps shocking to the readers in the 20th century. Nevertheless, it was Lily Briscoe who was able to witness love in the Ramsays' family and describe it so exquisitely, as only an artist could do it. According to her words, “love flooded them. They became part of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe which is the world seen through the eyes of love. The sky stuck to them; the birds sung to them.” (287)

The second chapter of the novel “Time Passes” serves as an interjection put between chapter 1 and 3. It is a dark poetic depiction of death approaching and lurking in every crevice – brought about by war, reflected in the decaying house and the death of Mrs Ramsay. The passing of time results in the passing away of men yet time remains inflexible while frail existence of man brings sorrow and tears. The fact that Mrs Ramsay died was summarized in one short sentence and so much pain within two sentences can be experienced in literature rather rarely. Mr Ramsay tries to touch his late wife but he can only touch emptiness which is an unbelievably sad scene. We are also informed that the fearless death gradually embraces young members of family: Andrew, who died at War, and Prue, who passed away because of some illness connected with child-birth. Yet Mr Carmichael expresses words that are out of harmony with the dominant sense of gloom: “The war, people said, had revived their interest in poetry.” (342) In the time of suffering people have the tendency to look for a shelter in things that are usually out of their interest. To be more precise, we look for safety in immaterial reality: religion, philosophy, or in this case – art.

The house being overgrown with weed and cobwebs serves as a symbolic object of marking the passing of time and the ferociousness of nature. Nature grows on death, on thick layers of dead generations and it does not pay attention if it was a great marble temple or an English wattle and daub cottage. Nature covers everything with a colorful blanket of flowers and weed, veiling our houses, theaters, military buildings with a cover of forgetfulness.

Finally, the third part of “To the Lighthouse” portrays Lily Briscoe finishing her painting after years of strenuous effort and thinking that “For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel. And if one can neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?”. (381) She would be right there, in the right place, at the end of her exasperating artistic task. She had exerted great pains in order to finish the painting and went through pases of serious doubts: “Why then she do it? She looked at the canvas, lightly scored with running lines. It would be hung in servants' bedrooms. It would be rolled up and stuff under a sofa. What was the good of doing it then, and she heard some voice saying she couldn't paint, saying she couldn't create, as if she were caught up in one of those habitual currents which after a certain time forms experience in the mind, so that one repeats words without being aware any longer who originally spoke them.” (359) Against all the difficulties, both mental and socila, she painted Mrs Ramsay and the Lighthouse in the background. The very last detail she added to the composition was a line on the sea, between Mrs Ramsay and the Lighthouse. This line is the second chapter of the story entitled “Time Passes”. It could be imagined clearly: in the foreground of the picture Mrs Dalloway, as the first chapter of “To the Lighthouse” concentrates on her being alive. Then, the sea of time with the line of Lily Briscoe, as the second chapter follows. And finally, the Lighthouse in the background – James Ramsay achieving his dream of going there and Lily Briscoe her dream of finishing the picture. Lily Briscoe puts her brush saying that she has had her vision and we could see Virginia Woolf herself finishing the novel. The painting of the picture reflects Virginia Woolf working on the novel herself which treatment makes “To the Lighthouse” even more fascinating, visionary and intricate piece of art reflecting on human relationships, the passing of time and love, the ever-present theme of the writings of Virginia Woolf.