To The Lighthouse/A Room of One's Own

To The Lighthouse Review (incorporating some of the teachings from A Room of One’s Own)

To The Lighthouse (publ. 1927) is perhaps the most autobiographical of Woolf’s novels, strongly based upon her childhood holiday at St Ives, Cornwall (recalled as the happiest days of her life) and her two parents. Some critics have added further to this autobiographical sense by noting how the lighthouse itself, in its ‘fitful, sudden [and] remote’ nature is symbolic of Woolf’s intimate friend Vita Sackesville leading Hermione Lee to conclude that ‘the writing of To The Lighthouse was the closest that Virginia Woolf came…to undergoing psychoanalysis’. The novel itself takes the form of a modernist tragedy employing a stream of consciousness style, allowing for a vast understanding of the thoughts and wishes of those described, along with the constant use of sea imagery throughout, allowing the reader to practically visualise this place described, thus illuminating Woolf’s passion for her former childhood holiday home at St Ives. Personally, I found it to be the easiest Woolf read so far (typing this at a time when my Woolf book count is at the humble number of four), somewhat due to its flowing and pure nature, and found the various teachings very beneficial.

Many of the characters in the novel are rather acknowledging of the transient nature human life in general and find different ways to challenge this in order to achieve a sense at least of immortality. This imminent sense of transience is perhaps most evident when Mrs Ramsay notes, having just left the room of her dinner party, that the party itself was ‘already the past’ or equally in her passing remark of ‘how could any hand have made this world?’, inferring an absence of religious belief and so no hope of an afterlife after the physical body recedes. Mrs Ramsay herself tries to tackle this overbearing transience through basing her life on social contact, relationships and her children. This is seen through her metaphysical attachment to her household as seen in the passage when she suddenly notices an imbalance in the building before realising that the explanation is the halting of a nearby conversation. All seek some kind of guidance from Mrs Ramsay during her tenure in the novel as showcased by the responsibility-ladling line of ‘the others stood looking at Mrs Ramsay’ and she also shows great emotional initiative frequently in the novel as seen in the line ‘for he wished, she knew, to protect her’, her psychoanalytical skills show no abound. Woolf herself would take the view that these qualities were practically inevitable for a 19^th/early 20^th century housewife noting that ‘all the literary training that a woman had in [this period] was training in the observation of character, in the analysis of emotion’ in A Room of One’s Own. Mr Ramsay, in contrast to his wife, attempts to achieve this immortal sense through his work and studies. This difference in viewpoint to his wife is perhaps most evident in the contrasting parallel structure of ‘he should be very proud of Andrew if he got a scholarship, he said. She would be just as proud of him if he didn’t, she answered’ relating to their son Andrew. Mr Ramsay is constantly noted as being in a state of great discomfort when away from his books and studies for too long as seen in the telling line of ‘three hundred miles from his library’, the library being the focal point of his life. However, it is not these academic studies that Mr Ramsay lives for, it’s the appraisal that they can result in as seen in one observer noting in horror how a man ‘could depend so much as he did upon people’s praise’. The other way in the novel through which immortality is attempted at is through the medium of art, as exemplified by the character Lily Briscoe. She is often portrayed as desperately ‘grasping onto her paintbrush’ almost as if it is her choice of weapon against the main enemy that is death and does ultimately succeed in defying time in the novel itself. Her painting, something that appears in both the first and third sections of the novel, is able to cross the time boundary that the second section accomplishes as seen in her ‘tunnelling her way into her picture, into the past’ in her second attempt at the impossible picture, through art she is able to relive emotions and memories that would be otherwise laid to rest. Therefore it would be inferred that Lily Briscoe’s path to challenge transience is the most successful, the novel’s last image after all is that of this painting. Certainly Woolf does by no means praise Mr Ramsay’s choice of lifestyle noting how he seems to be constantly ‘absorbed in himself’ and so disconnected from the process of living in general. Furthermore he is constantly wavering over how ‘he [will] never reach R’, the letter R being a symbol for intellectual intelligence, the closer to Z one is the greater their intellect, and this worry that he will never achieve greatness consumes him whilst it does not for the more laidback approaches of relationships and art as a choice of lifestyle. However, I believe Woolf’s stance on Mrs Ramsay’s choice of path is decidedly more positive, following her death in the second part of the novel her absence is decidedly felt by the reader along with the characters (as seen in the confusion resulting from the lack of maternal guidance over ‘what [to] send to the lighthouse’) and is, I would say, generally missed, thus indicating a success in her being remembered through the relationships and friendships she makes.

Another clear theme in To The Lighthouse is male-female relationships and the clear indications towards feminism that the book includes. Mr Tansley acts as the opposing force towards feminism and greater forces of equality in the novel being a more repugnant version of Mr Ramsay through their joint search for intellectual greatness and superiority, as seen in the line ‘he was Charles Tansley…one of these days every single person would know it’, and acting as a barrier to many of the creative interests of the women, most noticeably Lily Briscoe whom he chants to ‘women can’t paint, women can’t write’, this phrase acting as a barrier to her artistic ventures for many years to come, indeed Woolf herself in A Room of One’s Own notes how ‘a man’s figure came to intercept [her]’ in her literary wanderings. As a character Tansley fulfils Woolf’s analysis perfectly in A Room of One’s Own of the male, thirsting for any sense of superiority he can find. Men are said to use ‘women …as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size’ hence his frequently belittling nature. Although there are suggestions of practical subservience on the part of many of the female characters in TTL, such as Mrs Ramsay’s noting that her husband is ‘infinitely more important’ than her there are many oblique and blatant portrayals of the feminist ideology throughout. On the more oblique side of things is through the story Mrs Ramsay tells to her son James throughout much of the first section, where at one point one female character is noted as bravely stating that ‘if [her husband] won’t be king, [she] will’ whilst more overt examples include Mrs Ramsay’s noting the faults in the male equipment in the line ‘she pitied men almost as if they lacked something’ and the revealing quote of ‘she did in her own heart prefer boobies to clever men who wrote dissertations’, which is not necessarily inferring towards lesbianism but merely the sisterhood of women and the gender’s greater emotional intuition and warmth compared to intellectual, but disconnected, males who replace people with ‘dissertations’. Thus in reading both these two books I found Woolf’s stance to be unquestionably feminist.

Two smaller themes and ways of thinking in To The Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own are the effects of beauty and the importance of wealth on creativity. To start with the former an obvious, immediate effect of the beauty of characters such as Mrs Ramsay is envy, as seen in the stark quote ‘beauty offended people’. Beauty is portrayed as having wider effects as well however, restorative effects following pauses of admiration for the book’s beautiful characters as seen in one individual’s noting how Mrs Ramsay has ‘stars in her eyes and veils in her hair’ conflict can be crushed. This is seen in the protagonist’s early mutual dislike towards Mr Tansley being healed when he admires her looks. This in essence can be summed up by the line ‘[beauty] stilled life, froze it’, as one forgets practicality and the issues surrounding them in its stead. The importance of wealth on creativity is a key teaching from A Room of One’s Own, indeed the title arising from how ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’, an indeed it is true characters in To The Lighthouse such as Mrs McNab, a poor housemaid, would by no means be able to pursue the artistic realms in such a way as Lily Briscoe the rich maid can, ‘intellectual freedom’ after all ‘depends on material things’. Woolf also makes the point in her essay that with greater wealth woman comes to hate man less, thus explaining Mrs Ramsay’s decidedly hushed and quiet feminist stance, for after all ‘[she] need not hate man, [as] he cannot hurt [her]’ with her relative financial stability.

Symbolism is also a key part of To The Lighthouse including Miss Briscoe’s painting, the pig skull in the children’s room and the lighthouse itself. To start with, the painting can be merely seen to symbolise the feminist stance that underlines this book overall, however through reading A Room of One’s Own it seems Woolf would view such an approach towards art, as a means of vengeance, is unhealthy and ultimately unsuccessful. Indeed, Woolf notes in the collection of essays that ‘it is fatal for anyone who writes [based] on their sex’.  Thus although the painting might have started off with that intent, as mentioned in a previous paragraph, it comes to symbolise the immortality of art, as ultimately Lily is able to leave it for ten years or so, and upon returning to it experience the same emotions that she did all those years ago. The painting could also be seen as Lily’s substitute for a husband or lover, her celibate status throughout the novel being rather clear along with a means to defend herself, upon facing an impossible conversation with Mr Ramsay she turns to her painting as a means of escape. The pig skull, I believe, has a more clear symbolism, a stark reminder of death throughout the novel which ultimately is rather based around that theme, as seen in the numerous such deaths of the second section. Also, Mrs Ramsay by covering it with ‘her own shall’ showcases her maternal practicality and importance towards her children, the reassuring nature of her shall nulls the fear that the skull would cause. Finally, the lighthouse, I believe, symbolises impossibility as seen in the ethereal and distant imagery of the following section:

‘lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst…fading and falling, in soft, low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited by men’

The soft, fluid fricative alliteration, along with the foreign imagery of ‘some moon country’ and the mystical sense of its being ‘in the midst’ surely supports this. But impossibility towards what? This sense of impossibility can differ depending on which character it is staring off at the lighthouse but I believe most evidently, it is the impossibility of immortality. This is supported by how, in the second section, as a holiday house begins to decay more and more ‘only the lighthouse beam enter[s] the house’ indicating its continuity and eternality.

I definitely found To The Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own to be some of Woolf’s easiest reads (especially now since having read The Waves) and have heaps of praise for both books, though some slight critiques also. To start off with To The Lighthouse praise most certainly has to be given both to Mr and Mrs Ramsay as characters. The former’s tale was a rather melancholy one as the futility of his lifestyle, achieving immortality through his studies and dissertations became more apparent. However ultimately there was a sense of hope as near the end he finally praises his son James, something very alien to him, praising others that is, and this possibly hints to next few years of his life being more encompassed in relationships than solitude. This also suggests another meaning for the lighthouse, its cleansing nature when reached. Mrs Ramsay, however, was the star character for me. Her wandering thoughts as she does rather menial processes through the first half, noted as the ‘tune’ accompanying the ‘bass’, are wonderful and I found the stream of consciousness technique here to be truly effective as one got a real sense of the wandering mind of the bored housewife, clearly she will not focus all her time on her children and hosting, though externally this may be so. I found it rather humorous the interruptions of her wandering thought processes back to practicality and responsibility as showcased by the line ‘realising that James [her son] was tugging at her’ and found her mind to be deeply fascinating, her occasional disconnect from the world around her being illuminated by the line ‘became part of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe’. Mrs Ramsay certainly fulfils Woolf’s requisite in A Room of One’s Own that ‘fiction is like a spider’s web attached ever so lightly…to life at all four corners’. I also found her lapses into momentary depression due to the dull repetition that surrounds her to be rather relatable and understandable. Though these lapses weren’t overt and were only short-lived they were nonetheless incredibly powerful. The most powerful example would certainly be the following passage which occurs during the dinner party of the first section.

‘as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, she would have whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea’

The sea imagery evoked makes this wish for relief, for death and an end to all this duty and responsibility all the more vivid. Stream of consciousness is also effective as a technique I find in showcasing how repetitive the human mind can be, constantly returning to the most tedious of worries, as seen Mrs Ramsay’s frequent return to ‘(the bill for the greenhouse)’. This also showcases one of the many use for brackets in the novel, others being the sharp reveal of a death in the ‘Time Passes’ section. This is the section of the novel I had most difficulty with reading, it is rather abstract after all and with an overbearing sense of death and decay, however despite this I found it nevertheless integral to the novel’s power. Through To The Lighthouse one gets a real sense of Woolf’s presence among the characters along with the sea air almost being tangible, this latter strand is added to by the stream of consciousness technique as the flowing nature of the waves is reflected. My slight critiques would be the early exit for Mrs Ramsay (I felt that her character still had the potential to be thoroughly explored even more before her exit) and towards the character of Charles Tansley, who although rather humorous was rather too predictable and stereotypical for my liking. He had no breadth to him, merely being a stark opposition to all things feminist, though perhaps this is a general comment of Woolf’s towards the type of person universities were producing at the time, however in essence I can fully understand why many would call the novel ‘Woolf’s masterpiece’. A Room of One’s Own I found to be generally humorous and appreciated how Woolf managed to delve into the world of non-fiction and essay without losing the sense of magic and the otherworldly that comes with her fiction. Now having had a hands on reveal to the wanderings and ways of Woolf I feel that future readings will be benefitted enormously. Several interesting comments were made on the role of women and fiction, comments which for the most part I found great reason to agree with though there was one that I found slight reason to differ with. Woolf claims that the reason many of the early women writers were not successful is because they wrote with a vengeance towards the inequality of the time, something that poisoned and polluted their works. However surely writing with such a passion and retaliation, if dealt correctly with, can make a novel all the more powerful. Dickens, for example, writes with a stark social conscience in hand rather successfully I find equally Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry was a rewarding read for me early on this year, the sense of injustice being rather aggravating. However the ending moral I strongly agreed with, that ‘to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worthwhile’ and that only through the strives and persevering of today’s generation will a greater say for women writers be achieved.