To the Lighthouse

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To the Lighthouse (1927) is a novel by Virginia Woolf. The freely, multiply discursive tale centers on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.

To the Lighthouse follows and extends the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, where the plot is secondary to philosophical introspection, and the prose can be winding and hard to follow. The novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations of the major characters. Foremost among these characters are Lily Briscoe, whose observations on the Ramsay family form the backbone of the book, and Mrs. Ramsay.

The novel recalls the power of childhood emotions and highlights the impermanence of adult relationships. One of the book's several themes is the ubiquity of transience.

Plot summary

Part I: The Window

The novel is set in the Ramsay's summer home in the Hebrides, on the Isle of Skye. The section begins with Mrs. Ramsay assuring James that they should be able to visit the lighthouse on the next day. This prediction is denied by Mr. Ramsay, who voices his certainty that the weather will not be clear, an opinion that forces a certain tension between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, and also between Mr. Ramsay and James. This particular incident is referred to on various occasions throughout the chapter, especially in the context of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay's relationship.

The Ramsays have been joined at the house by a number of friends and colleagues, one of them being Lily Briscoe who begins the novel as a young, uncertain painter attempting a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay. Briscoe however, finds herself plagued by doubts throughout the novel, doubts largely fed by the statements of Charles Tansley, another guest, claiming that women can neither paint nor write. Tansley, himself, is an admirer of Mr. Ramsay and his philosophical treatises.

The section closes with a large dinner party. Mr. Ramsay snaps at Augustus Carmichael, a visiting poet, when the latter asks for a second serving of soup. Mrs. Ramsay, who is striving for the perfect dinner party that no one could achieve, is herself out of sorts when Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle, two acquaintances whom she brought together in engagement, arrive late to dinner, as Minta lost her grandmother’s brooch on the beach.

Part II: Time Passes

As the first and third sections are separated by about ten years, the second section is employed by the author to give a sense of time passing. Woolf explained the purpose of this section, writing that it was 'an interesting experiment [that gave] the sense of ten years passing.'^[1]. This section's role in linking the two dominant parts of the story was also expressed in Woolf's notes for the novel, where above a drawing of a "H" shape she wrote 'two blocks joined by a corridor.'^[2] During this period Britain begins and finishes fighting World War I. In addition, the reader is informed as to the fates of a number of characters introduced in the first part of the novel: Mrs Ramsay passes away, Prue dies in giving birth to a child, and Andrew is killed in the war. Mr Ramsay is left adrift without his wife to praise and comfort him during his bouts of mortal fear and his anguish over doubts regarding his self worth.

Part III: The Lighthouse

In the final section, “The Lighthouse,” some of the remaining Ramsays return to their summer home ten years after the events of Part I, as Mr. Ramsay finally plans on taking the long-delayed trip to the lighthouse with his son James and daughter Cam(illa). The trip almost doesn’t happen, as Mr. Ramsay seems almost intent on finding excuses to delay it, but they eventually take off. En route, the children give their father the silent treatment in response to his criticism of the son of the sailor Macalister, both of whom have accompanied them on the trip. James handles the boat in a difficult spot, but rather than receiving the harsh words he has come to expect from his father, he hears praise, providing a rare moment of empathy between father and son.

During this trip, Macalister’s son catches a fish and cuts a piece of its flesh to use for bait, throwing the injured fish back into the sea. This serves as a metaphor for Woolf’s view of the world as a cruel, unfeeling environment where one must overcome one’s trials to survive.

While they set sail for the lighthouse, Lily attempts to complete her long-unfinished portrait of Mrs. Ramsay. She reconsiders Mrs. Ramsay’s memory, grateful for her help in pushing Lily to continue with her art, yet at the same time struggling to free herself from the tacit control Mrs. Ramsay had over other aspects of her life. Upon finishing the painting and seeing that it satisfies her, she realizes that the execution of her vision is more important to her than the idea of leaving some sort of legacy in her work – a lesson Mr. Ramsay has yet to learn. Lily states aloud to the poet Carmichael (and to herself), “It is finished,” a phrase uttered by Jesus in the Gospel of John during the moments immediately before his death.

Major themes

Complexity of experience

Large parts of Woolf's novel do not concern themselves with the objects of vision, but rather investigate the means of perception, attempting to understand people in the act of looking.^[3] In order to be able to understand thought, Woolf's diaries reveal, the author would spend considerable time listening to herself think, observing how and which words and emotions arose in her own mind in response to what she saw.^[4]

Narration and perspective

The bulk of the story is seen through the perspective of an omniscient narrator.

Whereas in Part I the novel is concerned with illustrating the relationship between the character experiencing and the actual experience and surroudings, the second part, 'Time Passing' having no characters to relate to, presents events differently. Instead, Woolf wrote the section from the perspective of a displaced narrator, unrelated to any people, intending that events be seen related to time. For that reason the narrating voice is unfocused and distorted, providing and example of what Woolf called 'life as it is when we have no part in it.'^[5][6]

Allusions to actual geography

Leslie Stephen, Woolf's father, began renting Talland House in St Ives in 1882, shortly after Woolf's own birth. The house was used by the family as a family retreat during the summer for the next ten years. The location of the main story in To the Lighthouse, Hebridean island and the house there, was formed by Woolf in imitation of Talland House. Many actual features from St Ives Bay are carried into the story, including the gardens leading down to the sea, the sea itself, and the lighthouse.^[7]

Although in the novel the Ramsays are able to return to the house after the war, the Stephans had given up the house by that time. After the war, Viginia Woolf along with her sister Vanessa visited Talland House under its new ownership, and again later, long after her parents were dead, Woolf repeated the journey.^[7]

Publishing history

Upon completing the draft of this, her most autobiographical novel, Woolf described it as 'easily the best of my books' and her husband Leonard thought it a masterpiece, 'entirely new...a psychological poem'. They published it together at their Hogarth Press in London in 1927. The first impression of 3000 copies of 320 pages measuring 7.5 inches by 5 imches was bound in blue cloth. The book outsold all Woolf's previous novels and the proceeds enabled the Woolfs to buy a car.

Bibliography

• Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse, {London: Hogarth, 1927) First edition; 3000 copies initially with a second impression in June.
• Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse, {New York: Harcourt Brace, 1927) First US edition; 4000 copies initially with at least five reprints in the same year.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

• To the Lighthouse (1983), starring Rosemary Harris, Michael Gough, Suzanne Berti, and Kenneth Branagh.

Footnotes

References

• Davies, Stevie (1989). Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse. Great Britain: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-077177-8.
• Raitt, Suzanne (1990). Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. ISBN 0-7450-0823.
• Dick, Susan; Virginia Woolf (1983). “Appendix A”, To the Lighthouse: The Original Holograph Draft. Toronto, Londo: University of Toronto Press.

External links

• Project Gutenberg Australia hosts a free eBook of To the Lighthouse; note that copyright may apply in countries other than Australia - Zip file, Text file (U.S. text, slightly different from the UK text)
• GradeSaver study guide - includes analysis, glossary, themes and quizzes related to the novel
• Spark Notes study guide
• To the Lighthouse at University of Alabama