Commentary on To The Lighthouse Essay

To the Lighthouse

By Virginia Woolf

To The Lighthouse is a so-called stream-of-consciousness novel, one of the particularities of this modern genre is that they have no real plot. Plot always refers to action, it indicates the special arrangement of its elements. In the stream-of-consciousness novels, however, there very rarely is any action at all, the few things that happen in the world around the characters are mostly only devices to influence the mental processes of the characters.

Written in a full Suffragettes period, the book develops the distinction between genders and sees the different statuses of the woman- married, mother, angel of the house-all these transposed to Mrs. Ramsay, a pillar of the book. All her thoughts from the first chapter, The Window, shows a woman preoccupied by the future of her eight children, a women that cannot express her feelings in front of her husband, that impossible I love you and a women excessively preoccupied to like, to be likeable. Her introspective mirrors are combined with the external ones, the people she is surrounded by, find her beautiful and almost everyone is in love with her. The young intellectual Tansley has his moment of attraction when, walking beside Mrs. Ramsay, he saw a common man admiring her. William Bankes, the solitary middle-aged man, has his feelings towards Mrs. Ramsay triggered when he saw her in her early youth and her ravishing beauty impressed him. James, the youngest son, is, by the Oedipian complex, into his mother. And, of course, Mr. Ramsay, who has still strong feelings for his wife, after many years of marriage. We can say giving all this examples that Ms Ramsay has an aura that attracts everyone, even tough she doesnt do something extraordinary. She has a magnetic attraction in a way that no one can understand. Probably, now, we can see another modern symbol of Woolfs writing, a riot against the Eternal Feminine, against the mythical womens mystery.

Mrs. Ramsay has an antithetic heroine, Lily Briscoe. She is an independent woman, even tough the author doesnt say what is her social status or her qualification. In an era that promoted the institution of marriage, due to the Victorian principles, Lily is a rebel. She doesnt want to marry, even tough Mr. Ramsay, whom she admires, makes huge efforts to persuade Lily in this way because she thinks that the purpose of humanity is to get married and have babies. Lily paints, but we cannot say that she is a painter. Tansley says to her that no women can paint, nor write. She believes that her painting is a manifesto to his cruelty. With all that, she realised that Tansley has his point, in the last chapter of the book. Even tough she finishes the paint in her second visit to the house of Ramsay, she also see its finality, stored and rolled in the attic where no one will see it. After the death of Ms Ramsay, the war ( The First World War), the failed marriage of Minta, the counter example of Lily, in the last chapter of the book, The Lighthouse, Lily said Everything has changed, Mrs. Ramsay. This persona can be seen as a round one. She kept her status, as single woman, with no need of marring or having babies, happy with this situation. Probably, Woolf created Lily because sometimes she felt that she cannot be integrated in the mens writing world that she is unable to write how men do.

All the characters are followed by that introspective mirror that makes another modern element evident: the parallel existences seen due to the thoughts that everyone has. We can say that this book has the structure of a glossary, with fragments of thoughts and feelings. This is what makes modern literature hard to perceive: different characters, their thoughts mixture, the symbolic gestures, their actions and above all, finding the essence of the book, understanding the deep sense that the author created only for the initiated readers.

Another important modern element is the manner of writing. The style is per excellence, intellectual. It is full of poetic images the thoughts crashing like waves in Mrs. Ramsays head, the descriptive images of the characters, their gestures, the furniture of the house. Also, the problems that Mr. Ramsay develops thinking that in a lifetime, he is at the Q letter, and at a huge step from the R, and that, probably, he will never see the Z. And it is not a solitary example. William Bankes and Charles Tansley thoughts are purely intellectual, too. They even despise the small, little world that women are constantly trying to involve them.

In the end, the main symbol of this book, the Lighthouse, the symbol for the traditional family structure, reveals its meanings.

The reason why James and Mr. Ramsay have so much invested in the Lighthouse either in getting to it in the first place or in preventing others from going, is that they are both men. Moreover, they are both really into Mrs. Ramsay. One is her husband and the other is her son, but they feel they have to compete with each other for her attention. And each of them competes for Mrs. Ramsay attention.

What we are getting at, in a roundabout way, is that the Lighthouse is potentially a symbol for family structure, and especially for the authority of the father in the traditional family. Not to be rude or anything, but the Lighthouse is kind of a phallic symbol, and phallic symbols in literature often mean that there are issues that come along with different paternal complexes.

Mrs. Ramsay can be seen, too, as another dimension for the Lighthouse because the book underlines Mrs. Ramsay's own investment in the Lighthouse (and in the importance and authority of fatherhood) by emphasizing that she makes charitable donations to the Lighthouse keeper (who, apparently, has a son with "tuberculosis"). She's not only looking after her own children but she can also look after other people's children. In a larger sense, Mrs. Ramsay's charitable work is linked to the Lighthouse because it is part of her role as a traditional mother to take care of people. If the Lighthouse symbolizes the power the paternal figure has in the traditional family, the charity is like the mother's place in that power structure. The father is a beacon; he's what people are imitating, while the mother takes care of everybody.

The family as an institution, like the Lighthouse tower itself, is (or at least, seems) solid and unchanging. The progress of time is a major theme of To the Lighthouse. No matter how solid Family may seem as a concept, every family has its own private shape and trajectory, a tension between the ideal and lived reality that the Ramsay family certainly dramatizes.

Reading Virginia Woolf, I realised the reason for not reading her sooner. She is a hermetically author, a closed one for an uninitiated reader. Full of symbols, To the Lighthouse is an exhibit in this way. With all that, Woolfs writing was also a revelation in her way of finding the depths of the mind and creating links between past and present.