The lighthouse

THE NOVEL
There is a family on a holiday in Scotland. There are friends near and other people around
them. The married couple, the Ramsay, and one of their eight children wants to visit the
lighthouse. The parents allow him to go if the weather is fine. They have lunch, they talk, this
all happens in a day (1910).
In another section, ten years pass. It is 1920, the mother dies, a brother is killed in war, a
sister dies while giving birth. Then, the father and the other children return. The father and
two children decide to go to the lighthouse.
“The important part is what is happening internally. “Examine for a moment an ordinary
mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad of impressions–trivial, fantastic,
evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant
shower of innumerable atoms, and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of
Monday or Tuesday” (“On Fiction”). Thought is not direct and uninterrupted, a great variety
of things go through our heads: Mr Ramsey is a philosopher, whilst Mrs Ramsay is a
housewife; still, her thought processes are much more interesting that her husband’s.
• The Window (120): one day and introduces the characters before the WWI.
• Time Passes (30): covers ten years, with the conflict of WWI in between.
• The Lighthouse (60): the return to the house ten years later.
Woolf recognises that authors used to focus on the external events. For her, modernism
should be about psychology and the phenomenology: the dance of the characters and their
minds.
Some critical view: “the importance of perspective” -> Lilly, a painter, analysing her work ->
vision and narrative intersect in the whole novel: “Each offers a perspective on the
perspective of the other. Just as characters must continually adjust to the changing look of
objects, distant or near, connected or severed, in sun or undercloud, so the narrative asserts
the multiple dimensions of life in time”.
Characters:
 Mr Ramsay: philosopher and university professor, obsessed with what his reputation
will be once he dies. The epitome of the Victorian father figure, he is the leader of the house,
a tyrant. He is childish in many ways, he demands attention; he wants people to be focused
on him, he is selfish. He is concerned about his intellectual stature, and his relevance in
posterity. He also has an eccentric behaviour: reciting a poem (for example).
 Mrs Ramsay: housewife and mother. She realizes that the beauty of this world is
ephemeral and should be protected. Ability to bring together different things into a whole.
After her death, lily and the others try to keep this legacy. She is based on Woolf’s mother,
she is an ideal of Victorian womanhood: the angel in the house, her life happens in the
domestic world. she worries about the well being of everybody, children, guests… The novel
gives voice to her mind, her expression.
o Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, a painter, admitted to being the most touched by the
portrayal of their mother stating that it was almost painful to have her so raised from the
death.
 James R: young child. Loves his mom and hates his dad, highly sensitive. Is there a
possibility of Oedipus complex? (Virginia had already read Freud). He clashes with his
father for his mother’s love and affection -> childishness of the father, jealous. He believes
that his father takes pleasure out of telling him that he won’t be able to go to the lighthouse.
 Andrew R: First child, killed in WWI. He aimed to be a mathematician, kind,
independent. Representation of the wasted lives in WWI.
 Roger R
 Prue R: oldest daughter, killed during birth.
 Nancy R
 Can R
 Lily Briscoe: the painter. The ideals of the new woman, she is no longer the angel in
the house, the representation of modernity (contrasted with Mrs Ramsay). In A Room of
One’s Own, Woolf argues that women, historically, have lacked material and social
conditions which are necessary in order to produce art: they need privacy, money, and
independence -> Lily refuses to get married (Mrs Ramsay tries to set her up with William).
o Lily does not have her own room, so she paints outside, “at the mercy of men’s
censorious glances” (prejudices towards modern art). McIntire: Liluy was originally intended
as a minor character–she was to be 55 and initially described as a kind old lady, but this
changes.
o Lily is placed outside the spectacle of feminine and masculine relationships,
fascinated by it but resisting incorporation into it (Bowlby).
 Paul Rayley: a guest.
 Minta Doyle: a guest, engaged with Paul.
 Chales Tansley: a disciple of Mr Ramsay. A young philosopher, he stays with the
family. He is unpleasant and highly insecure. He has working-class background, below his
companions. He can insult other people, especially women (Lily), whose talent and
accomplishments he constantly calls into question. His bad behaviour, like Mr Ramsay’s, is
motivated by this need for reassurance.
o Simpson: Virginia Woolf reveals a prevalent middle-class vias in her work. Her
depictions of members of working-class members are peripheral and unsympathetic. For
example, the servants are not described differently than since Victorian age.
o Tansley is a working-class provincial, he shows some social mobility, which provokes
anxiety that the middle-class characters attempt to contain. His class war and demands for
unity in reform are premised on his fierce assertion of his masculine superiority and exclusion
of women.
o Lack of aesthetic sensitivity, he attacks literature and the artistic possibility of women.
This indicates a fundamental insensitivity and an inability to see a difference in view, which
puts him in odd with the emergence of modernist women artists at the time. His portrayal can
be interpreted as Woolf’s middle-class insecurities about social mobility.
 William Banks: another guest. A botanist, an old friend of the Ramsay. Mrs Ramsay
hopes he will marry Lily. Although they become close friends, they never marry, as she plans
to keep her independence. In a section: he touches Lily’s art with a knife (almost like a
violation).
 Augustus Carmichael: an opium-user poet who visits the family on the Isle of Skye.
 Mrs Mcnab: cleaning lady.
 Macalister: brings the boat to the house.