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To The Lighthouse
To The Lighthouse
in To the Lighthouse
By Daniela Munca1
Abstract
This essay addresses Virginia Woolf’s personal stand in her answer to “women
can’t paint, women can’t write”, a reflection on the Victorian prejudice of the role of
women in the family and society shared by both her parents, Leslie and Julia Stephen. By
bridging a close textual analysis with the most recent psychological critical analysis, I
argue that apart from the political, social and artistic implications, Woolf’s attitude to the
Victorian stereotypes related to gender roles carry a deeply personal message, being
undeniably influenced and determined by the relationship with her parents and her need
to lie to rest some unresolved issues concerning her status as a woman artist. This essay
focuses on Woolf’s 1926 novel, To the Lighthouse, which is, undoubtedly, her most
autobiographical novel. Lily Briscoe, the unmarried painter who finally manages to
conceptualize Woolf’s vision at the end of the novel, has a double mission in this novel.
First, she has to resolve her own insecurities and come to peace with the memory of the
deceased Mrs. Ramsay, a symbol of the Victorian woman and Julia Stephen’s artistic
alter ego. Second, she has to connect with Mr. Ramsay and prove to herself that women
can, indeed, paint. As she matures as a painter Virginia Woolf is overcoming her anger
and frustration caused by the fact that she didn’t not fit into the generally accepted pattern
of the woman’s role in society and in the family life, and especially of the status of
women as artists. By creating one of the most challenging novels of the English
Literature, Virginia Woolf also proves to herself and to the readers that women can,
indeed write.
Being one of the earliest and most influential feminist writers of the 20th century,
Virginia Woolf has offered us with a literary heritage exploring in different forms such
themes as socioeconomic processes of occupational segregation, wage discrimination,
imposition of separate spheres and social exclusion. Her implied perspective on
distributive gender justice nourish her novels and diaries, but no other piece of fiction
reflects more faithfully her deeply personal stand in this regard as To the Lighthouse
(1926), a novel which marked her as a mature, self-fulfilled modern writer. This essay
addresses Virginia Woolf’s personal stand in her answer to “women can’t paint, women
can’t write” (Woolf , To the Lighthouse, 48), a reflection on the Victorian prejudice of the
role of women in the family and society shared by both her parents, Leslie and Julia
Stephen. By bridging a close textual analysis with the most recent psychological critical
analysis, I argue that apart from the political, social and artistic implications, Woolf’s
1
English Language Instructor American Language Center (ALC/ACCELS) Chisinau, Moldova,
[email protected]
Woolf’s personal vision of Women as Artists: the personal versus the artistic
dichotomy
The women versus artist dichotomy is furthermore explored in the first section of
the novel, “To the Lighthouse”, “here was Lily, at forty-four, wasting her time, unable to
do a thing, standing there, playing at painting, playing at the one thing one did not play
at”, and as she thinks that “ one can't waste one's time at forty-four” (160). Maze writes
about how Lily Briscoe intentionally represents the author as an adult, because “in the
crucial third section, "The Lighthouse," as she stands painting, Lily is intent on analyzing
her own feelings towards the Ramsays just as Woolf was doing for herself in the writing”
(86). Maze’s arguments are the following: Lily is the same age as Woolf was when
writing the book; at first Lily wonders why she did not grieve for the dead Mrs. Ramsay
and then she is represented as suddenly achieving grief, as Woolf thought she should
herself; and finally Lily is struggling to complete a painting in which Mrs. Ramsay's
absence from her familiar place is somehow the focal point, just as Woolf was struggling
to achieve a resolution of her novel on the same theme: “Painting and novel are
completed at the same instant” (86). Guiget also supports this claim by writing that “the
essential thing that lies behind the appearances and the superficial individualities of Lily
Resolving the female artists’ conflict with the male muse: thinking back to Leslie
Stephen
“The Lighthouse”, the last section of the novel, starts with Lily Briscoe’s
reflection on the house and its inhabitants after Mrs. Ramsay’s death. Lily feels lost and
powerless; everything seemed pointless, just like Mr. Ramsay’s snap at his children not
being ready for their trip to the Lighthouse: “What’s the use of going now?” (146).
Sitting alone among the clean cups at the long table, Lily felt “cut off from other people,
and able only to go watching, asking, wondering”. She thinks: “how aimless it was, how
chaotic, how unreal it was” looking at her empty coffee cup. These questions reflect the
post First World War chaos and shift of values which Virginia Woolf became a witness
of, a historical period marked by the Modern stream of thought she faithfully represented
in A Room of One’s Own and in her essays. Lily Briscoe is also searching for something
permanent, for something that would be equivalent to Mrs. Ramsays’ moments of
eternity she created during the dinner when the “Boeuf en Danube” was served. Depicted
as a young inexperienced painter in “The Window”, struggling with her lack of
confidence and self esteem, Lily comes back in the last section of the book much better
equipped. It is facing Mr. Ramsay, a symbol of the Victorian patriarchy that strengthens
her faith in the value and power of art. When Mr. Ramsay “raised his head as he passed
and looked straight at her, with his distraught wild gaze which was yet so penetrating”
(146). In order to escape his “demand on her”, Lily pretends to be drinking out of the
empty coffee cup. She starts reflecting on his words “Perished. Alone” and feels that
there were some “empty places” she wanted to bring together. This empty space could be
Woolf’s unsolved relationship with her past and more specifically, in this context, her
attitude towards her father. In order to focus on filling that space, Lily “turned her back to
the window” in order to avoid Mr. Ramsay seeing her, for she had to “escape somewhere,
be alone somewhere” (147). This is the very same moment when she decides to go back
to that unfinished picture which “had been knocking about in her mind all these years”.
Lily’s being haunted by the image of her unfinished picture is a very accurate
Works Cited
Abel, Elizabeth. Virginia Woolf and the Fiction of Psychoanalysis. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Dalsimer, Katherine. Virginia Woolf Becoming a Writer. New Heaven: Yale University
Press, 2001.
Gliserman, Martin. Psychoanalysis, Language, and the Body of the Text. University Press
of Florida, 1996.