‘Nothing is ever simply one thing’ James laments during the course of the novel. This idea resonates throughout To the Lighthouse: the symbols, the characters, even the structure of the novel have a duality to them which causes the conflict within the narrative. Woolf portrays a society in which objects appear to be alienated and cut off from human purpose thus causing characters to be uncertain of their identity due to feeling unconnected to the world around them. This therefore means to truly understand reality and an individual’s place within it, the internal and external worlds of characters need to be reconnected.
The novel entails the events of a Victorian family, the Ramsays, along with their guest which include Lily the painter and an assortment of intellectuals, on holiday on the Isle of Skye. The events of the novel take place in and around the family’s cottage by the sea which is constantly watched over by a lighthouse out at sea. Like the lighthouse, the narrative of the novel flashes between characters revealing their inner thoughts and conflicts. This narrative technique is Woolf’s stream of consciousness style: where narration flows between characters with no clear linear order. This gives insight into how an individual’s internal struggles are projected outwardly by their actions. This also reflects Woolf’s intention to form a novel that expresses life more accurately: to show that life is ‘made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one (that) became curled and whole like a wave’. The constant shifting narrative highlights this diversity and complexity of life in a way that a traditional narrative is unable to do due to it only reflecting the single perspective of the narrator. Therefore, Woolf’s stream of consciousness narration reflects the difficulties of ever knowing all of another person: that even Mrs Ramsay’s husband ‘would never know her’. So, by allowing the reader too see the multiple perceptions of characters, it allows us to move past the barriers of human relations and see how characters recognise their own identity and the extent to which this differs from their actions. This establishes the conflict within the novel as being the contradictions of these perceptions; between the objective and the subjective views on reality.
Woolf uses symbols to form bridges between these conflicts; they have physical presence within the novel but also hold a metaphysical significance. The lighthouse is a constant presence throughout the novel. When James, Mrs Ramsay’s son, arrives at the lighthouse he describes it as being ‘stark and straight, glaring white and black…the waves breaking in white splinters like smashed glass upon the rocks’. Here the lighthouse appears to be portrayed as being violent, almost apocalyptic, yet the author herself dismissed the idea that the lighthouse was symbolic at all. In a letter to Roger Fry, she claimed that ‘I meant nothing by the lighthouse’, that ‘one has to have a central line down the middle of the book to hold the design together’. If the lighthouse is the ‘central line’ in the novel, it is a dividing line which holds the structure of the narrative together. In this sense then, by the authors own claims, the lighthouse is symbolic of nothing: it represents the lack of substance and the need for destruction upon which life is founded on. This is why the lighthouse is described in this way by James, it is not intended to offer different meanings in its self but instead to provide a link between the different narrative voices of the novel.
This use of symbols to connect realities together is mirrored by Mr Ramsay’s philosophical work which explores the “subject and object and nature of reality”. Subject here refers to the subjective internal world of characters and object to the physical reality in which they exist. These different forms of existence are condensed by Mr Ramsay’s son, Andrew, into the image ‘of a kitchen table…when you’re not there’. This symbolises the separation of the physical object of the table from the subjective purpose that it possesses when people are around. This is also what is done with the lighthouse: its physical ‘stark’ presence is separate from the distant, hopeful horizon which it is perceived as being by James and Mrs Ramsay earlier in the novel. Moreover, this shows how multiple subjective perspectives can intersect at commonly held physical objects. This corresponds to the work of Edmund Husserl who argued that even if we approach life from a solipsistic view, there must still remain a degree of intersubjectivity to be able to formulate a unified reality. Accordingly, this means that to be able to understand each other, we must assume that elements of another’s reality correspond to those of our own, even though their subjective interpretation of reality differs from our own since they are based upon egocentric viewpoints. Therefore, Husserl’s ideas relate to Woolf’s use of symbols since they embody this intersubjectivity: they move beyond our own isolated perspectives and establish fixed points within reality that are shared by the characters. Hence, individual identity can be drawn from the variance in character’s interpretations of these common objects.
Lily’s painting is another example of Woolf’s use of symbolism. It acts as an external manifestation of her internal vision: a meeting point between the subjective and the physical thus embodying Mr Ramsay’s work. During Lily’s painting she attempts to match up both her artistic questioning and her identity within society. Lily’s personal uncertainties stem from her sense that she is isolated from civilisation as a whole. Mrs Ramsay tells her that ‘an unmarried woman has missed the best of her life’, Lily believes that this may be true since she is ‘in love with all of this, waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children’: she is in love with the unity that Mrs Ramsay is able to form by being the traditional matriarchal figure. Lily wants all of this but she also wants her independence, to be able to be an artist which is incompatible with the traditional gender role that Mrs Ramsay sets out. Lily’s painting gives meaning to her internal life, but she struggles to invest any further meaning beyond this. The reflection of wider society is represented by Mr Tansley’s refrain that ‘women can’t write, women can’t paint’, a sentiment held by a large proportion of men during the Victorian era. These words continually break into her thoughts when she paints, causing her to constantly doubt the validity of her work: ‘it was bad, it was bad, and it was infinitely bad!’ This further causes her to doubt whether it is worth usurping the order of society if her painting is insignificant. Her internal uncertainty is therefore intertwined with her artistic struggles so that the resolution of both must be jointly reached.
The structure of the novel is that of three parts, beginning with ‘The Window’ and finishing with ‘The Lighthouse’ and separated by ‘Time Passes’. In ‘Time Passes’, all the social certainties of the first section disintegrate and leave chaos and disorder. The death of Mrs Ramsay, who is symbolic of unity, causes the family unit to slowly crumble. The subsequent deaths of her children Prue and Andrew are significant due to both of them being prophesised as being greater than their parents: Andrew more intelligent, Prue more beautiful. This symbolises the loss of hope for the future generation, which was a strong feeling within society at the time, due to large amounts of the younger generation dying in the First World War. This destruction of the original demonstrates Freud’s principle that ‘the finding of an object is in fact a refinding of it’: that the true object must be lost in order to be recreated by desire. Hence, the world of Mrs Ramsay must be destroyed in order to be reconstructed again. This is reflected in Lily’s painting due to the fact that the vision can only be had after its initial inspiration has been lost. This is evident within the painting but is also reflected by the novel itself: the world formed in ‘The Window’ must be lost so it can re-established in ‘The Lighthouse’. This reflects how the initial interpretation of an object or event can differ greatly from that of a later one. Indeed, this also shows how Woolf use of symbolism within the novel creates the effect of separating the constant object or event from the changing subjective perspective of it.
At the end of the novel when Lily has her vision, the lighthouse becomes ‘almost invisible’, representing how at the climax of the novel the barriers between the subjective and physical realities fall, thus allowing characters to discover their true identities. This reveals Woolf intentions for To the Lighthouse: how by reconnecting the mind and body, we are no longer alienated from the world and are thus able establish our own identity within it.
Bibliography 1) Woolf, Virginia; To the Lighthouse; 1927; Hogarth Press 2) Woolf, Virginia; The Letters Of Virginia Woolf: Vol. Three, 1923-1928; 1977; Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich 3) Freud, Sigmund; Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality; 1962; trans. James Strachey; New York: Basic Books.