To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouseis a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. A landmark of high modernism, the novel
centres on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.
Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James
Joyce, the plot of To the Lighthouse is secondary to its philosophical introspection. The novel
includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations.
The novel recalls childhood emotions and highlights adult relationships. Among the book's many
tropes and themes are those of loss, subjectivity, and the problem of perception.
In 1998, the Modern Library named To the Lighthouse No. 15 on its list of the 100 best English-
language novels of the 20th century.
[1]
In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one
of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present.
[2]

Plot summary
Part I: The Window
The novel is set in the Ramsays' summer home in the Hebrides, on the Isle of Skye. The section
begins with Mrs Ramsay assuring her son 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,
Lily Briscoe, begins the novel as a young, uncertain painter attempting a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay
and James. Briscoe finds herself plagued by doubts throughout the novel, doubts largely fed by
the claims of Charles Tansley, another guest, who asserts 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. When Augustus Carmichael, a visiting poet, asks for
a second serving of soup, Mr Ramsay nearly snaps at him. Mrs Ramsay is herself out of sorts
when Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle, two acquaintances whom she has brought together in
engagement, arrive late to dinner, as Minta has lost her grandmother's brooch on the beach.
Part II: Time Passes
The second section gives a sense of time passing, absence, and death. Ten years pass, during
which the four-year First World War begins and ends. Mrs Ramsay passes away, Prue dies from
complications of childbirth, and Andrew is killed in the war. Mr Ramsay is left adrift without his
wife to praise and comfort him during his bouts of fear and anguish regarding the longevity of
his philosophical work.
Part III: The Lighthouse
In the final section, The Lighthouse, some of the remaining Ramsays and other guests return to
their summer home ten years after the events of Part I. Mr Ramsay finally plans on taking the
long-delayed trip to the lighthouse with his son James and daughter Cam(illa). The trip almost
does not happen, as the children are not ready, but they eventually set off. As they travel, the
children are silent in protest at their father for forcing them to come along. However, James
keeps the sailing boat steady and 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;
Cam's attitude towards her father changes also, from resentment to eventual admiration.
They are accompanied by the sailor Macalister and his son, who catches fish during the trip. The
son cuts a piece of flesh from a fish he has caught to use for bait, throwing the injured fish back
into the sea.
While they set sail for the lighthouse, Lily attempts to finally complete the painting she has held
in her mind since the start of the novel. She reconsiders her memory of Mrs and Mr Ramsay,
balancing the multitude of impressions from ten years ago in an effort to reach towards an
objective truth about Mrs Ramsay and life itself. Upon finishing the painting (just as the sailing
party reaches the lighthouse) and seeing that it satisfies her, she realises that the execution of her
vision is more important to her than the idea of leaving some sort of legacy in her work.
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]
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]

Complexity of human relationships
This examination of perception is not, however, limited to isolated inner-dialogues, but also
analysed in the context of human relationships and the tumultuous emotional spaces crossed to
truly reach another human being. Two sections of the book stand out as excellent snapshots of
fumbling attempts at this crossing: the silent interchange between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey as they
pass the time alone together at the end of section 1, and Lily Briscoe's struggle to fulfill Mr.
Ramsay's desire for sympathy (and attention) as the novel closes.
[5]

Narration and perspective
The novel lacks an omniscient narrator (except in the second section: Time Passes); instead the
plot unfolds through shifting perspectives of each character's stream of consciousness. Shifts can
occur even mid-sentence, and in some sense they resemble the rotating beam of the lighthouse
itself. Unlike James Joyce, however, Woolf does not tend to use abrupt fragments to represent
characters' thought processes; her method is more one of lyrical paraphrase. The lack of an
omniscient narrator means that, throughout the novel, no clear guide exists for the reader and that
only through character development can we formulate our own opinions and views because
much is morally ambiguous.
Whereas in Part I the novel is concerned with illustrating the relationship between the character
experiencing and the actual experience and surroundings, the second part, 'Time Passes' 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 an example of
what Woolf called 'life as it is when we have no part in it.'
[6][7]

Allusions to autobiography and actual geography
Woolf began writing To the Lighthouse partly as a way of understanding and dealing with
unresolved issues concerning both her parents
[8]
and indeed there are many similarities between
the plot and her own life. Her visits with her parents and family to St Ives, Cornwall, where her
father rented a house, were perhaps the happiest times of Woolf's life, but when she was thirteen
her mother died and, like Mr. Ramsay, her father Leslie Stephen plunged into gloom and self-
pity. Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell wrote that reading the sections of the novel that describe Mrs
Ramsay was like seeing her mother raised from the dead.
[9]
Their brother Adrian was not allowed
to go on an expedition to Godrevy Lighthouse, just as in the novel James looks forward to
visiting the lighthouse and is disappointed when the trip is cancelled.
[10]
Lily Briscoe's
meditations on painting are a way for Woolf to explore her own creative process (and also that of
her painter sister), since Woolf thought of writing in the same way that Lily thought of
painting.
[11]

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, the house on the Hebridean island, 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.
[12]

Although in the novel the Ramsays are able to return to the house on Skye after the war, the
Stephens had given up Talland House by that time. After the war, Virginia Woolf visited Talland
House under its new ownership with her sister Vanessa, and Woolf repeated the journey later,
long after her parents were dead.
[12]

Publication 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'".
[13]
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 inches was bound in
blue cloth. The book outsold all Woolf's previous novels, and the proceeds enabled the Woolfs to
buy a car.