Major Themes

Ephemerality

Few novels capture the ephemeral nature of life as poignantly as Virginia Woolf's To
the Lighthouse. Reality, when conceived of as a collection of fleeting moments,
seems as chaotic and fluid as ocean waves. Each of the main characters struggles
with this realization, and they all grasp for symbols of permanence and stability
despite their understanding of the transience of experience. Mrs. Ramsay, consumed
by a need to connect herself to lasting experiences, looks to the pulsating glow of
the Lighthouse to unite her experience with a sense of endurance. For her, the
steady stroke of the Lighthouse light represents stability and permanence. For this
reason, she connects herself to it, unites herself with it, in the hope of gaining a
similar sense of connection both to her present and to eternity. In fact, she seeks not
only to unite herself with the permanent objects in the physical world, but also to
unite her friends, family, and guests in the creation of lasting beauty.

Whereas Mrs. Ramsay's search for permanence lies in the emotional realm of
experience, her husband's is based entirely in the intellectual sphere. He longs to
transcend his own lifetime with an important philosophical contribution, yet feels
practically certain that this goal is unachievable. Lily Briscoe suffers from a similar
fear that her paintings will be thrown into the attic, never to be fully appreciated and
never to make a lasting impression.

By the culmination of the novel, however, Lily is able to surrender this need for
permanence and meaning, and she is thus finally able to fulfill her artistic vision. This
final scene suggests that Lily can only achieve a sense of fulfillment because she is
able to relinquish her need for a permanently significant existence. She finally
embraces the ephemeral nature of the countless experiences that constitute a
lifetime.

Subjective Reality

The omniscient narrator remained the standard explicative figure in fiction through
the end of the nineteenth century, providing an informed and objective account of
the characters and the plot. The turn of the 20th century, however, witnessed
innovations in writing that aimed at reflecting a more truthful account of the
subjective nature of experience. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is the triumphant
product of this innovation, creating a reality that is completely constructed by the
collection of the multiple subjective interiorities of its characters and presented in a
stream-of-consciousness format. Woolf creates a fictional world in which no
objective, omniscient narrator is present. There is a proliferation of accounts of the
inner processes of the characters, while there is a scarcity of expositional
information, expressing Woolf's perspective on the thoughts and reflections that
comprise the world of the Ramsays.

Time is an essential component of experience and reality and, in many ways, the
novel is about the passage of time. However, as for reality, Woolf does not represent
time in a traditional way. Rather than a steady and unchanging rhythm, time here is
a forward motion that both accelerates and collapses. In "The Window" and "The
Lighthouse," time is conveyed only through the consciousness of the various
characters, and moments last for pages as the reader is invited into the subjective
experiences of many different realities. Indeed, "The Window" takes place over the
course of a single afternoon that is expanded by Woolf's method, and "The
Lighthouse" seems almost directly connected to the first section, despite the fact that
ten years have actually elapsed. However, in "Time Passes," ten years are greatly
compacted into a matter of pages, and the changes in the lives of the Ramsays and
their home seem to flash by like scenes viewed from the window of a moving train.
This unsteady temporal rhythm brilliantly conveys the broader sense of instability
and change that the characters strive to comprehend, and it captures the fleeting
nature of a reality that exists only within and as a collection of the various subjective
experiences of reality.

The Presence of the Lighthouse

The Lighthouse is distant, old, and set against a landscape that fades to the farthest
horizon, encompassing the length of visible space. This is a majestic image of a pillar
of presiding stability and constant observation. It is a presence that extends beyond
the physical and chronological boundaries of the Ramsays and their world, observing
them and illuminating the rooms in which the contents of their minds are bared.

The Lighthouse offers a life force to Mrs. Ramsay and her family, propelling both the
plot (the novel opens with the conflict surrounding James's desire to go to it) and the
streams of consciousness that ensue. It has a clear and significant presence in this
world, yet it is inanimate, not conscious, and it is a figure characterized by its
distance from the immediate events of the novel. It seems somewhat elusive and
intangible, having indistinct boundaries and features. The setting of the Lighthouse
recedes into a realm "uninhabited by men" and therefore signifies a realm and life
force that the characters cannot enter themselves. It is distant, intangible, and
elusive.

Yet its qualities are permanent and everpresent. The Lighthouse is Mrs. Ramsay's
source of stability and permanence, and it is the force that defines and joins the
members of the Ramsay family. It is even present in their home during the ten years
that the family is not there--presiding over the abandoned house.

Art as Unity and Permanence

In the novel, art is defined by Lily (the novel's central artist) as something able to
unify disparate elements into a cohesive whole. When she looks at her canvas,
awaiting the fulfillment of her vision, she contemplates how she will incorporate
several people and objects into the work in order to create a unified and singular
product. This goal, she believes, is the responsibility of the artist, and her artistry
represents her way of finding a sense of meaningful permanence in her existence.

Unity is also directly associated with permanence in the novel. Mrs. Ramsay's most
active desire is to create moments of complete connection and unity between people.
At her dinner party, she is disturbed by the lack of cohesion, and it is not until a
fleeting moment when everyone seems to merge and assimilate into a single unit
that she feels fulfilled. Such moments provide her with a sense of stability and
endurance, for she knows that they will continue to exist in the memories of others
even after she is dead.
In Mrs. Ramsay's preoccupation with cohesion, and in the connection between
cohesion and art, Mrs. Ramsay herself comes to be a sort of artist. Lily acknowledges
this figuration near the end of the novel, creating yet another connection with the
deceased woman.

The Dichotomous Representation of Water

Waterhas a great role throughout the novel, in particular as the characters spend a
great deal of time looking at the sea that separates the Ramsay's summer home
from the Lighthouse. The symbolism of the water is complex, however, for it seems
to represent both permanence and ephemerality. Mrs. Ramsay enjoys listening to
the waves beating against the shore. The rhythm is steady and constant, serving as
a symbol of consistency and eternity. She learns to depend upon this sound, and it
soothes her, providing a deep sense of stability.

Yet water also represents a destructive and erosive force. As Mr. Ramsay stands
outside viewing the sea, he reflects that the piece of land beneath his feet will one
day be completely worn away and consumed by the sea. In this sense, the sea is a
constant and eternal force that magnifies its effects over time and ultimately proves
the ephemerality of whatever it touches.

Time

Time is one of the major themes of To the Lighthouse. Most of the adult characters
fixate on the concept of time in one way or another. Mrs. Ramsay cannot help but
notice that the present moment becomes the past, and she seeks objects in the
external world to ground her in the moment. She also frets endlessly about how time
will change her children's lives. She does not want James and Cam to grow up, for
she knows that they will inevitably suffer. In essence, she wishes to stop time for her
children, allowing them to be young and carefree forever.

Mr. Ramsay is obsessed with the future and, more specifically, the future of his
career. He desperately longs to achieve greatness as a philosopher, but is almost
certain that he will not, and he is preoccupied by envisioning the future and
predicting whether or not he will be recognized and remembered. He is grief-stricken
with the notion that no one will read his books after he has gone, and he laments the
fact that young scholars are not interested in his work because they are, after all,
the future leaders in the field.

Lily Briscoe is also preoccupied with time, but her fixation changes shape over the
course of the novel. Originally, she shares similar concerns with Mr. Ramsay,
wondering if her paintings will amount to anything and whether anyone will ever see
them. By the final section of the novel, however, her thoughts are located more in
the past and in her memories of Mrs. Ramsay. It is partially the effect of these
memories that propels her forward and brings her vision into focus.

The Subversion of Female Gender Roles

Many of the women in To the Lighthouse either overtly or silently subvert

conventional female gender roles. Lily Briscoe, for example, has no desire to marry,
but rather wants only to dedicate herself to her work (much like Mr. Ramsay and Mr.
Bankes). She is independent and self-sufficient, and she is able to disregard Mr.
Tansley's chauvinistic comments about women being unable to paint. Despite Mrs.
Ramsay's persuasion, she holds her ground throughout the novel, refusing to
become any man's wife. These choices and ideas were very unconventional in the
early 20th century.

Three of Mrs. Ramsay's daughters (Nancy, Rose, and Cam) also silently reject the
life that their mother chose for herself, in all of its domesticity. They know that they
want their lives to be different and more complex than what they perceive as the
limited realm of wife-mother, and they are headstrong and adventurous.

Moreover, the novel promises only misfortune for the women who accept the roles
carved out for them. Mrs. Ramsay dies unexpectedly at a relatively young age. Prue,
shortly after getting married, dies as a result of childbirth. Even Minta, who had been
a somewhat unconventional lady, suffers in her marriage, for Paul leaves her for
another woman. The novel seems to punish the women who accept positions as wife
and mother, while it abounds with young women who are sure that they want a
different existence.