Stream of Consciousness: To The Lighthouse

I just finished reading To the Lighthouse, a 1927 novel that was named No. 15 by the Modern Library in 1998 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2005, the book was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels since 1923. Though it was not an easy read, I was able to connect with the author and appreciate the plot development and themes with the help of SparkNotes, the online study guide. In addition, as part of my extended study, I read the biography of the author, Virginia Woolf, an icon of English literature and the women's suffrage movement in the UK in the 20th century. Through the extended study I gained some insights into Virginia Woolf, her family, her life, and her times, which were just as rewarding as those gained from reading the novel.

Born Adeline Virginia Stephen on 25 January 1882, in South Kensington, London, to Julia and Leslie Stephen, Virginia showed an early affinity for writing. By the age of five, she was writing letters. From the age of 10, she began an illustrated family newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News, chronicling life and events within the Stephen family, and modelled on the popular magazine Tit-Bits. After her father’s death in 1904, Virginia and her family moved to the Bloomsbury district, where she became a founding member of the influential Bloomsbury Group. She married Leonard Woolf, another member of the Bloomsbury Group, in 1912, and together they established the Hogarth Press in 1917, which published much of her work. 

In 1905 Vanessa (Virginia's sister) began the "Friday Club" and Thoby (Virginia's brother) ran "Thursday Evenings", which became the basis for the Bloomsbury Group─a group of associated British writers, intellectuals, philosophers, and artists in the early 20th century. Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics, as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality. Among its many unconventional activities, I was amused by the Dreadnought hoax that the group notoriously carried out, in which they posed as a royal Abyssinian entourage. Among them, Virginia assumed the role of Prince "Mendax" (which means “liar” in Latin). This image shows the building at 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London, where  John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), a Bloomsbury Group member and an influential economist, lived from 1916. 

A modernist writer, Virginia Woolf, along with Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Dorothy Richardson, was credited with popularizing stream of consciousness, a literary method of representing the flow of a character's thoughts and sense impressions, usually in an unpunctuated or disjointed form of interior monologue. Stream of consciousness narratives continue to be used in modern prose and the term has been adopted to describe similar techniques in other art forms such as poetry, songwriting, and film.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is widely accepted as a groundbreaking work of modernist literature. The novel unfolds in three parts, with the first section, “The Window,” introducing the Ramsay family and their summer on the Isle of Skye, the largest and northernmost of the major islands in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. Through the use of stream of consciousness techniques, Woolf delves into the characters’ inner thoughts. The second part, “Time Passes,” captures the effects of World War I on the Ramsay family. In the final section, “The Lighthouse,” the family returns to the Isle of Skye, desiring to visit an important local lighthouse. The novel is recognized for Woolf’s intricate prose as well as her rich and complex exploration of consciousness and the human condition. This image shows the cover of the first edition of the novel, created by Woolf's sister Vanessa, a Post-impressionist painter and a Bloomsbury Group member.

Interestingly, Woolf wrote To the Lighthouse partly as a way of understanding and dealing with unresolved issues concerning both her parents and her own life. Her visits with her 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. This image shows Godrevy Lighthouse on Godrevy Island in St Ives Bay, Cornwall, the model for lighthouse in the novel.

A mother of eight children, Mrs. Ramsay is the protagonist for the first half of the novel. She feels the need to play her role primarily in the company of men and to protect the entire opposite sex because "men shoulder the burden of ruling countries and managing economies." Mr. Ramsay stands as Mrs. Ramsay’s opposite in many ways; he tends to be short-tempered, selfish, and rude. Woolf fittingly describes him as “lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one,” which conjures both his physical presence and suggests the sharpness (and violence) of his personality. An accomplished metaphysician who made an invaluable contribution to his field as a young man, Mr. Ramsay reinforces his wife’s philosophy regarding gender: men, burdened by the importance of their own work, need to seek out the comforts and assurances of women. Throughout the novel, Mr. Ramsay implores his wife and even his guests for sympathy. This image shows Julia and Leslie Stephen, Woolf's parents and the archetype of Mrs. and Mr. Ramsay in the novel.

Lily Briscoe, a passionate artist and a guest invited to the Ramsays' summer house, is the protagonist in the second half of the novel. She worries over the fate of her work, fearing that her paintings will be hung in attics or tossed absentmindedly under a couch. She rejects conventional femininity, represented by Mrs. Ramsay in the form of marriage and family. The recurring memory of Charles Tansley, another guest and an admirer of Mr. Ramsay, insisting that "women can neither paint nor write" deepens her anxiety. It is with these self-doubts that she begins her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay at the beginning of the novel, a portrait riddled with problems that she is unable to solve. But Lily undergoes a drastic transformation over the course of the novel, evolving from a woman who cannot make sense of the shapes and colors that she tries to reproduce into an artist who achieves her vision and, more important, overcomes the anxieties that have kept her from it. By the end of the novel, Lily puts into practice all that she has learned from Mrs. Ramsay, and successfully crafts something beautiful and lasting from the ephemeral materials around her—the changing light, the view of the bay. Her artistic achievement suggests a larger sense of completeness in that she finally feels united with Mr. Ramsay and the rational, intellectual sphere that he represents. This image shows Woolf, left, with her sister Vanessa, right, the inspiration for the character Lily Briscoe in the novel.

The fourth main character is the six-year-old James, the smallest child of the Ramsay family. A sensitive child, James is gripped by a love for his mother that is as overpowering and complete as his hatred for his father. He feels a murderous rage against Mr. Ramsay who seems to take pleasure in delivering the bad news to James (that there will be no trip to the lighthouse). But James grows into a young man who shares many of his father’s characteristics, the same ones that incited such anger in him as a child. When he eventually sails to the lighthouse with his father, James, like Mr. Ramsay, is withdrawn, moody, and easily offended. His need to be praised mirrors his father’s incessant need for sympathy, reassurance, and love. Indeed, as they approach the lighthouse, James considers his father’s profile and recognizes the profound loneliness that stamps both of their personalities. By the time the boat lands, James’s attitude toward his father has changed considerably. This image shows Woolf, left, with her brother Adrian, right, the inspiration for the character James Ramsay in the novel.

The novel explores several themes, among them "the transience of life and work." Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay take completely different approaches to life: he relies on his intellect, while she depends on her emotions. But they share the knowledge that the world around them is transient—that nothing lasts forever. Mr. Ramsay reflects that even the most enduring of reputation, such as Shakespeare’s, is doomed to eventual oblivion. Mrs. Ramsay is as keenly aware as her husband of the passage of time and of mortality, yet her reaction is markedly different from her husband’s. Whereas Mr. Ramsay is bowed by the weight of his own demise, Mrs. Ramsay is fueled by the need to make precious and memorable whatever time she has on earth. She thinks that such crafted moments offer the only hope of something that endures.

The second theme is "the subjective nature of reality." Toward the end of the novel, Lily reflects that in order to see Mrs. Ramsay clearly—to understand her character completely—she would need at least fifty pairs of eyes; only then would she be privy to every possible angle and nuance. The truth, according to this assertion, rests in the accumulation of different, even opposing vantage points. Woolf’s technique in structuring the story mirrors Lily’s assertion. She is committed to creating a sense of the world that not only depends upon the private perceptions of her characters but is also nothing more than the accumulation of those perceptions. 

The third theme is "art as a means of preservation." Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay employ different strategies for making their lives significant: Mr. Ramsay devotes himself to his progression through the course of human thought, while Mrs. Ramsay cultivates memorable experiences from social interactions. However, neither of these strategies proves an adequate means of preserving one’s experience. After all, Mr. Ramsay fails to obtain the philosophical understanding he so desperately desires, and Mrs. Ramsay’s life, though filled with moments that have the shine and resilience of rubies, ends suddenly. Only Lily Briscoe finds a way to preserve her experience, and that way is through her art. As Lily begins her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay at the beginning of the novel, she means to connect elements that have no necessary relation in the world—“hedges and houses and mothers and children.” By the end of the novel, ten years later, Lily finishes the painting she started, which stands as a moment of clarity wrested from confusion. Art is, perhaps, the only hope of certainty in a world destined and determined to change. While mourning Mrs. Ramsay’s death and painting on the lawn, Lily reflects that “nothing stays, all changes; but not words, not paint.”

To the Lighthouse is historically situated in a time of profound change. World War I and its aftermath are crucial to the novel’s setting. Virginia Woolf, a prominent figure in the Bloomsbury Group, mirrors the intellectual and artistic currents of that particular era in her novel. The narrative serves as a reflection of the impact of the war on individuals and society. To this day, the novel remains relevant for its innovative narrative techniques and exploration of the complexities of human experience. The novel’s influence on the literary landscape endures, making it a subject of continued study in literature courses globally.

On a related note, I also watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a 1966 American drama film that was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, winning five. It is one of only two films to be nominated in every eligible category at the Academy Awards (the other is Cimarron). All four main actors were nominated in their respective acting categories, the first time a film's entire credited cast was nominated. The film was adapted from a 1962 play of the same name, a pun on the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Walt Disney's Three Little Pigs (1933), substituting the name of the celebrated English author Virginia Woolf. Though Woolf is not really the inspiration for the film, I thought that the success of the film enhanced Woolf's legacy, while her name boosted the popularity of the film.