Regardless of what you end up thinking of To the Lighthouse overall, I can't imagine that there aren't individual lines, images, passages, etc., that don't nearly take your breath away (you know, in the vein of "if I could just write one sentence like that in my lifetime, I would die happy!"). There has to be at least one pearl on every page. I don't know, for example, if I've ever encountered a better writer of similes.
How about that moment when Mr. Ramsay, in an endearing if ultimately unsuccessful way, tries to make amends with his son. The passage then moves into a positively stunning example of descriptive writing (amateur nature photographers like myself will appreciate the concluding image):
"Already ashamed of that petulance, of that gesticulation of the hands when charging at the head of his troops, Mr. Ramsay rather sheepishly prodded his son's bare legs once more, and then, as if he had her leave for it, with a movement which oddly reminded his wife of the great sea lion at the Zoo tumbling backwards after swallowing his fish and walloping off so that the water in the tank washes from side to side, he dived into the evening air which, already thinner, was taking the substance from leaves and hedges but, as if in return, restoring to roses and pinks a lustre which they had not had by day" (32-33)
Then there's the bee simile, which in many respects distills a major component of the thematic interests of this novel. We're essentially alone as individuals, it seems to say, and can only ever have access to the outer shells of others:
"How then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives, which were people" (51).
I'll be asking you to find and write about (in a paragraph to be turned in next Wednesday) a short passage/moment from the novel that speaks to you in some way: something you can relate to in some way, something you admire stylistically as notable writing, etc. But maybe we can catch and compile more such highlights and ruminations here ...
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There was one particular moment, starting at the end of page 64, after Mrs. Ramsay puts James to bed where she's comparing the light of the lighthouse to herself:
ReplyDelete"...she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her...but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination, hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness..."
This struck me as a very interesting image, where Mrs. Ramsay sees herself like the "remorseless" light flashing into her room, yet realizes that her happiness is not genuine and only something she puts on for other people. She's almost relying on the light from the lighthouse to coax true happiness out of her with its "silver fingers." I thought this was a fascinating way for Woolf to express this aspect of Mrs. Ramsay's character.
Yes, Jessica, there would probably be a good paper/study in that connection between the lighthouse and Mrs. Ramsay ...
ReplyDeleteAnother passage to which I'm always drawn is that wonderful section about childhood and parenting, beginning at the top of p.59. It begins with the line "they were happier now than they would ever be again" (which is itself a pretty startling to thing to say/realize: I wonder if there's a point in most human lives when we realize that to be true, of if most of us are more likely to think that stronger happiness always still awaits us?), but then continues with this:
"She [Mrs. Ramsay] heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they woke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after breakfast, which they did every day of their lives, was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish -- something they had heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They had all their little treasures ..."
Well, the parents among us can appreciate that, I'm sure. The passage economically captures the rhythm of the typical day for young children (and for the parent who tries to keep up with these energy buckets), and so wonderfully captures their energy, their way of appearing fresh and revved up at the top of the stairs each day, as if ready to make of that day a work of art (in that irrepressible, innocent way of theirs). "And so on, with one thing after another" until that moment when they're finally put to bed, still telling stories composed from the shards of their day. Woolf is just such a great chronicler of the ordinary human heart, and is able to make wise poetry out of the most basic stuff of our days.
Just 1 out of a billion:
ReplyDeleteFrom "Time Passes"
"Now, day after day, light turned like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite." (P.129)
Describing the house that once bustled, now empty, the only activity is sunlight. I believe this is yet another simile for the lighthouse itself, "light turned" like the light on top of the lighthouse, relating the building to the sun. Perhaps in a way that the lighthouse draws the family out there the way the sun draws life. Or in the sense that there the lighthouse itself is a very lonely place and secluded place, and at the moment so is the summer house.