To The Lighthouse To The Self
To The Lighthouse To The Self
To The Lighthouse To The Self
Lehigh Preserve
Theses and Dissertations
2004
Recommended Citation
Fennelly, Kristina, "To the lighthouse, to the self " (2004). Theses and Dissertations. Paper 848.
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Fennelly, Kristina
To the
Lighthouse, To
the Self
May 2004
To the Lighthouse, To the Self
by
Kristina Fennelly
A Thesis
of Lehigh University
Master of Arts
In
Department of English
lehigh Uniyersity
Apri130,2004
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge and thank Amardeep Singh, who served as the mentor of
this project and who first introduced To the Lighthouse to me. Deep guided me through a
short paper on the novel, which then expanded into a seminar paper for his British
Modernism course I took in the Fall, 2003 semester. Since then, Deep has guided me
through several versions of this paper and has led me to pursue British Modernism as one
I also wish to acknowledge and thank Beth Dolan, who read drafts of this thesis,
met with me to discuss particular passages from the novel, suggested auto-biographical
and feminist theory materials and allowed me to borrow her copies, and encouraged me
Fennelly, who have always encouraged my passion for reading and writing and have
Page 1 Abstract
Page 28 Bibliography
Page 29 Biography
Abstract
In this master's thesis, I trace Lily Briscoe's personal struggles with self and art in
Virginia Woolfs To the Lighthouse. These struggles unveil questions about the
"woman-artist," raised by Adrienne Rich, as well as tensions between essentialism and
constructionism elaborated on by Diana Fuss and Luce Irigaray. Ultimately, Lily's art in
and of itself points to a desire for fluidity, for "multiple essences" (Fuss 72), which do not
compete with one another for an essentializing subject. Rather, these "multiple essences"
coalesce to form a unified self as woman, subject, and creation capable of voicing that
self in resistant and subversive ways. Along Lily's journey To the Lighthouse, and to her
self, she encounters the Other disguised as Desire in Mrs. Ramsey; she confronts the
patriarchal male influence under the guise of Charles Tansley and Mr. Ramsey who seek
to distract her from her work; and she ultimately transcends all of these figures and forces
by continuously returning to Woolf's designated question: "What is 'herself'? [... ] what
is a woman?" Ultimately, I conclude that neither Woolf nor Lily ever fully answer such
queries, leaving them open and inviting to pursue again and again as an inexhaustible,
figurative journey To the Lighthouse.
Always (it was in her nature, or in her sex,
she did not know which) before she exchanged
the fluidity of life for the concentration of painting
she had a few moments of nakedness when she seemed
like an unborn soul, a soul refl of body, hesitating on some
windy pinnacle and exposed without protection to all the
blasts of doubt.
--Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
Situated in "The Lighthouse," the final section of Virginia Woolfs novel To the
Lighthouse (1927), the above excerpt reveals Lily Briscoe's intense personal struggle
with reconciling her self with her art and her art with her self Specifically, Lily attempts
to move beyond the "blasts of doubt," which both society and biology impose on her.
Arguably, such doubt is self-imposed since Lily is still unsure of her fate as both woman
and artist. Yet when considering comments offered by men like Charles Tansley
(representative of her British Victorian society) who claim "women can't write, women
can't paint" (91), the reader understands Lily's natural inclination to take such words to
heart, believing in this claim's general truth (i.e., all women cannot write or paint) and in
its personal applicability (i.e., Lily cannot write or paint). Lily's consideration of
whether her anxieties stem from her biological sex as female, or from her gendered and
socialized nature as woman, capture this transitional period in history for many women,
both artist and "angel" alike. In essence, Lily struggles between heeding what she is told
by men-"women can't write, women can't paint"-and knowing what she feels as a
Poet Adrienne Rich addresses this same anxiety when she describes the process
by which she created and \\Tote her poem "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" (1958-
1960): out of "scraps and fragments" emerged "a theme, an obsession" with "this
situation of the woman artist historically and in my time and place." In considering "this
.,
situation," namely her own, she ponders "what it could possibly mean to be a woman and
an artist in one body." Her concern with this duality residing in one physical entity
signals a tension between biology and society which Lily demonstrates. Both Woolf and
Rich, through their writing, capture the struggles within the female self-both body and
outside the boundaries of social and thereby untainted (though perhaps repressed) by a
patriarchal order" (2). Biological sex, therefore, reflects the essence of woman as
itself a historical construction [... ] What is at stake for a constructionist are systems of
representations, social and material practices, laws of discourses, and ideological effects"
(2). Gendered and socialized nature thus constructs, or fashions, females into women:
Both Fuss and Rich, like Lily in the above passage, intimate that this struggle
between biological sex and social nature, between the woman as female and the woman
as artist, can have a negative effect on the woman artist; and in her evaluation of the
poem, she directs the woman artist or thinker to "take herself seriously even when no one
else docs." Lily's experience as a woman-artist, and Woolfs process of\\Titing the
novel. reveal a genuine attempt by both creators to regard themselves "seriously:' and
both artists demoralize their pursuit of the personal and the pleasurable in their work, it is
crucial to trace Fuss's theory of whether "the natural is repressed by the social,"
according to the essentialist~ or, to decide whether "the natural is produced by the social,"
then society simply elicited, or drew out, Woolfs depressed tendencies. Either view
couples the natural influence with the psychological influence, thereby re-complicating
Fuss's formulations and our own understanding of Woolf from a feminist perspective.
well as a literary achievement for her during her most severe bouts with mental illness.
At these times, Woolf confirmed what Tansley preaches above, admitting once to Roger
Fry: '''Cant write [... ] (with a whole novel in my head too-its damnable) [... ] 'It will be
too much like father, or mother'" (Lee 471). Though deeply affected by the emotional
drain from extricating herself from her obsession with her parents, Woolf nevertheless
conceded that she wrote the novel with relative ease, "with speed and fluency" (Lee 471).
Thus, through her literary art form, Woolf, like her female protagonist, demonstrates how
women are just as capable as men in both professional and creative endeavors, relegating
the personal onto a blank canvas or page to produce both an aesthetic creation and
inspirational art foml. Her own writing, both of fiction and scholarship, supports Lily's
prevailing belief in herself and dispels Tansley's view, representative of the early
twentieth century, but more specifically the previous Victorian era. Hemlione Lee adds
to this premise in her biography rirgiml1 Woo(f "Virginia Woolf. in her retrospective
story of the Victorian family, diffuses her personal self' (474), ultimately diffusing and
then reconciling that self with her own past and the past of her gender-both of which
were thwarted in their initial aims of scholarship, the arts, and other noted professions.
experiences" as a woman writer. Foremost among her recollections is the moment when
she realizes that she needs "to do battle with a certain phantom. And the phantom was a
woman, and when I came to know her better I called her after the heroine of a famous
poem, The Angel in the House" (278). Woolf decries the angel in the house, Victorian
society's quintessential perfect woman, and examines this figure of mythic proportions
who not only thwarted women from engaging in professions, but also impeded women's
Though Woolf does not name the author of this "famous poem," as she terms it,
Patmore's mid-nineteenth century poem "The Angel in the House" (1854), written as a
tribute to his wife whom he believed possessed all the qualities and characteristics
indicative of a true angel on earth. Woolf summarizes the most obvious qualities of such
a woman: "She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was
utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself
daily" (278). Interestingly, Woolf uses the past tense to describe the angel, implying that
she no longer exists. True, in Woolfs 0\\'11 mind, the angel in the house is no longer a
force in her life because "I killed her in the end" (279). But Woolf also admits the
continuing, lingering presence of the angel (akin to that obsession with the woman-artist
described by Rich earlier) since "she was always creeping back when I thought I had
despatched her" (279). The angel remained a haunting figure, not only because of its
paternal and authoritative creator (Patmore and the patriarchy he represented), but also
because of the angel's feminine and maternal origins, which often masked themselves in
When she came to write a retrospect of these first writing years she
invented the famous figure of the Angel in the House (named after
Coventry Patmore's poem), the Victorian mother/editor who would slip
behind her [Woolf] in rustling skirts as she began to review a book by a
famous man, and remind her to be charming, tender and polite-and
whom the young woman writer had to kill, by throwing the inkpot at her,
before she could find her voice. (213)
Her quest to find "her voice" mirrors Lily's quest to finish her painting; both quests
produce what Vanessa reviewed To the Lighthouse as: '''a great work of art'" (Lee 474).
Lily and Woolf both experience relative success with their professional and
creative pursuits. Lee concurs by noting: "She [Woolf] is Lily Briscoe, painting her
picture, like Virginia Woolf writing this book" (474). Similarly, Virginia and Lily both
effectively dismantle "the angel in the house," gaining a healthy degree of self-
confidence in the process by relegating her mother and Mrs. Ramsey, respectively, to
Nevertheless, they still must confront an irrepressible question, which Woolf posed
before her audience at the National Society for Women's Service in 1931: "What is
'herself? 1mean, what is a womanT' (Woolf 280) Woolf intimates this same query four
years earlier in To fhe Ughflwusc; her direct questioning of the tension between se1fllOod
and womanhood four years later signals an ongoing consideration of this issue, which
century through the beginning of the twentieth century. Both reality and literature
"
transformed the Woman Question into the New Woman Question, examining what the
New Woman was and how she deviated from previous models of womanhood erected by
Victorian codes and standards (Richa,rdson and Ellis 39-40). Not only did the angel in
the house serve as the basis for womanhood, but it also functioned as the foundation on
which all of society rested. Essentially, the angel in the house served as the moral
normative role as angel in the house would severely jeopardize Victorian institutions,
Woolf extends her challenge and critique of this model of womanhood to her
female protagonist Lily Briscoe, imploring readers to engage in that task which she sets
before her audience in 1931: "it is necessary also to discuss the ends and the aims for
which we are fighting" (282). As evidenced in the opening passage from To (he
Lighthouse, Lily examines her own "ends and aims," questioning whether it is her own
nurtured her which makes her both approach and recoil from painting, from engaging in a
profession which otTers both pleasure and access to her own self.
Thus, Lily eventually comes to paint in order to reconcile her life choices with
social nornlS and expectations. Woolf herself admits to this act ofreconciling one's inner
dO\\ll to my depths & made shapes square up'" (472). Interestingly. "square" is
7
synonymous \vith reconcile, a figurative merging of various angles into one complete
shape. Both Woolfs and Lily's primary obstacle then as both artist and woman involves
dispelling the tension between conforming to and resisting society via one's work.
and patriarchy), hinder writer and artist from fully participating in their creative act free
of struggle. As Lee reminds us, this struggle was Woolfs primary goal for her character:
"Retrospectively, she saw it as a successful endeavour to do the two things at once she
makes Lily do in the last part of the book: understand her own feelings, and create a
This "structure" manifests itself in the image of the lighthouse and later extends
itself to Mrs. Ramsey-a point to which I will return in the next section. Lee directs our
attention well to chapter eleven of the final section in the novel when Lily considers the
power of "distance" on her painting, and also of physically distancing her self from her
work. By extension, Lily also reflects on how distance affects human behavior that has
influenced her own: "So much depends then, thought Lily Briscoe [,.,] upon distance:
whether people are near us or far from us" (191). The allowance of such physical
distance between two objects-in this case, herself and Mr. Ramsey "as he sailed further
and further across the bay" towards the lighthouse-affords her a new perspective on her
art and, by extension, affords the reader a new perspective on the truth of the novel. Lily
presents such truth succinctly at the end of that paragraph: "some common feeling held
the whole" (192). Yet what is this "feeling" which holds thc "whole" of her vision of the
distance between her self and the Other? Further, what is this "common feeling" which
seemingly holds together the "wholc" of the novel. uniting both creator and created-
Woolf being the creator who creates Lily (the created), who then becomes the creator
In the last part, moving between Lily painting her picture on the lawn and
Mr. Ramsey with his two children in the boat, she [Woolf] wrestled, like
Lily, with problems of balance, feeling that the material in the boat was
not as rich 'as it is with Lily on the lawn.' She wanted to get the feeling of
simultaneity. (471)
Indeed, the novel's "feeling of simultaneity" serves as the "common feeling" which
emerges from Lily's watching the images of the "sails" and "clouds" and "blue" of the
sky (191). Lee likens these images to Woolfs process of '''scene making,'" her version
of symbolism (472). Though akin to symbolism, Woolf goes to great lengths to dispel
the lighthouse as a symbol, boldly asserting: "I meant nothing by The Lighthouse. One
has to have a central line down the middle of the book to hold the design together" (472),
to offer that "common feeling."l If the Lighthouse means nothing, then why did Woolf
title this work in such a way that involves a journey-To the Lighthouse? Could the
lighthouse-as a separate entity unto itself-mean nothing, while the journey means
something? Lily hints at this latter consideration when she observes the daily routine of
It was a way things had sometimes, she thought, lingering for a moment
and looking at the long glittering windO\vs and the plume of blue smoke:
they became unreal. So coming back from a journey, or after an il1ness,
before habits had spun themselves across the surface, onc felt that samc
unreality, which was so startling: felt something emergc. Life was most
vivid then. (191-192)
1 For a hIller re\iew of interpretations and misinterpretations of the "lighthouse:' plc.ase see Anita Tarr's
"Getting to the Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf and Thomas Carlyle." Tarr C(lntends "Indeed, the major point
to consider in To the UghtilOllSC is Woolfs use of the lighthouse as primary among her ocular metaphors"
The emergence of clarity and of participating in this journey of the self recalls Joseph
according himlher great honor and respect. This approbation of character can be
attributed mostly to the journey he/she undertakes, a journey which Campbell terms as a
the known and returning back changed by trials and tests which initiate the
"unreality," from the familiar to the unknown, from consciousness to delving into the
simultaneously that renders any need for symbolism in the novel as unnecessary. The
obvious coding of the image of the Lighthouse, which Roger Fry directed Woolf to do in
her drafts, proved too much of a distraction to Woolf who responded: '''Whether its right
or wrong I don't know, but directly I'm told what a thing means, it becomes hateful to
me'" (qtd. by Lee 472). Ifwe accord the lighthouse with too much meaning, then we
absorb ourselves as readers wholly in this image and move away from the "central line"
of the story: the voice of the novel via Lily's projection of her subconscious
understanding of life onto the conscious landscape of the story. By silencing the Other-
the inner critic, the outer judge, and the far off lighthouse-we begin to observe Lily
listening to her self and giving voice to that self via art. Finding a new female voice thus
dismantles that voice of the angel, the female image that assumed mythic proportions via
\\Titers like Patmore and others \vhom Woolf strove against to assert her 0\\11 voice as a
10
Lily, like her creator, stands among few heroines of this genre who persists with
"the human apparatus for painting or for feeling" (193). More importantly, she stands out
because she survives, refusing to compromise her work, her freedom, or her self (both the
physical and intangible self). Both her self and her work confirm Woolfs observations
of her character: "it [the human apparatus] always broke down at the critical moment"
(193). Regardless, Lily believes "heroically, one must force it on" (193}-that is, follow
one's passion to the unveiling of the self and consequently to the birth of the soul which
no longer stands naked, "hesitating on some windy pinnacle," but embraces that "fluidity
of life" instead. In this way, Lily mimics Woolf when she wrote To the Lighthouse: "she
composed it with a joy and a fluidity that she encountered only intermittently in the
creation of her other fiction" (van Buren Kelly 5). Is it any wonder, then, how these same
elements ofjoy, fluidity, and artistic creation become infused and inseparable from Lily's
character, allowing the reader to fully appreciate and perhaps even participate vicariously
Before Lily embraces this life of "joy and fluidity," however, she faces certain
hindrances, namely due to her gender and the era in which she lives. The early twentieth
century \'witnessed the emergence of the New Woman, though this figure primarily
existed in literature in characters like Lady Brett Ashley of 77ze SU11 Also Rises (1926)
and Lily Bart of House (?fMirth (1905). However, the characteristic angel-in-the-house
Dickens's Dm'id Coppcrjield (1849-50) and Mrs. James of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's
11
"The Angel Over the Right Shoulder" (1852) popularized this image~ and even art
conveyed a similar ideal of virtue, purity, and self-sacrifice for women. Abbott
Henderson Thayer (1849-1921), an American idealist painter, is best known for his series
of angels and Madonnas in the late nineteenth century. His painting Angel (1887)
promotes both his personal and artistic vision of women as "sacred embodiments of
moral virtue" (Turner 648). If you were not an angel, you were a fallen woman and
could, therefore, never return to that original state of purity to which all women of the
nineteenth century ascribed. This dichotomy persisted into the twentieth century~ and, to
The New Woman, by contrast, afforded women another space-both literally and
and work. The New Woman embodied confidence, self-assertion, and belief in one's self
as a fully capable human being-no longer a weak, frail woman dependant on a man.
The New Woman is not as easily identifiable or definable as the angel in the house. In
their recently published collection of essays The New Woman ill Fictioll alld Fact: Fill-
de-Siecle Femillisms (2001), editors Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis examine this
category of women, pursuing not only the question "who was the New Woman?" but also
"who were the New Women?-a question which was far from settled at the fin de siecle"
(12). Richardson and Willis outline several common qualities of the New Woman, based
on the various definitions offered by their contributors: "her perceived ne\\l1ess, her
autonomous self-definition and her detennination to set her 0\\11 agenda in developing an
the story. Much of how we define the New Woman-and consequently Lily-is based
on how we define women other than angels in the house. In the nineteenth century, you
were either an angel or a fallen woman, one who "falls from her purity" and for whom
"there is no return" (Starbuck). Yet fin-de-siecle and early twentieth-century life and
literature loosens this strict dichotomy, affording a new category of New Women for
those who chose alternative paths. These new directions for women usually involved a
At the close of chapter three in "The Window," Lily paints a portrait of Mrs.
Ramsey, a woman who has willingly chosen marriage and motherhood as her life's work.
The pairing of these two very dissimilar women allows Woolf to capture both images of
womanhood: the traditional angel and the burgeoning New Woman. This pairing
demonstrates the tension women like Lily experience as they are forced to choose
between maintaining gender norms and asserting their own free will. Through art, Lily
chooses to affirm her independence, albeit she is judged severely by her counterpart, Mrs.
Ramsey, who firmly believes "people must marry; people must have children" (60)-two
aspects of life in which Lily wants no part. For the most part, Mrs. Ramsey fails to
marriage and motherhood. Her attempts to join Lily together \\ith William Bankes fail.
not because the two individuals are an ill-suited couple, but rather because Lily
experiences the "ne\\l1ess" to which Richardson and Ellis refer. }'lore in the concluding
chapter than in the preceding two sections does Woolf articulate the "newness" which
Lily experiences: "She felt curiously divided" (156). Understandably, Lily feels divided
between her gender and her self, unable to identifY whether "her nature, or [... ] her sex"
forces her into that exchange of "fluidity of life for the concentration of painting."
While Lily does not have a husband, she does suffer from a father figure, Mr.
Ramsey, whose attention and needs also cause her to feel "curiously divided" between
her home and her work: "she pretended to drink out of her empty coffee cup so as to
escape him-to escape his demand on her, to put aside a moment longer that imperious
need" (147). Moments like these when she is literally consumed with both an external
fixes Lily in the socially dictated role of daughter, which she seeks to escape from via her
own quest for "truth" (147). In this way, Lily diverges from that model of the angel in
the house, who is featured best by Agnes Wickfield in Charles Dickens's David
Copperfield. Dickens first introduces Agnes as Mr. Wickfield's "little housekeeper" and
later as "his daughter Agnes" (194). These terms define Agnes as the quintessential
angel in the house, by nineteenth-century standards, who tends tirelessly and selflessly to
the material and emotional needs of others. Lily deviates from this pattern, however,
because she is not self-less; in other words, there is no actual absence or lack of self in
Lily.
Lee observes how the paternal presence ofMr. Ramsey not only troubles Lily's
true desires to remain alone and unatTected, but even complicates Woolfs creation of the
novel: "Of all these complicated connections between the life and the fiction, perhaps the
1110st surprising-and, it may be. the deepest-is between Virginia Woolf and Mr.
14
Ramsey. The comic, tyrannical, charismatic father is often described as the enemy in the
novel" (474-475). Lily's escape from Mr. Ramsey-"She got up quickly, before Mr.
Ramsey turned" (147)----<;onfinns Woolfs refusal to compromise her art for the needs of
others [namely her father's need for "No writing, no books" for his daughter] (qtd. by
Unlike Lily, Mrs. Ramsey is not divided, fulfilling all her obligations as a wife
and mother, never "slur[ring] over her duties" (6) or acting deficient in any consequential
manner. She matches the same description of an angel which Woolf constructs. Like a
unselfish ... excelled in the arts of family life ... sacrificed herself daily" (Woolf 278). Her
position in the aforementioned scene with Lily composing her portrait reinforces these
angelic qualities: "she was supposed to be keeping her head as much in the same position
as possible" (17). In other words, her duty is to remain passive, calm, demure, and
immobile-very much like her actual life as wife and mother. Lily, by contrast, paints
actively and passionately, struggling to achieve not only a painting but to assert that
courage which ebbs at moments of creation: "Such she often felt herself-struggling
against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: 'But this is what I see; this is what I
see,' and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a
thousand forces did their best to pluck from her" (19). Alice van Buren Kelly's criticism
otTers insight into scenes such as these, which beg for resolving the general tension
between "two social worlds"-that of the past and that of the present (6). Van Buren
Kelly expounds on this point when she asserts: "The artist's task is to conquer the
end, while simultaneously distancing her fears and anxieties that interrupt her work: "as
she began to paint. .. there forced themselves upon her other things, her own inadequacy,
her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road ... " (19). Hereid
lies part of Lily's anxiety: she struggles to fulfill her duties as a good and attentive
daughter (indicative of an angel in the house) while willfully asserting her own personal
passion, her love for her art, and her desire to know both herself and others through art.
Yet what differentiates Lily from other New Women is the fact that ultimately she
resolves such anxiety and does not allow it to consume her as it does other women in
literature who struggle between tacit bondage and fully actualized autonomy. Instead,
Lily-through art-gives birth to her new self, her new womanhood. The description of
Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She could see it all so
clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her
brush in her hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's
flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who
often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from
conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child.
(19)
Interestingly, the above passage suggests a development not only of her art and her work,
but also of herself as a mature human being, fully conscious of her fears, passions,
capabilities, and hindrances. Like a child, though, she is initially terrified of the
Mrs. Ramsey provides such comfort and even a fonn of mothering. since Lily's
mother is absent from the story; unlike her father, Woolf does not even mention the
existence ofLily's mother. Instead. Lily develops a particular and perhaps even peculiar
lfi
bond with Mrs. Ramsey, whom she simultaneously adores and abhors for her meddling in
Lily's private affairs. Of crucial significance is the moment in the first section of the
novel when Lily recalls why Mrs. Ramsey had upset her due to "some highhandedness"
(48). Her train of thought leads her to consider Mrs. Ramsey's words of caution-"an
unmarried woman has missed the best of life" (49)-and reflect on her attraction to a
woman whose lifestyle diverges so clearly from her own. As with her artwork initially,
Lily also feels "childlike" in the company of Mrs. Ramsey: "she liked to be alone; she
liked to be herself; she was not made for that; and so have to meet a serious stare from
eyes of unparalleled depth, and confront Mrs. Ramsey's simple certainty (and she was
childlike now) that her dear Lily, her little Brisk, was a fool" (50). Yet soon we come to
realize that Lily is neither child nor fool, immature nor ignorant. Rather, Woolf shows
Lily's careful consideration of the outer world-via her painting of individuals and
landscapes-and her thoughtfulness in questioning what those women like Mrs. Ramsey
would never even think to question: their place in life, their inner world, which Woolf
(Woolf280)
What art was there known to love or cunning, by which one pressed
through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like
waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one
adored? Could the body achieve, or the mind, subtly mingling in the
intricate passages of the brain? or the heart? Could loving, as people
called it. make her and Mrs. Ramsey one? (51)
Ifunity can be found in love between Lily and Mrs. Ramsey, then we must deduce that
Mrs. Ramsey is "the object" which Lily "adorcd"-though not in a purely sexual way.
17
Lily's fascination and obsession with Mrs. Ramsey points to her larger quest to identify
"some common feeling [which] held the whole." Prior to this section, I have regarded
"the whole" as the whole of the novel. But if "the whole" really signifies Lily's "whole"
self, we must return to Irigaray's premise on essence. Irigaray argues that women have
the potential for subjecthood but can never be subjects unto themselves because they are
The inability to achieve "the wholeness of her form" would explain Lily's struggle to
specifically name "some common feeling [which] held the whole." Fuss attempts to
move beyond such limitations using Lacan's argument that "woman does not possess the
phallus, she is the Phallus. Similarly, we can say that, in Aristotelian logic, a woman
does not have an essence, she is Essence" (71). By not seeking first to possess and
control the way man as subject seeks to possess and control the female as object, women
gain "entry into subjecthood" through their identification as Essence with a capitalized
"E" to signal their naming of themselves, not their attempt at possessing essence with a
Lily first attempts, and ultimately fails, to gain entry into her 0\\11 subjecthood via
her obsession over Mrs. Ramsey, rather than exploring or attempting to find her Essence.
This obsession. she believes. \\;11 afford her access to an intimacy that would allow her to
Rumsey is the object noted in the carlier passage. then Lily ser\"Cs as subject one who is
1:\
capable of loving and conferring love on her possessed object. Further, since Lily is
successful in cultivating her personal and professional self by engaging in the possibility
of "knowing" through art in the first section of the novel, she increases her own
subjectivity and thus transcends Mrs. Ramsey as a mere object (an image of the angel).
In this section, Lily further questions: "What art was there, known to love or
cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? ... How then, she had
asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they
were?" (51) Lily's desire for intimacy and human connection points to a more pressing
question of the novel: How can we access another if we have difficulty accessing
Essence if we have difficulty accessing the essence of ourselves? Woolf complicates this
query even further when she speculates: "Who knows what we are, what we feel? Who
knows even at the moment of intimacy, This is knowledge?" (171) Perhaps, then, part of
the reason Lily likes to "be alone" and likes to be "herself' is due to this knowledge of
the self, of knowing who one is and why. Or, perhaps that knowledge of intimacy and of
self remains elusive and fluid, much like Lily's art, throughout the majority of the novel.
Like Woolf who does not answer such queries for us in To the Lighthouse,
Irigaray refuses to define and prescribe "essence," for such a move would prove too
limiting and patriarchal in establishing a clearly defined system of what is essence and
what is not. Rather, Irigaray attempts and encourages women to gain entry into
subjecthood via their 0\\11 individual essence "without actually prescribing \vhat that
essence might be, or without precluding the possibility that a subject might possess
multiple essences which may even contradict or compete \\ith one another" (Fuss 72).
19
Lily's indeterminacy over her self and over "some common feeling [which] held the
whole" parallels the reader's struggle to truly identify and name that relationship which
"multiple essences," rather than possessing that object which Lily seemingly desires in
Mrs. Ramsey. Lacanian theory also supports this move towards fluidity by de-
What this premise reveals is how Lily does not desire a particular object, or even subject,
in Mrs. Ramsey; rather, as Fuss explains, "Desire for the Other often manifests itself as
desire to speak as Other, from the place of the Other (some would even say, instead of
the Other)" (12). Thus, Lily's desires actually signal an intense move to appropriate a
female voice, which her own experience as a single woman cannot afford her. Lily is not
a mother, nor does she have a woman in the novel to call as mother. Regardless, her
voice as woman artist insists on being heard in these most intimate moments between
Lily and Mrs. Ramsey; we hear this voice of the woman-artist taking herself seriously
instead of the Other maternal figure perpetuating the natural essence of womanhood.
Initially, one might observe that the absence of a mother causes Lily to develop a
particular affection for Mrs. Ramsey as a maternal figure. She desires to throw "her arnlS
round Mrs. Ramsey's knees" (50) as a child would in order to read the figurative "tablets
bearing sacred inscriptions" that would re\'eal to Lily the "secret chambers" containing
In
answers about life, love, and happiness (51 ). Yet readers would be remiss in interpreting
this scene as pro-feminist with two women bonding together in mutual understanding and
admiration. In fact, Janis Paul's critique of Mrs. Ramsey thwarts our respect of her
character since she is undeniably an eternal angel: "adherence to social strictures stultifies
her own possibilities and keeps her from a greater unity with others... " (165). Since she
cannot achieve a "greater unity" with others, not even her husband, a maternal reading of
Lily and Mrs. Ramsey's relationship neglects to closely analyze Mrs. Ramsey's true role
in the this novel. Further, "greater unity" does not allow Lily's intense desire to form a
By contrast, does such intimacy provide knowledge and also become a viable
vehicle for the release ofa kind of sensual desire? Lily's physical longing to connect her
body with Mrs. Ramsey's, to throw "her arms round Mrs. Ramsey's knees" and thus
which critic Lise Well confirms in her essay "Entering a Lesbian Field of Vision." As
noted earlier, Lily seeks to broaden her vision as both artist and woman via knowledge,
which she believes Mrs. Ramsey can provide willingly. Well concerns her analysis of To
the Lighthouse with this quest for vision, ultimately deeming it a rejection of patriarchy
~1
Indeed, Frye's definition of lesbian is convincing in terms of how it positions Lily in
relation to Mrs. Ramsey. Yet to determine that Lily really harbors latent homosexual
desires for Mrs. Ramsey proves too convenient and simplistic. What is most useful in
applying Frye's definition of Lily to lesbian is how it helps us to see Lily's ultimate
that New Women in the early twentieth century were seeking: a field that is "eventful,
As both Weil and Frye assert, Lily's vision deviates from conventional patriarchy,
as well as from traditional gender roles. In this regard, her vision matches that premise
noted by Richardson and Willis, who define the New Woman based on one who "set her
own agenda in developing an alternative vision of the future" (12). Indeed, Lily develops
an alternative vision not only for her future but for her present, as well. Though Weil,
among many other critics of To the Lighthou.se, does not include Lily among the category
of New Woman, our reading of Lily's engagement with art, vision, and ways of knowing
(physically, sexually, and maternally) confirm the reader's perception of her rightful
she, unlike any other character in the novel, arrives at truth via art. Van Buren Kelly
aptly reveals what such truth entails for Lily and how Woolf imparts this truth to her
readership: "Art may hold out the possibility of a different sort of unity and intimacy than
that offered by the love that ?\lrs. Ramsey belie\'es in-different, though no less
important, no less satisfying" (97). Yet several characters in the story demonstrate their
"
inability to arrive at a definite truth about their own lives and their own inability to
accessing self-knowledge and self-realization. Mrs. Ramsey, for instance, questions her
actual achievements at the beginning of her dinner party. Set in a scene of perfect
domestic bliss around the dinner table, Mrs. Ramsey ponders, "But what have I done with
my life?" (82) Though she posits this question, the answer does not elude her. Rather,
she eludes the answer, never taking the time to focus exclusively on her self, her needs,
or her desires the same way Lily does. In fact, the narrator reveals how Mrs. Ramsey
"disliked anything that reminded her that she had been seen sitting thinking" (68). She
does not wish to be "seen" inert and contemplative since that activity diverges from the
only role she's ever known: an angel in the house. Further, the avoidance of thinking and
exploring her own interests points to a very real fear Mrs. Ramsey has of knowing-or of
Mrs. Ramsey also fears her children growing up because then she will have to
face an inevitable void in her role as a woman, that of mother: "she never wanted James
to grow a day older. .. Nothing made up for the loss" (58). From the context of the quote,
we understand that by "loss" Mrs. Ramsey is referring to the loss of her children's youth
as they eventually mature into adulthood. More crucial to our examination here is the
loss of self-in fact, the very undeveloped and non-evolved self-which Mrs. Ramsey's
character demonstrates.
This absence of self also reveals itself in Mr. Ramsey who, like Lily, experiences
,./ - -
self-doubt about his work. Unlike Lily. thoUl!h, Mr. Ramsev's
. strul!l!le
- --..., is more self-
centered than self-developing. According to Anita Tarr in her essay "Getting to the
Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf and Thomas Carlyle": "Mr. Ramsey is ... one who borro\\'s
')~
/ .. '
excuses in order to justify his own inadequacies" (270). Lily and William Bankes echo
he [Mr. Ramsey] had not done the thing he might have done. It was a
disguise~ it was the refuge of a man afraid to own his own feelings, who
could not say, This is what I like-this is what I am~ and rather pitiable
and distasteful to William Bankes and Lily Briscoe, who wondered
why ... so brave a man in thought should be so timid in life. (45)
Mr. Ramsey is, indeed, plagued by fears of inadequacy, specifically regarding his work.
scale, placing himself at "Q" and consoling himself with the argument that "Very few
people in the whole of England ever reach Q" (33). Not only does this moment
demonstrate his egocentric behavior, but it also shows his ethnocentric mindset,
describirig the "whole of England" as if it were the whole world. He fears people-
scholars specifically-will no longer read his books and his ideas will cease to circulate
in academia; thus, he would no longer be at the center of his self-made world. However,
he does not feel inadequate about his contributions to his family, despite the fact that he
rarely offers them much support, compassion, or love, as evidenced by his strained
relationship with his youngest son James. He consoles his work-related anxieties when
he thinks, "That was a good bit of work on the whole-his [my italics] eight children"
(69). Casting aside any doubts where his family is concerned, he relies heavily-and
This same patriarchal attitude extends itself to Charles Tansley, who Mr. Ramsey
is guiding in his academic studies. Tansley represents the obstacle to women which
society erects in order to keep women in the home, in the previous century's conception
her self-worth as a woman and an artist. Ultimately, though, Lily's own sense of purpose
prevails: "Women can't write, women can't paint-what did that matter coming from
him? .. Why did her whole being bow, like com under a wind, and erect itself again from
this abasement only with a great and rather painful effort?" (86) Woolfs metaphor of
wind as a social force altering and shaping humans signifies the primary obstacle Lily
questions whether patriarchy fully "believed" women to be incapable, or if "for some odd
reason he wished it?" (197) This question returns us to Lily's initial consideration of
whether "it was in her nature, or in her sex" to affinn the negative stereotype to which
purely reproductive rather than productive in their own right. She does not wish to
accede to a "nonnal" life filled with marriage, children, and only a household to run, as
Mrs. Ramsey does all so expertly. Instead, Lily dismantles the imposing and
essentializing role of the angel in the house via her art. While painting, she pauses to
reflect on the dead Mrs. Ramsey who sti11 haunts her soul: "But the dead, thought Lily,
encountering some obstacle in her design which made her pause and ponder... " (174).
As evidenced here, even through dead human beings, social nonns intrude upon her art
and her work of fulfilling her vision and satisfying her self. However, rather than fulfill
Lily does not give in to social mandates like Agnes Wickfield: she does not commit
suicide like Lily Bart (albeit her "suicide" is debatable): nor does she abandon her life's
work altogether, which Woolf herself feared many women did, like Shakespeare's
fictitious sister Judith. She does not become an object like Lady Brett Ashley,
conveniently at the disposal of all the men around her; nor does acquiesce to be
strengthened and comforted by "the angel over her right shoulder." Instead, she
concludes: "one would have to say to her [Mrs. Ramsey], It has all gone against your
wishes... I'm happy like this... (Lily] triumphed over Mrs. Ramsey who would never
know... how she [Lily] stood here painting, had never married, not even William Bankes"
(175).
In Lily, we begin to see what Tarr refers to as that "female genius"-a genius
which, like the lighthouse, "now carries a light across the dark room of our lives" (271),
more promising future for women and their work of choice. She satisfies Woolfs
direction both to "kill the angel in the house" and "to discuss the ends and the aims for
which we are fighting, for which we are doing battle with these formidable obstacles"
(282). Clearly, Lily aims not only for the lighthouse beyond, but also the lighthouse
within, seeking enlightenment of the self via her art, attaining an Essence, a personal
womanT Simply, Lily is "herself' and "woman," and "herself' and "woman" are Lily.
Fuss cautions against further defining of such ternls, even from the onset of her
scholarship: "Real essence is itself a nominal essence-that is, a linguistic kind. a product
of naming. And nominal essence is still an essence, suggesting that despite the
circulation of ditTerent kinds of essences. they still all share a common classification as
essence" (5). As previously demonstrated, Fuss uses 1rigaray to silence those invocations
of the Other to "define the essence of 'woman'" and listen, instead, to that "common
thread," that female voice which Lily fully commands and authorizes. 1rigaray puts forth
the above questions as challenges: '''1' am not 'I,' I am not, I am not one. As for woman,
try and find out..." (qtd. by Fuss 72). Along with Lily, we as careful readers ultimately
surrender to that pleasure of finding out "What is 'herself? [... ] what is a woman?" with
Adrienne Rich. Dir. Dan Griggs. With Eavan Boland. Videocassette. Lannan
Foundation, 1999.
Fuss, Diana. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Difference. New York:
Routledge, 1989.
Richardson, Angelique and Willis, Chris, Eds.. The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact:
Fin-de-Siecle Feminisms. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 200 1.
Starbuck, William Gayer. A Woman Against the World. London: Bentley, 1864.
Tarr, Anita C. "Getting to the Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf and Thomas Carlyle."
Midwest Quarterly 42.3 (200] ): 257-271.
Turner, Jane. The Dictionary of Art. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishers Limited,
1996.
van Buren Kelly, Alice. To the Lighthouse: The Marriage of Life and Art. Boston:
Twayne Publishers, 1987.
Weil, Lise. "Entering a Lesbian Field of Vision." Eds. Eileen Barrett and Patricia
Cramer. Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings. New York: New York University
Press, 1997. 241-258.
Woolf, Virginia. "Professions for Women." Ed. Mitchell Leaska. The Virginia Woolf
Reader. New York: Harcourt, 1984. 276-282.
Biography
Institutions Attended:
Teaching Experience:
• Teaching Assistant, Center for Talented Youth, Johns Hopkins University, 2001-
2003
Honors:
• Member of the National Honor Society, Spanish Honor Society, and French
Honor Society
• Member of the Phi Beta Kappa society; inducted in May, 2002
• Received Departmental Honors for senior thesis on the fallen woman in
nineteenth-century British and American literature
• Received the Sally Chapman \\Titing award from Skidmore's English Department
• Received the E. Beverly Field Women's Studies Award from Skidmore's
Women's Studies Department
• Received award for senior thesis from Skidmore's Periclean Honors Society
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