Lehigh University

Lehigh Preserve
Theses and Dissertations

2004

To the lighthouse, to the self

Kristina Fennelly
Lehigh University

Follow this and additional works at: http://preserve.lehigh.edu/etd

Recommended Citation
Fennelly, Kristina, "To the lighthouse, to the self " (2004). Theses and Dissertations. Paper 848.

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Lehigh Preserve. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an
authorized administrator of Lehigh Preserve. For more information, please contact preserve@lehigh.edu.
Fennelly, Kristina
To the
Lighthouse, To
the Self

May 2004
 To the Lighthouse, To the Self

by

Kristina Fennelly

A Thesis

Presented to the Graduate and Research Committee

of Lehigh University

in Candidacy for the Degree of

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

of my fields of post-doctoral studies. I am very grateful to Deep for his patient

assistance, respectful guidance, and insightful dialogue about this paper.

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

to follow my passion and interest in both Lily and Woolf

Finally, I wish to acknowledge and thank my parents, Dale-Karen and Kevin

Fennelly, who have always encouraged my passion for reading and writing and have

always supported the "woman-artist" in me.

 Table of Contents

Page 1 Abstract

Pages 2-27 To the Lighthouse, To the Self

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

woman-women can write and can paint.

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

spirit-when confronted with socially-expected roles of femininity and womanhood.

In her opening chapter of Essentially Speaking (1989), Diana Fuss poses a

similarly complex tension between essentialism and constructionism. Essentialism, she

argues, "can be located in appeals to a pure or original femininity, a female essence,

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

separate from societal influence. Constructionism, by contrast, "insists that essence is

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:

"the natural is itself posited as a construction of the social" (Fuss 2).

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

even to name themselves "seriously" as the combined "woman-artist." When critics of

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,"

according to the constructionist. A5 biography on Woolf indicates, however, psychology

also influences these so-called "natural" paradigms of women. If we adopt an essentialist

perspective, then society repressed Woolfs psychological processes, thereby resulting in

her depression and lack of creativity at times. If we adopt a constructionist perspective,

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.

Intensely self-revealing, To the Lighthouse functions as a catharsis for Woolf, as

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.

In her essay, "Professions for Women," Woolf shares her "professional

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

ability to define and determine their own selfhood.

Though Woolf does not name the author of this "famous poem," as she terms it,

her audience and readership would have undoubtedly recognized it as Coventry

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

patriarchal forms of scholarship and authority. As Lee reveals:

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

their proper place--()utside the dominant consciousness of their personal selves.

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

remains elusi\'e e\'en now in the twenty-first century.

 Selfhood and womanhood were intimately connected at the end of the nineteenth

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

guardian of nineteenth-century codes and standards to ensure a healthy, happy family,

and by extension a productive and honorable society. Any challenge to woman's

normative role as angel in the house would severely jeopardize Victorian institutions,

such as marriage and work.

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

biology or the way external society-seemingly removed from the individual-has

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

life with the outer struggle

-_ via her.
literarY
. work when she admits in her diary:
. "'1... --got

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.

Intermittent periods of self-doubt, as well as other social institutions (namely marriage

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

structure that worked" (472).

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

(artist) and recreates the painting to produce a final creation?

Lee speaks to this similar cycle of creator-created-creator-creation in her

commentary on this final part of the novel:

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

her fellow neighbors:

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

Campbell's understanding of any hero who we come to regard ultimately as a hero,

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

"transformation of consciousness." In this transformation, there is a going out beyond

the known and returning back changed by trials and tests which initiate the

transformation of one's consciousness. It is this same altering of reality-from reality to

"unreality," from the familiar to the unknown, from consciousness to delving into the

subconscious-which Lily observes in others and experiences within herself

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

female \\Titer of the early twentieth century.

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

from other New Women prevalent in late-nineteenth, early-twentieth-century literature

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

in this rare human experience?

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

(represented by Mrs. Ramsey in Woolfs novel) remained a prominent staple in family

Ii fe and in society as a whole. Fictional characters like Agnes Wickfield of Charles

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

an extent, still exists today.

The New Woman, by contrast, afforded women another space-both literally and

figuratively-by which to challenge certain social conventions, namely those of marriage

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

alternative vision of the future" (12).

 Woolf tacitly conveys many of these qualities when she first introduces Lily in

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

divergence from the traditional occupation of housewife. As Lily demonstrates, she

chooses to paint-presumably for both employment and enjoyment-rather than serve as

wife and mother.

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

understand Lily's conscious decision not to participate in the coveted institutions of

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

demand and a personal need-"imperious" and absolutely necessary at that-temporarily

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

Lee 475), showcasing her heroine's choice of self over selflessness.

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

true angel, Mrs. Ramsey is "intensely sympathetic... immensely channing... utterly

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

paradox, to find the eternal in the reconciliation of the cyerlastingly contradictory, to

capture in words sensations that move faster than words" (21). Lily aims towards this

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

Lily's creative process mimics the transition from conception to birth:

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

unknown, seeking shelter with those most familiar and comfortable.

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

gives voice to earlier by considering "What is 'herself? I mean, what is a woman?"

(Woolf280)

The following passage offers some of the salient questions Lily-and by

extension Woolf-poses to herself and to the reader:

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

denied access to it. Diana Fuss explains:

Because only subjects have access to essence, 'woman' remains in

unrealized potentiality; she never achieves 'the wholeness of her fonn'-
or ifshe has a fonn, it is merely 'privation' (Speculum, 165). Woman is
the ground of essence, its precondition in man, without herself having any
access to it; she is the ground of subjecthood, but not herself a subject.
(71 )

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

lower-case "e" that signals mere object.

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

possess. rather than be possessed-a seemingly preferable power dynamic. If}'frs.

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

ourselves? By extension, using Irigaray's model, how can we identify ourselves as

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

Lily and Mrs. Ramsey share: mother-daughter, lover-lover, friend-friend. Ultimately,

Woolf encourages that "possibility" which Irigaray names as a subject possessing

"multiple essences," rather than possessing that object which Lily seemingly desires in

Mrs. Ramsey. Lacanian theory also supports this move towards fluidity by de-

essentializing woman. Fuss explains:

On the surface, Lacan's erasure of the 'The' in 'The woman' is a

calculated effort to de-essentialize woman. Eternal Woman, the myth of
Woman, Transcendental Woman-all are false universals for Lacan, held
in place only the dubious efforts of the 'signifier which cannot signify
anything'-the definite article 'the' ('God and the Jouissance of The
Woman,' 144). (11)

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

unit-to become "one"-v,ith this so-called mother figure.

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

place herself in a subservient position to Mrs. Ramsey, suggests a sexual attraction,

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

in order to embrace a fuller actuality:

Lily Briscoe's journey in To the Lighthouse is above all a journey in

vision; in [Marilyn] Frye's temls, it is ajoumey to lesbian vision. In the
course of the novel, Lily comes to see clearly and fully not only Mrs.
Ramsey, but everything that had once overwhelmed her about the
Ramseys and their \\11Y of life [... ] as she [Lily] begins to see all that has
been left out of the patriarchal vision ofreaIity, she becomes the very kind
of seer Marilyn Frye defines as a lesbian: 'a seer for whom the
background is eventful, dramatic, compelling... one who. by virtue of her
focus, her attention. her attachment. is disloyal to phallocratic reality'
(171). (242)

~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

rejection of patriarchy-including its most conventional institutions, marriage and

motherhood-and eventual recognition and acceptance of a more complete field of vision

that New Women in the early twentieth century were seeking: a field that is "eventful,

dramatic, compelling" (WeiI 242).

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

inclusion in the genre of New Women literature.

Also meriting Lily's inclusion among twentieth-century's New Women is how

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

getting to know-her self.

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

such sentiments when the narrator reveals:

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.

He reveals his innermost fears by measuring his accomplishments along an alphabetized

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

almost parasitically-{)n his wife.

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

of womanhood. Often pointing to women as that which makes "civilization impossible

 ~
with all their 'chann,' all their silliness" (85), Tansley causes Lily to temporarily doubt

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

faces repeatedly in the novel. Through Tansley, Woolf.-and consequently Lily-further

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

Tansley gives voice: women can't paint.

Nevertheless, Lily's emergence as a New Woman dispels this myth of women as

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

that destiny typical of many heroines in late-nineteenthJearly-twentieth century literature,

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),

obscuring the limitations of the past in order to illuminate-as a lighthouse would-a

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

identity, which transcends, beyond mere subject/object limitations.

We thus return to Woolfs initial inquiry: "What is 'herself? [... ] what is a

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

each new journey To the Lighthouse and to the self

 Bibliography

Adrienne Rich. Dir. Dan Griggs. With Eavan Boland. Videocassette. Lannan
Foundation, 1999.

Fuss, Diana. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Difference. New York:
Routledge, 1989.

Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.

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

Name: Kristina Ruthann Fennelly

Date of Birth: April 19, 1980

Place of Birth: Hackensack, New Jersey

Parents: Kevin & Dale-Karen Fennelly

Institutions Attended:

• Hackensack High School, 1994-1998

Graduated 4th in a class of 360

• Skidmore College, 1998-2002

Graduated summa cum laude and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in
English with Honors

• Lehigh University, 2002-2004

Graduated with a Master of Arts degree in English

Teaching Experience:

• Substitute teacher at Hackensack High School, 2002-2003

• Teaching Fellow at Lehigh University, 2002-2004

• 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
ENDOF
TITLE