Symbolism in Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse
Name: Bharti Dharaiya
M.A English semester: 3
Roll no: 03
Batch: 2019 - 2021
Enrollment No: 2069108420190008
Email id: bhartidharaiya123@gmail.com
Submitted to: Smt. S. B Gardi, Department of English, MKBU
Paper no- 9 Modernist literature
Mrs. Ramsay's character reflects the present time.
Topic : Symbolism in Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse
👉Introduction :
To the Lighthouse, novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1927. The work is one of her most successful and accessible experiments in the stream of consciousness style. The Novel To The lighthouse is written in three sections which take place between 1910 to 1920. During visits to their summer residence on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, that time many members revolve around the Ramsay family. Central motif of the novel is the conflict between the feminine and masculine principles at work in the universe. And also there are many symbols represented through the whole Novel.
👉What is Symbolism?
In the broadest sense a symbol is anything which signifies something in this sense all words are symbols.
In discussing literature, the term "symbol" is applied only to a word or phrase that signifies something or has a range of reference beyond itself.
👉Modernist literature and symbolism :
The Modern period in the decades after world war one was a notable era of symbolism in literature.
Many of the major writers of the period exploit symbols which are in part drawn from religious and esoteric traditions and in part invented.
👉Symbolism in the Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse"
Lighthouse : Titular significance
Lulu's painting
Ramsay's summer house
The Sea, the storms, the rocks, reefs and shallow water
The Boar's Skull
Rose's arrangements of the grapes and pears
Refrigerator
Fisherman and his wife
The Window
👉Lighthouse :
The lighthouse is the title of the novel. The Title of the novel is a Symbol of the novel. The lighthouse suggests that the destinations that seem surest are most unobtainable. Just as Mr. Ramsay is certain of his wife’s love for him and aims to hear her speak words to that end in “The Window,” Mrs. Ramsay finds these words impossible to say.
Lighthouse stands alone and tall in both light and darkness is a focal point which symbolises strength, guidance and safe harbours. It is a spiritual hermit guiding all those who are traveling by sea.
Metaphorically as the element of water represents the emotions.
Mrs Caroline Ramsay stands as a lighthouse. She stands as a star and emotional safety to other family members who visit the lighthouse after the death of Mrs Ramsay . She is the spiritual between other humans in the novel.
The lighthouse is a symbol for the spiritual strength and emotional Guidance which is available to us during the times we feel we are being helplessly tossed around in a sea of inner turmoil.
In the novel Mrs. Ramsay stands strong like the lighthouse admits emotionally shattered beings.
👉Lily Briscoe's Painting :
Symbolises women's struggle in patriarchal society.
Lily’s painting represents a struggle against gender convention, represented by Charles Tansley’s statement that
" Women can’t paint
Women can't write."
Lily’s desire to express Mrs. Ramsay’s essence as a wife and mother in the painting.
The painting of Lily Briscoe also represents dedication to a feminine artistic vision, expressed through Lily’s anxiety over showing it to William Bankes.
Lily makes the choice to establish her own artistic voice.
The American Heritage Dictionary tells us that it's a "tall structure topped by a powerful light used as a beacon or signal to aid maritime navigation."
👉Ramsay's Summer House :
The Ramsays’ summer house is a stage where Virginia Woolf and her characters explain their beliefs and observations.
In the "time passes" section the ravages of war and destruction and the passage of time are reflected in the condition of the house rather than in the emotional development or observable aging of characters.
From the dinner party to the journey to the lighthouse, Woolf shows the house from every angle, and its structure and contents mirror the interior of the characters who inhabit it.
During the expedition, Mr. Ramsay, James and can gazes at the house from the boat rowing towards the lighthouse.
👉The Sea, the storms, the rock, reefs and shallow water.
The reference of the sea is seen throughout the whole novel. The storm consists of both wind and rain. The air is the element representing the emotions, storms symbolize agitated thoughts and emotion. Storms damage both our mind and our subconscious. Virginia Woolf described the sea most beautifully and lovingly but it's negative point is violence. Sea is a powerful reminder of life.
The rocks, reefs and shallow waters symbolize the final dangers and miseries which seem to accompany the end of any voyage.
"It's always darkest before dawn".
Things become darkness and hopeless.
👉The Boar's Skull:
The Boar's Skull symbolizes transient nature of art and life. After Ramsay families dinner party Mrs. Ramsay checks whether children wake up but their children are bothered by the boar skull that is hand on wall. The boar skull reminds us that death is always at once in our life.
It also symbolically presents Mrs Ramsay's understanding or caring nature and power to suffer for others anywhere as she wrapped a boar skull with her shawl.
Shawl represents her desire and preservation of life.
👉Rose's arrangements of the grapes and pears / The Fruit Basket :
Rose arranges a fruit basket for her mother's dinner party that serves to draw the partygoers out of their private suffering and unite them.
The basket tests both to the “frozen” quality of beauty that Lily describes and to beauty’s soothing quality.
The basket of fruit in the third part of its transitory signifies the nature of beauty , art and truth.
👉Refrigerator in Army and Navy stores catalogue :
The refrigerator is also a symbol change. A change of technology. It improves human culture. The refrigerator is an instrument of science and it occupies the same sphere as the lighthouse.
James is guided in his choice by Mrs. Ramsay is associated with her role as a preserver of life and shaper of culture.
Mrs Ramsay is shown as someone who is training and shaping her children's minds.
She wants her daughters and women around her to support and sustain men, she wants men's support to be a successful woman in society.
👉Refrigerator in the catalogue : Army and Navy stores :
The catalogue in To The lighthouse does not have any particular date but it has a name.
Virginia Woolf was very much aware of the importance of money and the delight of consumerism.
👉Fisherman and his wife :
In the To The lighthouse the situation of the fisherman's wife and Mrs. Ramsay both make unreasonable demands towards their husbands.
In the fisherman's story the wife of the fisherman keeps asking her husband to return at sea and requests more and more from the flounder, the same situation of Mrs. Ramsay's repeatedly unreasonable desires.
Virgiy Woolf's use of the fairytale of a fisherman seems to be ironic. She is subverting the misogyny of the fairytale.
👉The Window :
Mrs. Ramsay spends her everyday afternoon sitting at a window, reading to James. She reads the fisherman's story to James every day. The window is the growth of members like Mrs. Ramsay in a very static position, while everyone else is caught up in dynamic movement: Mr. Ramsay is walking, Lily is painting, the children are playing cricket. Mrs Ramsay is the center of the whole story.
The window is the manifesto of the Idea that Mrs Ramsay is centred on the household.
Windows symbolism is shown at the very beginning of the novel and at the end of the novel windows seem like symbols.
👉Waves :
In the novel waves do a couple things in To the Lighthouse. For Mr. Ramsay, waves are a destructive power because they are part of the vast sea of human ignorance that eats away at a little spit of land symbolizing human knowledge. Waves are a negative force in the novel To The Lighthouse. If we symbolise waves as life, then the waves and life both go on but they are never the same.
👉A Final Word or conclusion :
We talked about the Lighthouse as a symbol for family authority and how control over getting to the Lighthouse has a lot to do with family power. But what about the whole eternal yet shifting thing.
Like the Lighthouse tower itself, the family as an institution is solid and unchanging. But individual families come and go as rapidly as a lighthouse beacon goes on and off – time changes the shape of all families.
References :
Lily Briscoe, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lily,December 04, 2020
Shmoop Editorial Team,To the Lighthouse Symbolism, Imagery, https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/to-the-lighthouse/analysis/symbolism-imagery-allegory, November 11, 2008.
To the Lighthouse,
https://www.britannica.com/topic/To-the-Lighthouse, December 04, 2020.
Virginia Woolf, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf, November 30, 2020.
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