Brain Pain discussion
This topic is about
To the Lighthouse
To the Lighthouse - Spine 2013
>
Discussion - Week Two - To the Lighthouse - Part 1, Ch 13-19 & Part 2, Ch 1-10
date
newest »
newest »
Jim wrote: "What do you think of Woolf’s handling of time in these sections? Did you find the casual, bracketed mentions of death to be jarring?"Yep, it was jarring. Seems like all of Time Passes could be seen as a bridge, both in style and content. Part Three: The Lighthouse picks up again stylistically from Part One. (not a spoiler...)
In last week's thread (Week One of To the Lighthouse), Carol and Jim mentioned that Virginia Woolf wrote this novel as a memorial for her mother, who passed away when Woolf was 13 years old.I find this to be very interesting, and as I read more about Virginia Woolf's family life (while I'm reading To the Lighthouse), it definitely makes sense that this is a memorial to her mother.
However, I'm only at the beginning of Chapter 17 of Part 1, and I don't find Mrs. Ramsay to be a very likable person. She's definitely very vain, and she seems to want to surround herself with both men and women who admire her, out of her own insecurity and her own unhappiness.
There are MANY thoughts of hers within the first 16 chapters which are very negative and pessimistic. She keeps thinking of how sad it will be when the children grow up, and how they will be unhappy once they do grow up. She wishes they would remain children forever.
Also in last week's post, Jim had commented on Woolf's memories of her childhood spent at the shore, and that her memories were very happy. I'm wondering if Woolf had a happy childhood, but became depressed, unhappy, negative, and pessimistic as she got older, which may be the reason she portrays Mrs. Ramsay this way.
I believe Woolf was 45 years old when she wrote this novel, and Mrs. Ramsay is 50 years old. Woolf's mother passed away when Woolf was only 13, so perhaps VW was too young to really understand whether her mother was happy or unhappy, but I'm thinking that Woolf is putting her own feelings and emotions (of unhappiness) into the mind of Mrs. Ramsay.
In terms of Mrs. Ramsay's physical beauty, I read that Woolf's mother was a renowned beauty. She died at the age of 49 or 50, which is the age of Mrs. Ramsay (currently in the novel), so it definitely makes sense that the age and the fact that Mrs. Ramsay's beauty are mentioned a lot in the story (so far). In other words, perhaps Woolf portrays the age and the outer beauty of her mother, but as far as her mother's thoughts and inner feelings, Woolf is assuming that her mother was unhappy at the age of 50 because Woolf herself is unhappy and disillusioned with life by the time (or before) she is 45 years old.
At the beginning of Chapter 17 (in Part One), at the dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay is thinking that "She could not understand how she had ever felt any emotion of affection for him" regarding her husband, Mr. Ramsay. But Mrs. Ramsay is pushing Minta Doyle and Lily Briscoe to get married. Is this because Mrs. Ramsay wants other women to understand the "unhappiness" that marriage can bring to a woman?
My favorite characters (so far) are Lily Briscoe and William Bankes. I don't know much about Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell, who was a painter and part of the Bloomsbury group, but I'm wondering if Lily represents Vanessa in some way.
Jim wrote: "What do you think of Woolf’s handling of time in these sections? Did you find the casual, bracketed mentions of death to be jarring?"I found the author's technique very interesting, sort of like she reversed the foreground and the background to produce a negative image. The big events, like deaths, happen in the background, while the slow march of time and shadows through the house is the foreground. The slow unwinding of the scarf from around the skull is also a nice touch.
I was really struck by the fact that the last time we see Mrs Ramsay, at the end of Chapter 19, she has "triumphed" by conveying her love to Mr Ramsay without having said it. I feel like that circled back to the amazing passage at the beginning of Chapter 11, when she felt "some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity”.I think she reached into that vast wedge-shaped cone of darkness to find the way to connect with her husband.
Mod
I fin..."
It's always tricky to match-up biographical details with fictional works, but in the introduction to the Vintage edition I'm reading, Vanessa Bell reportedly cried when she read this book because it evoked those summers of their childhood so effectively.
A memorial doesn't have to be positive to be loving. Maybe Mrs. Woolf was vain and insecure and unhappy, or maybe that was just a 13-year old's perception of her mother. Raising children is an energy drain on all mothers - or so they'll tell you. Woolf's imagining of the relation between her parents is quite amazing, especially the "psychic sex" scene that James witnesses between his parents in chapter 7. That is the adult Woolf creating, not remembering.
The Minta and marriage question is an interesting one. My sense is that Mrs. Ramsay believes that marriage is the proper state for men and women to exist in. Whether they are happy or not is secondary to the "correctness" of marriage, if that makes sense.
In general, Mrs. Ramsay seems to be always on the verge of explosion - or maybe implosion - from trying to create/maintain some sense of order and harmony in the household. Her issue about opening windows and closing doors speaks of trying to control, but being thwarted by the loved ones she's trying to protect. Woolf shows us that tension by having Mrs. Ramsay's inner monologue jumping around from topic to topic like a caged bird.
This novel is densely packed, isn't it?
Mod
It's a wonderful piece of writing, isn't it? And juxtaposing the march of time with Mrs. McNab trying to halt the physical deterioration of the neglected house makes it that much richer.
@Jt - I'm really curious to see how Lily's paintings resolve both as objects and as fictional devices. The "wedge-shaped cone of darkness" is beautiful and terrifying in what it implies.
Another somewhat left-field response I had to the deterioration of the house in Part Two: it reminded me of one of the stories in Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, "There Will Come Soft Rains" -http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/56...
- which in turn led me to the original source of the title of that story, a poem written just after World War I dealing with wartime death & loss:
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
-Sara Teasdale, 1920
Full circle!
Mod
..."
Nice find!
I would imagine Woolf could have known that poem, timing-wise.
I know the loss of her brother in the war was a heavy blow, especially wondering if he died without pain or if he suffered. I imagine writing of Andrew's death, even in brackets, must have caused her a lot of grief.
If we are assuming Mrs. Ramsay represents Woolf's mother, which of the daughters represents Virginia?
Mod
I've been thinking about your question for a few days, and now that I've begun reading Part III, I think that Lily Briscoe might be considered as a stand-in for Woolf. Lily is the observer, the artist, and the chronicler of the events in a way that none of the daughters are represented. I wouldn't think of it as an exact representation of Woolf, but more of a literary device to have a detached, non family member serving as Woolf's surrogate voice and eye.
I'm a little behind as usual, but am noticing how deftly Woolf contrasts the men's "work" --how important it seems, how it feeds them and defines them, how they long to escape to it--and Mrs. Ramsay's work--which drains her of everything she has, does not enter the consciousness of anyone as "work" (it is just "life"), and leaves her wondering who she is as she struggles to define herself. And as we saw in the previous section she escapes to the dark. In a sense her existential crisis is as grave as Mr. Ramsay's but it is set in completely different terms, and is internal as opposed to external (Mr. Ramsay).
I must also say that I don't find myself judging Mrs. Ramsay, or even disliking her. I feel amazed, instead at Woolf's ability to draw such a nuanced picture of a mother--her mother--when Woolf herself led a very different life.
Mod
The contrast is drawn very sharply, for sure. Mr. Ramsay can march up and down the terrace fretting about how to reach "R" from "Q", while Mrs. Ramsay has to hold literally everything and everybody together - especially ministering to his "brass beak" ego.
I like the image of the light coming on (candles lit) and the lost ships (children) coming home. I'm interested in how light imagery will play in Time Passes (not quite there yet).
In chapter 18 Prue's words almost lifted off the page. "That's my mother." "What an extraordinary stroke of fortune it was for her to have her."
Of all the accolades Mrs. Ramsay receives so far, whether from others' minds or imagined by herself, this one seemed the most real, the most intimate and believable of them all. I don't remember Prue having any other voice or thoughts in the story.
Could this be Virginia?
After reading these chapters, and coming to the sudden death of Mrs. Ramsay, my mind went straight to the boar's skull in the bedroom, wrapped in her green shawl, as some shadow of Mrs. Ramsay still protecting Cam from its frightfulness, and at the same time giving James his right to keep it.
One last comment: I liked the way V. W. started chapter 14 with the children singing a song about "Dam your eyes, damn your eyes" and Paul experiencing the worst moment in his life at the end of the same chaper,when he asked Minta to marry him. He felt Mrs. Ramsay made him do it because "He had felt her eyes on him all day to-day"
Linda wrote: "In chapter 18 Prue's words almost lifted off the page. "That's my mother." "What an extraordinary stroke of fortune it was for her to have her."
Of all the accolades Mrs. Ramsay receives so far..."
Linda, I had the same thought.
Jim wrote: "Interesting how these two sections of the novel treat time so differently. The dinner at the end of Part One seems like it lasts for a very long time. Part Two, in the same number of pages, covers a good ten years or so in what feels like the blink of an eye. What do you think of Woolf’s handling of time in these sections? Did you find the casual, bracketed mentions of death to be jarring?"I like the way time is treated so differently. The moments of human fellowship that lengthen into our memories--human time--in The Window vs. nature's time in Time Passing. In this sense I think the bracketed deaths seem entirely appropriate; humans are just a blink in nature's time.
I loved Time Passing in general: the little airs invading the house and touching everything with feather light fingers, the aged Mrs. McNab lurching and rolling through the house like a ship at sea and leering "at nothing directly" (the very opposite of Mrs. Ramsay), the shawl falling from the skull, the wave imagery (especially the leaf being turned in the wave). Chapter 4 is perfect and I really loved the line about the light bending "to its own image in adoration on the bedroom wall."
Erika wrote: "Jim wrote: "Interesting how these two sections of the novel treat time so differently. The dinner at the end of Part One seems like it lasts for a very long time. Part Two, in the same number of pa..."I think it's VW's imagery that so entrances me. This is what keeps me coming back.
Linda wrote: "In chapter 18 Prue's words almost lifted off the page. "That's my mother." "What an extraordinary stroke of fortune it was for her to have her."
Of all the accolades Mrs. Ramsay receives so far..."
I agree. I loved the way Prue expressed her feelings about her mother.
Linda wrote: "One last comment: I liked the way V. W. started chapter 14 with the children singing a song about "Dam your eyes, damn your eyes" and Paul experiencing the worst moment in his life at the end of t..."I was (and still am) very confused about Paul feeling that he had experienced the worst moment in his life after he asked Minta to marry him. I don't know, maybe I was reading upside-down (or something) but it seemed to me that Paul was very happy to be spending time with Minta and it seemed that he really did want to marry her.
I found Paul's character to be very contradictory. I also didn't understand why Mrs. Ramsey kept commenting (to herself) about Paul not being smart. Maybe in comparison to the other men in the novel -- philosophers, scientists, etc., Paul may just be "normal" as opposed to "brilliant" like the other men. I don't have the book in front of me right now, but I believe Mrs. Ramsay found Paul to be "dim" in terms of intellect. (Dim is not a quote from the novel, it's my interpretation of Mrs. Ramsay's thoughts).
But, most importantly, I would love it if someone could explain why Paul seemed to be so happy about his engagement to Minta, but at the same time thought of it as the worst experience of his life. Did I miss something???
In the last chapter of Part 1, Mrs. Ramsay was not able to tell her husband that she loves him. She wanted him to know, but she could not say the words. Finally, based on their eye-contact, she felt that he knew that she does love him, so she actually DID tell him, but not with words.First of all, I found that entire scene between the two of them to be absolutely beautiful. I'm so in love with Virginia Woolf's writing (and this is only the second novel of hers I've read.)
But I'm just wondering if anyone here has any thoughts as to why Mrs. Ramsay was not able to say the words "I love you" to her husband.
Mod
I read that part as Paul remembering the stress and doubt leading up to his proposal. "Will she say yes? reject me? am I man enough to be a good husband? am I making the right decision?" and so on. He is young and insecure. Mrs. Ramsay en-courages him; literally gives him the courage to propose. So when he says he just had the most appalling experience, he means the moments leading up to her acceptance.
Mod
I'm glad you're enjoying her writing. Woolf is in my top five writers of all time.
I don't know how many times I've read this book & each time is so fresh, so enriched from former readings but never dulled. It's almost like a first reading where some familiarity with the text enables me to fly with it.Maybe it's just me, speaking as a wife and mother (well, a semi-former wife-too complicated to deal with here). Being married is full of difficulty but for the most part that doesn't necessarily equal unhappy. That's even more true of being a mother, except the issues there have more to do with severe fatigue-physical when the children are small and emotional always but that has nothing to do with being "happy" or "unhappy." Again, at least for me. But I feel that Mrs. Ramsay, at least in that time and place did not perceive herself as unhappy exactly.
And I agree that pursuing correspondences with characters and their models is complicated. It's almost like asking Lily what her paintings "stand for." Mrs. Ramsay is probably based on her mother but perhaps also on Woolf herself, as she imagines she might have been, and also on her views of women's lives at that time & their constrictions, as described in A Room of One's Own, and in contrast to Lily, who may be partly based on Vanessa (who was, though, married and had children) and partly, again, on an aspect of herself.
I experience the book itself as a kind of painting in its use of resonating images and the whole thing mentioned above of alternating foreground and background.
Plus I find the use of time disorienting but this discussion has helped me re-experience that. Somehow many readings has altered my experience of time, almost as though my mind has organized time in a way more familiar to me.
Jim wrote: "Barbara wrote: "I was (and still am) very confused about Paul feeling that he had experienced the worst moment in his life after he asked Minta to marry him. I don't know, maybe I was reading upsid..."Thank you for that explanation, Jim. I "sort-of" thought that might have been the case (that he was terrified beforehand, but very happy once the proposal was offered and accepted), so I'm glad that you confirmed this for me.
You said Woolf is in your top five writers of all time. She just made my top five list too!! Now that I've read Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, what do you suggest as my third Woolf read??
Also, I would love to know who the other four writers are in your "top five" list. Is there a thread in this group for random discussions on favorite books and favorite writers??? (Because I know I probably shouldn't be asking these question in the To the Lighthouse Thread.)
Mod
I didn't sense that Mrs. Ramsay was unhappy either. It was more a matter of being constantly vigilant and "on patrol" while guarding her flock - like the hen metaphor from week one's discussion. And so, being constantly vigilant and dividing her energy between children, guests, and husband, she is drained and fatigued, but still happy.
Time really is handled creatively and masterfully by Woolf. Her last summer with her mother was when she was 13. She wrote this book at 44 (same age as Lilly Briscoe in Part Three) and so had to peer back through the decades to find her mother and her family, and herself. According to her sister Vanessa, she did a great job re-visioning those years.
Mod
As Ellie pointed out above, A Room of One's Own deals with women's lives and place in the society of her times. Having read Mrs. Dalloway and now To the Lighthouse, it would be an excellent time to read her most famous non-fiction, A Room of One's Own. It should give you good insight into where Woolf was coming from intellectually, politically, and in her fictional portrayal of women. Like all of her work, it's in the public domain and I'm sure you can find an epub version for your Nook. After that, you might try Orlando or The Waves. (FWIW, I fell in love with Woolf's mind after reading A Room...)
Regarding my favorite writers, let's redirect that discussion to this thread:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/7...
In respect to V.W. treatment of time, she offers it as both fleeting and irrelevant. It's "like reading a good book again" and knowing "the end of that story." The sudden reflection of the Mannings and how "it was extraordinary to think that they had been capable of going on living all these years when she had not thought of them more than once all that time." I was also taken with how V.W. inserted chapter 14 between two ticks of a clock as if time were, as I said, irrelevant.She's an excellent craftsman as writer.
The dinner scene really brought the book together for me.I liked how Minta was able to get Mr. Ramsey to open up at the table. She really knew what he needed and how to get under the barriers he puts up around him self. Also it was interesting that Mrs. Ramsay knew exactly was Minta was doing. It reminds me of the quote ""Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast"
"and Mrs Ramsay saw that it would be all right for the moment anyhow moment anyhow; he would laugh at Minta, and she, Mrs Ramsay saw, realising his extreme anxiety about himself, would, in her own way, see that he was taken care of, and praise him, somehow or other. But she wished it was not necessary: perhaps it was her fault that it was necessary.
I was also deeply move by "Time Passes". It is an interesting contrast, especially thinking about the first part, which spans over only one day. For me, the thing that struck me the most was the feeling of the house being the main character. All happened around it, and to it. People were just brief moments in the story of the house. There was a very sharp contrast between the liveliness of summer days lived there and the neglect and ruin that followed Mrs. Ramsay's death and the war.
I broke down in tears when I read about her death. And again about the others'. I have a hard time dealing with death and the parenthetical treatment of it, reinforcing the feeling described above as human lives being plainly ephemeral to Nature, really emphasised the hard truths about it. It happens in an instant, and the rest of the world goes on.
I also loved the simplicity and liveliness of Mrs. McNab and Mrs. Bast. Two elderly women with the nearly impossible task of making a derelict house habitable again. It reminded me of Mrs. Ramsay, with her inability to follow the philosophical and literary ramblings of the men around her, but with the worldly skills of making a house feel like a home to such a band of strays, and taking care of eight children of her own and their sheer admiration of her. I felt the same way about the housekeeper who leered and lurched, and picked up some flowers not to let their beauty be spoilt by abandon. Really touching.
The first time I read the book, the death literally took my breath away. I kept going back & re-reading like "Wait...what??"; I just couldn't believe it. And that reaction has never completely changed, even though of course I know it's coming, Woolf's handling, an almost-aside, so vividly conveys the shock of the death of someone you love.
Brain Pain
Books mentioned in this topic
A Room of One’s Own (other topics)Orlando (other topics)
The Waves (other topics)
Part Two: Time Passes, Ch. 1 – 10, page 117 – 136
Part One, ch. 13 - 19
Nancy and Andrew go to the tide pools with Minta and Paul. Minta loses her brooch, but gains a proposal. A long, slow, awkward dinner begins to gel once the candles are lit.
Part Two, ch. 1 – 10
Time passes, objects decay, nature resumes its chaos and [death comes in brackets]. Mrs. McNab enlists the help of Mrs. Bast and her son to restore the house in time for the return of the Ramsay’s and their guests.
Interesting how these two sections of the novel treat time so differently. The dinner at the end of Part One seems like it lasts for a very long time. Part Two, in the same number of pages, covers a good ten years or so in what feels like the blink of an eye. What do you think of Woolf’s handling of time in these sections? Did you find the casual, bracketed mentions of death to be jarring?
To avoid spoilers, please restrict your comments to page 66 – 136 (and the earlier pages)