Week 1 — The Window, Sections 1-7

[Emil]

Thanks Susan, I haven't noticed it so far! Looks like I'll have to write down a schema, this is getting really interesting

[Susan]

Lily wrote: "Is this one of the places where Jane Austin, of Pride and Prejudice and Virginia Woolf overlap in giving us insights on human character? Pride, ego, self definition (or sometimes lack thereof?) get in the way of seeing the other. How might one say other great writers deal with this conundrum? "

I don’t recall that the discussion ever came back to this question, Lily, maybe because “To the Lighthouse” required our full attention *smile*. In addition to Jane Austen, there are other great writers whose characters demonstrate how pride/ego gets in the way of seeing other people. There are a number of examples in Dickens — one that stands out is Pip in Great Expectations who doesn’t see or value those around him appropriately due to pride.

[Susan]

Thomas wrote: "The description above is from chapter 7, which starts out from James' perspective, but quickly shifts to Mrs. Ramsay's. The imagery in this chapter from beginning to end is highly sexualized, so that shift is quite unsettling. It doesn't sound like Mrs. Ramsay, but I think it is. She's revealing thoughts that don't quite comport with her external character, and they are couched in language that is almost Freudian.”


After reading further in the narrative, I’m persuaded by your take that this section in chapter 7 is from the characters’ perspectives rather than the narrator’s with both James and Mrs Ramsay taking part at different times. The imagery used “the beak of brass, the arid scimitar, rosy-flowered fruit tree” sounds not only Freudian, but like something out of a fairy tale (although not the one they were reading at the time).