Assignment Paper No.9

Assignment Paper No.9

Click here to evaluate my Assignment

Paper No.9

 Name: RavjiJalondhara

 Roll No. 28

 Enrollment No. 

 Paper No. 9 

 Assignment Topic: Critical Appreciation of the Novel (To The Lighthouse)

 Batch No. 2017-19

 Email Id: ravjijalandhara@gmail.com

 Words: 1486

 Submitted to: Department of English MKBU

• About Virginia Woolf:

          Virginia Woolf was born on January 25, 1882, a descendant of one of Victorian England’s most prestigious literary families. Her father Leslie Stephen was the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and was married to the daughter of the writer William Thackeray. Virginia Woolf received free rein to explore her father’s library. 

As a young woman, Woolf wrote for the prestigious Times Literary Supplement. Woolf belonged to The Bloomsbury group, the group of artists and intellectuals. Working among such an inspirational group of peers and possessing an incredible talent in her own right, Woolf published her most famous novels by the mid-1920s, including “ The Voyage Out “, “ Mrs. Dalloway “, “ Orlando “ and “ To The Lighthouse “. With these works she reached the pinnacle of her profession.

       In Woolf’s writing we find her struggle to find meaning in her own unsteady existence. Her written in a poised, understated and elegant style, her work examines the structures of human life, from the nature of relationships to the experience of time.

• Introduction: (To The Lighthouse)

        To the Lighthouse follows the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, philosophical introspection, and the prose can be winding and hard to dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations.

         To the Lighthouse is divided into three sections: ‘the Window’, ‘Time Passes’ and ‘The Lighthouse’. Each section is fragmented into stream of consciousness contributions from various narrators.

1) The Window:

        Mrs. Ramsay spends her afternoon sitting at a window, reading to James. Lily Briscoe is attempting to paint them. The window encapsulates 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. The window furthermore frames Mrs. Ramsay as the centerpiece of the whole tableau. Mr. Bankes gazes adoringly at her, Lily looks at her critically in order to properly paint her, and Mr. Ramsay runs over for sympathy. The window is therefore the physical manifestation of the more abstract idea that Mrs. Ramsay is the center of the household, in addition to the idea that she is separate and apart from everyone else (literally separated by a pane of glass)..

2) The Time Passes:

      The second section gives a sense of time passing, absence and death. Ten year pass during this the four-year First World War begins and ends. Mrs. Ramsay passes away, prue died from the complications of childbirth, and Andrew is killed in the war. Mr. Ramsay is left adrift without his wife to praise and comfort him during his bouts of fear and his anguish regarding the longevity of his philosophical work.

     To the Lighthouse creates a strange feeling of continuity between drastically discontinuous events. “The Window” ends after dinner, as night falls; “Time Passes” describes the demise of the house as one night passes into the next over the course of ten years; “The Lighthouse” resumes in the morning, at breakfast. Woolf almost suggests the illusion that Lily sits at the table the morning after the dinner party, even though the scene takes place a decade later. This structure lends the impression that Mr. Ramsay’s voyage to the lighthouse with Cam and James occurs the next day as James had hoped, though his world is now wholly different.

• Critical appreciation of the novel:

    Virginia Woolf‘s To The Lighthouse illustrate abridge between the world s of Victorian mother and the modern potentially independent women was to be absorbed, as Mrs. Ramsay is, by the task of being mother and wife. Her reason for existing was to complete the man rather than to exist in her own right. Mrs. Ramsay certainly sees this role for herself and is distributed when she feels, momentarily, that she is better than her support to feel good about himself and the life choices he has made. Yet the end of the Victorian era saw the rise of women to excel without men or children. Adrinne Rich, in of women Born, says To the Lighthouse is about Virginia Woolf’s need to understand her own mother and to prove, through the character of Lily Briscoe, that a women can be independent of men, as Mrs. Ramsay is not.

        The issue of the change from one concept of womanhood to another is not as simple as the newer generation revolting against the older; at the same time that Mrs. Ramsay’s daughters hope to be different for her beauty and power. Prue, the eldest daughter, proudly watches Mrs. Ramsay as she descends the staircase and feels” what an extraordinary stokes of fortune it was for her to have her.”  Although this is the closest we come to knowing the thought and feeling of Prue, from others perspectives, we gather that she follows in her mother’s footstep and dies in childbirth. Does this signify the death of the old vision of womanhood? Or does it have more to do with the particular strength of Mrs. Ramsay? Perhaps it signifies the futility of the daughter who trying to imitate exactly the path of the mother.

     Mrs. Ramsay, who is identified as the ‘angel of the house’, cannot be separated from the actual physical house we see the conventional usage of feminism’s challenged. Woolf’s work challenges represented the social relationship between men and women; it is shown in the novel To the Lighthouse. In this novel Lily Briscoe and Mrs. Ramsay are the main female character. To the Lighthouse is fascinated by women, and Woolf’s To the Lighthouse asks the question of the sexuality of women, and questions the women’s role within the family. Lily does represent Woolf’s ‘ideal women’ and Mrs. Ramsay in direct contrast is portrayal (as I say before) as the ‘angel of the house.’ Woolf attempts to show these differences that to be a man or woman pure and simple, one must be women manly or man womanly, through the portrayal of Lily and Mrs. Ramsay and through Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay. Woolf believed that patriarchy always tried to silence and repress the women and women’s humanity…, and shows these qualities in direct contrast to Ms. Ramsay, and his masculine rationality that has reason, order and lucidity. In keeping with Woolf’s ‘angel of the house’ figure, Mrs. Ramsay is projected more as a symbol as the ‘earth mother’ than as an individual, as she is never called by her first name, she represents an era of Victorian values and Lily Briscoe represents the feminist figure as she rejects irrational chaos and fragmentation, which has come to represent feminity. 

    This is shown more dearly Charles Tansley’s treatment of Lily is sensitive about the role of women and feels constantly pressurized by Mrs. Ramsay into the sensation she has when he is around , that he is constantly deprecating her work by saying “women can’t write, women can’t paint.’ Though creating Lily, Woolf is representing a different kind of women; she is investigating the variety of experiences accessible to women. Mrs. Ramsay’s character at times does seem confused on one hand she is trying to marry out people off. Her moods, responses and the slant she puts on the interactions between them all, move around and differ. As her defined role of wife and mother to every one, Mrs. Ramsay believes she is there to care for others, harmonize every one, and marries people off and protected by men. 

      She also believes that women are there to protect the men to nature their egos, and to smooth over any awkward moments. Woolf does highlight the absence of women from higher education through oppressive protocol within To the Lighthouse; this does enforce the difference of gender roles. The male figure within the novels is educated, is studying for degrees and admires each other for their academic achievements. Science within the novel is seen objectively, and is portrayed as a masculine image. Mrs. Ramsay’s gender roles are shown in soft response to Mr. Ramsay who emerges as a heroic tyrant and appear to represent the ‘typical male’. He is compared to sharp instruments, knives, axe, poker with which his son wants to hit him. 

    The language the surrounds Mr. Ramsay is assertive, opinionated, slightly patronizing and show his philosophical prowess. He reached the level of ‘ordinary experienced’; as lily calls it: he feel simply; ‘that’s a chair, that’s a table’, however in Mr. Ramsay’s term he has manage to reach Q, but not R. the use of the alphabet shows the male mind; logical, chronological and liner but also child like.

Works Cited:

<https://www.shmoop.com/to-the-lighthouse/window-symbol.html>.

<https://www.shmoop.com/to-the-lighthouse/window-symbol.html>.

Komal, Bhalani. Criticall appreciation of the novel. 24 november 2011. 3 november 2018 <http://bhalanikomal212011.blogspot.com/2011/11/critical-appreciation-of-novel.html?m=1>.

moses, hillary. time passes Virginia Woolf To The Lighthouse. 28 july 2012. 3 november 2018 <https://hillarymohaupt.com/2012/07/28/time-passes-virginia-woolfs-to-the-lighthouse/>.