Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse Flashcards
Mrs Ramsay’s consciousness: ‘beneath it is…’
[Part One]
‘beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomablt deep; but now and agian we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by’
Mr Tansley on the women
[Part One]
‘he had been reading in his room, and now he came down and it seemed to him all silly, superficial, flimsy…they did nothing but talk, talk, talk, eat, eat, eat. It was the women’s fault…..made civilisation impossible with all their ‘charm’, all their silliness’
And furthermore ‘they made men say that sort of thiing’ too - infectious?
What does Mr Tansley declare of progress?
[Part One]
‘they never got anything worht having form one year’s end to anohter’
Lily - on her ‘whole being’ once insulted (‘women can’t paint’)
[Part One]
‘Why did her whole being bow, like corn under a wind, and erect itself from this abasement oly with a painful effort? She must make it one more. There’s the sprig on the tablecloth; there’s my painting; I must move the tree to the middle…’
What does Lily say of her painting?
[Part One]
“the picutre was not of them….or not in his sense…there were other senses too”
How does Lily criticise her painting?
[Part One]
It ‘is infinitely bad…it woudl never be seen, never be hung”
BUT reconciles herself to this - resigns immortality of memory in painting to the present moment being more important
What is the narrative division of Part Two?
10 part narrative - a development, or inversion, of the classical 12/24 part structure. the conscious decision of Woolf to deviate is made evident by Mr Carmichael’s allusions to Virgil (staying awake to read it)
What happens to Mr Carmichael’s ‘candle’, by which he reads Virgil?
[Part Two]
Overcome by ‘a downpouring of immense darkness..nothing, it seemed, could survive’
although he ‘blew out ‘ the candle himself - implying autonomous choice (conscious choice to choose modernity?) - this return to tradition is now made impossible
‘Nothing, it seemed…’
[Part Two]
‘Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness….not only was furniture compounded; there was scarcely anything left of body or mind by which one could say, ‘this is he’, or ‘this is she’’
THe ‘random light….’
[Part Two]
‘The random light directing them from an uncovered star, or wandering ship, ir the lighthouse even….must cease. Whatever else mat perish and disappear, what lies here is steadfast. Here one might say to those sliding lights…here you can neither touch nor destroy’
Problematises the idea of ‘light’ as revelation - points out that such illumination is transient or ‘sliding’ and not truth, thus problematising enlightenment vision of turht…
‘What after all is one night’?
[Part Two]
‘What after all is one night? A short space, espeically when the darkness dims so soon….night, however, succeeds to night’
What do the ‘autumn tres’ do?
[Part Two]
The ‘autumn trees…take on the flash of tattered flags kindling, in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages descirbe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands’
Not just time, but space problematised - postmodern anticipation?
The nights now….
[Part Two]
‘the nights now are full of wind and destruction’
‘what poeple had shed…’
[Part Two]
‘what people had shed and left - a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some datied shirts and coats in wardrobes - those alone kepy the human shape’
‘Did nature supplement…’
[Part Two]
Did nature supplement what man advanced? Did she complete what he began? With equal complaisance she saw his misery, condoned his meanness and acquiesced in his torutre. That dream, then, of sharing, completing, finding on the beach the answer, was but a reflection in a mirror, and the mirror itself was but the surface glassiness….contemplation was unendurable; the mirror was broken’
