In an effort to
choose a part of the novel that summarily serves as a conduit to one of the
overall motifs as well as an example of the strategy I happened upon a section
after the beginning of the ninth chapter.
First,
the novel that I will be analyzing is To
the Lighthouse, an exploration and an attempt to synthesize the dynamic and
fleeting nature of reality, written by Virginia Woolf. The story alone is unimpressive, will the characters
make it to the lighthouse, what will become of Ramsay’s summer home, and the
incidental references to contextual realities, are all part of a medium for
Woolf to masterfully explore the narratives of transience; both in the quilt of
reality and the fabric of which it is woven.
The
passage I choose begins with “Mr. Bankes expected her to answer.”, and ends
with “The House seemed full of children sleeping and Mrs. Ramsay listening;
shaded lights and regular breathing.” Chapter Nine begins with a discourse
between Mr. Bankes and Lily. Mr. Bankes
is a friend of the Ramsay family. He is
an older man who has strong feelings on Mr. Ramsays work in the field of
philosophy. Lily is a younger woman who
shares unique, for the time, opinions on her role in society and her ability to
succeed in acquiscing to the typical demands society places on a woman. As such she has strong feelings on marriage
and love, which will be explored. Woolf
has strong feelings on these things as well, but what is most illuminating
about this passage is the subjective nature of reality, the necessity of
multiple perspectives in order to achieve any level of a comprehensive
understanding of reality, and the difficulty in pinning down one component of
the structure of reality (in this section ‘love’ is the component).
During the
discourse Lily is silenced by Mr. Bankes apparent rapture with her beauty. My close reading leads me to believe that the
beauty that Mr. Bankes is fixated upon is physical in nature, but that should
not discount the possibility that Mr. Bankes has included the type of person
Lily is as part of his overall rapture of her.
This leads Lily to consider the gaze and she believes this is the look
of a man in love. Rapture for her is
tantamount to love, love she beliefs may or may not be part of marriage. She beliefs she isn’t fit for marriage, and
refuses to accept Mrs. Ramsay’s notion that she has disallowed herself some
level of happiness because of her lack of a marriage partner.
In
an attempt to describe the gaze, as well as account for the characteristics
that are necessary and sufficient for love Lily invokes choice language that I
belief Woolf chose in an attempt to account for two types of
understanding. On one hand you have
physical, visceral notions of love; on the other hand, you have a calculated
matchmaking endeavor that presumes two individual characters can interlock in a
way as to demonstrate love. Lily
ponders, “It was love, she thought, pretending to move her canvas, distilled
and filtered; love that never attempted to clutch its object, but like the love
which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to
be spread over the world and become part of the human gain” (Woolf 47). Here the language is both visceral “distilled
and filtered” and physical “clutch.” The
love is also calculated and measured “symbols” and “phrases.” From this we get the sense that Lily believes
she has a clear understanding of what constitutes love. Yet Lily seems to think that love is only
achievable if another individual is able to as concretely as she has deciphered
this gaze understand the totality of the other individual. Lily laments, “How did she [Mrs. Ramsay]
differ? What was the spirit in her, the
essential thing, by which, had you found a crumpled glove in the corner of a
sofa, you would have known it, from its twisted finger, her indisputably?”
(Woolf 47). This naiveté banishes her
from accepting a more nuanced and achievable relationship that many people can
relate too. I for one am no expert on
love, but I do believe that a necessary component of love is the desire to
learn more about your lover. Complete
knowledge as Lily believes is not necessary, but the desire for such is a
necessary ingredient.
Time
works in peculiar ways, in life, in this novel, and apparently in this
section. A gaze seems to last forever,
though it is most often at its longest a fleeting expose on ones truest
emotions. Woolf does a masterful job at
making the reader feel exposed, like Lily, in the anxiety of being analyzed
under ones gaze, even if the gaze is one of admiration or in this case
rapture. What little action actually
occurs in this section, the amount of time and words spend acquiescing to the
tangent is important. The discourse here
is about a component of life that is complicated, and so, Woolf explores.
A tool of an
author in writing a narrative is ‘free indirect discourse.’ This is when the focalization of the narrator
shifts, often without mention, between different perspectives. The passage I chose begins as a third person
narrator, omniscient of both the desires of Mr. Bankes (as demonstrated in the
first sentence of the passage) and Lily (as the passage continues we transition
to her thoughts). From there the
narrator shifts again, “Such a rapture – for by what other name could one call
it? – made Lily Briscoe forget entirely what she had been about to say” (Woolf
47). This is a tool used by Woolf
throughout the novel and serves to demonstrate a motif that exists throughout
the novel. In order to get a full
understanding of what is happening in the reality of this relatively short
passage one must transition between multiple perspectives to shape the
reality. Without that ability we are
focalized and therefore fall short of true comprehensive understanding.
To this point I
have done a close reading of a short passage and done my best to show that it
can serve to understand the novel as a whole.
Reality is difficult to comprehend, it is dynamic, in one moment Lily
believes she is bantering and gossiping about her shared host with Mr. Bankes,
in the next moment she is forced to explore the complex notion of love and self
reflexively analyze how she can digest the concept and translate that to a
reality in the world she lives. For her
to be a middle-aged woman and unmarried is uncommon, for her to seek intimacy
and comfort through her art is unique for the time period. Perhaps her art serves as a dynamic and
suitable substitute as the object of her study for it exists in reality but
traffics unencumbered by the pressures reality can impose. Her society offers an alternative as the sole
choice. This can provide security to
some and, or, anguish to others. Is her
project of painting Mrs. Bankes a subconscious attempt to discover if her essence
is valid? Is she confident that she isn’t
meant to participate in marriage? For a
true understanding of anything one needs contrast. Perhaps these contrasts are what Woolf wants
the reader to acknowledge not as contrasts but as alternatives or choices in
the vast woven rug of reality.
“She wiped one brush after another upon a
piece of old rag, menially, on purpose.
She took shelter from the reverence which covered all women; she felt
herself praised. Let him gaze; she would
steal a look at her picture” (Woolf 47).
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