To the Lighthouse

This installment of Woolf in Winter is hosted by Emily.

I think there is a danger in reading too much Virginia Woolf, too close together. For the past week, I've been living in a bit of a fog, or time warp. I see a Rice Krispie bar for sale at a coffee shop, and first it makes me smile as I remember my oldest son at age 2, trying to ask for one, and completely befuddling me by stating he needed a "tippie car." But then I remember a neighbor we had that was my friend at the time, and how later that friendship turned toxic, and we don't live there anymore, and I wouldn't want to be her friend, but maybe I understand now a little more about her and the way she behaved, and and and...

Never mind the train of thought that went off when I thought about making spaghetti for dinner tonight. God help us all if I ever decide to tackle Proust.

But of course, what I don't do well is what Woolf did so brilliantly. The lives of these people, of Mr. Tansley and Mr. Ramsey and Lily Briscoe and Minta and Paul, and James, sweet James (musical pun intended), all encompassed by Mrs. Ramsay, are so intricately wound together and beautifully portrayed. The little bits and pieces of thoughts that people have, how opinions are often so tenuous and can be swayed, sometimes by so very little, and sometimes can never be swayed at all (did Mr. Carmichael really not ever like Mrs. Ramsay?).

There's so much that's just beautiful about this book. At first, I felt like it was suffering from comparison to Mrs. Dalloway, but the more I read, the deeper I went into it (this is a second read for me on this one). I could quote endlessly some of the passages I found thought-provoking and lovely; I think this pretty much sums up the nature of the book for me: "She felt, too,...how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach."

Or Mrs. Ramsay's sad but true thought about her children: "They were happier now than they would ever be again."

Did anyone else find their heart stopping just a little bit when Woolf tells us Mrs. Ramsay has died, rather suddenly? Yet we don't see that, and in the end it's a bit of a mystery how she died--did make me wonder about that temper of Mr. Ramsay's.

In the book Beowulf on the Beach by Jack Murnighan, the author suggests skipping the middle section, Time Passes. I'd argue against that. I think it's critical to bridging the other two sections. You could simply go from The Window to The Lighthouse and pick up the story, but the hallucinatory tale of the decline of the house over the years after Mrs. Ramsay's death is a heartbreaking metaphor for the decline of the family without its grounding member: "So loveliness reigned and stillness, and together made the shape of loveliness itself, a form from which life had parted."

Given the tension between Mr. Ramsay and James in the early pages over James' dream of going to the lighthouse, the middle section tells us without being overt that things have not gone well, and in such a beautiful, sad way, that the ending of the book is even more heartbreaking, knowing that James and Mr. Ramsay have made one small step towards each other, and it may not be enough. Their relationship may be permanently damaged by the loss of Mrs. Ramsay, and yet there's still a glimmer of hope.

So, this is all very gushy of me, but I do love this novel. However, I have to confess in full geekitude that reading it helped me make some other connections. I'm a bit of a fanatic about the work of Sylvia Plath, and having read her journals and letters, I know she in turn was a fanatic about Woolf, reading and re-reading her novels compulsively and wanting to be like her. So I offer up a few comparisons:

Mrs. Ramsay thinks about her children: "The door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses."

Plath, from her poem Kindness: "You hand me two children, two roses."

Mr. Tansley noting that "he was coming to see himself, and everything he had ever known gone crooked a little."

Plath in her journals (and possibly in The Bell Jar), noting that "the world had gone crooked and sour as a lemon overnight."

From the middle section: "Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly, the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself between the tiles in the larder. The swallows nested in the drawing room...Poppies sowed themselves among the dahlias."

From Plath's poem Mushrooms:

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air

Nobosy sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room

...

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

My interpretation, of course. :-) But I'm finding this close reading of Woolf to be beneficial in other ways too.

Now, if it just doesn't cause me to become too absorbed in my past, present and future...Well, in any event, I am now off to see what everyone else has to say about this book, as I've been holding off reading the blogs until I finished.

Comments

[Emily]

Amy, three things (at least):

1. You made me laugh out loud with your comment about Proust! I know exactly what you mean about books warping your inner monologue - I'm so prone to that as well, and you're right - both Woolf and Proust are major offenders in that regard!

2. SKIP TIME PASSES?!? Oh, the humanity!

3. The ties you make to Plath are so interesting - I haven't read her since I was a dorky high school student obsessing about "Lady Lazarus," but knowing she was a fan of Woolf makes me want to go back and re-read. Thanks for that.

Thanks so much for reading along with us, Amy!

[Sarah]

Yes!! I've often caught myself in the middle of a train of thought that got profound but stemmed from a mundane object, and more to the point, for my own entertainment I've traced it back to it's start and marveled at how bizarre the human mind is. I think that's why I identified with Woolfs stream of conscience style so immediately. I'm appalled by the thought of skipping the middle part - and shocked that anyone would suggest skipping any substantial portion of ANY book! What on earth could that guy's argument for it have been?!

[JoAnn]

"God help us all if I ever decide to tackle Proust."
You had me laughing out loud with that sentence! Even though I didn't get To the Lighthouse this week (I'm rereading Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours), I really enjoyed reading your thoughts. Glad you mentioned Beowulf on the Beach - it seemed odd to suggest skipping the middle section.
I'll need to decide soon whether to move on to Orlando with the group or read To The Lighthouse (which seems to be calling out to me).

[claire]

Amy, I hadn't gotten around to all the posts last weekend but finally! Anyway, how thrilled am I to see someone else do the gushing! I cannot believe how the Beowulf on the Beach author suggested skipping Time Passes, qué horror! My heart skipped a beat, too, when I read Mrs Ramsay died. I thought it so brilliant of Woolf for connecting the two days in that manner. It was so illuminating and so much can be read into it, and the mysteries in question in turn are answered by the third section, though not directionally but all between the lines. Loved it. See I feel like, instead of typing, I'm all gesticulating here talking to you, haha.

Anyway, I do remember being reminded more than once of Proust while reading TTL. Also, while I have never read Plath (I know; will get to her this year), and while I only have read Woolf during this read-along, I sort of grouped them in my mind years ago (maybe because of the nature of their passing and the mystery surrounding them both), so it was really illuminating how you connected them here.

[Care]

I've never read Plath. It all makes me wonder what with all the oooing and ahing for Woolf that I've been doing lately that if my High School had introduced me to authors NOT Steinbeck nor Hemingway nor Twain - would I have chosen a more literature path. It almost makes me mad that I didn't even know about Woolf until The Hours movie was released.
I very much enjoyed this post and think that your idea of Mr. Ramsey having a more sinister involvement was something I didn't really think then but almost did? Does that make sense? And, yes, that bridge section felt harsh to me but necessary.