To the Light House

A detailed Summary of To the Light House

SUMMARY 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. The first section, "The Window," opens just before the start of World War I. Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay bring their eight children to their summer home on an island in the Hebrides. Across the bay from their house stands a large lighthouse. Six-year- old James Ramsay wants desperately to go to the lighthouse, and his mother tells him that they will go the next day if the weather permits. James reacts gleefully, but his father tells him coldly that the weather looks to be foul. James resents Mr. Ramsay, and believes that he enjoys being cruel to James and his siblings.The Ramsays hosts a number of guests, including the dour Charles Tansley, who admires Mr. Ramsay's work as a metaphysical philosopher. Also at the house is Lily Briscoe, a young painter who begins a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay. Mrs. Ramsay wants Lily to marry William Bankes, but Lily resolves to remain single. Mrs. Ramsay does manage to arrange another marriage, however, between Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle.

During the course of the afternoon, Paul proposes to Minta, Lily begin

In "The Lighthouse" section, time returns to the slow detail of shifting points of view, similar to "The Window." Mr. Ramsay declares that he and James and Cam will journey to the lighthouse. On the morning of the voyage, delays throw him into a fit of temper. He appeals to Lily for sympathy, but, unlike Mrs. Ramsay, she is unable to provide him with what he needs. The Ramsays set off, and Lily takes her place on the lawn, determined to complete a painting she started, but abandoned, on her last visit. James and Cam bristle at their father's blustery behavior and are embarrassed by his constant self-pity. Still, as the boat reaches its destination, each of the children feel a fondness toward him. Even James, whose skill as a sailor Mr. Ramsay praises, experiences a moment of connection with the father he so willfully resents. Across the bay, Lily puts the finishing touch on her painting. She makes a definitive stroke on the canvas and puts her brush down, finally having achieved her vision.

Mr. Ramsay - Mr. Ramsay stands, in many respects, as Mrs. Ramsay's opposite. Whereas she acts patiently, kindly, and diplomatically toward others, he tends to be short- tempered, selfish, and rude. Woolf fittingly describes him as "lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one," which conjures up both his physical presence and suggests the sharpness (and even violence) of his personality. An accomplished metaphysician who made an invaluable contribution to his field as a young man, Mr. Ramsay bears out his wife's philosophy regarding gender: men, burdened by the importance of their own work, need to seek out the comforts and assurances of women. Throughout the novel, Mr. Ramsay implores his wife and even his guests for sympathy. Uncertain of the fate of his work and its legacy, his insecurity manifests itself either as a weapon or a weakness. His keen awareness of inevitable death motivate him to dash the hopes of young James and to bully Mrs. Ramsay into declaring her love for him. His over-awareness of death forces him to confront his own mortality and face the possibility that he, like the forgotten books and plates that litter the second book of the novel, might sink into oblivion.

Lily Briscoe - Lily is a passionate artist. Like Mr. Ramsay, she worries over the fate of her work, fearing that her paintings will be hung in attics or tossed absent- mindedly under a couch. Conventional femininity, represented by Mrs. Ramsay in the form of marriage and family, confounds her and she rejects it. The recurring memory of Charles Tansley insisting that women can neither paint nor write deepens her anxiety. It is with these self-doubts that she begins her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay at the beginning of the novel, a piece riddled with problems she is never able to solve and that she eventually abandons. But Lily undergoes a drastic

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Approximate Word count = 1907
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English