One of the great books. ( )

3-2-17
Tonight I finished Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse.”

Wowzers, it’s really great. This was my first reading of Woolf, and I was really hypnotized by her style. It was an emotional rollercoaster, and I highly recommend you ride it. A very quick read, under 200 pages, and it just flows and flows. Lyrical. ( )

For the first 180 pages I was asking myself, "What's the point?" But then everything came together at the end. Woolf is genius in that she writes about incredibly deep themes in concise and simple (not to mention beautiful) narratives. ( )

Is art an expression of human life, or is it a decoration imposed upon it? It depends on whether or not someone relies on art to bring him fame and greatness. Mr. Ramsay is concerned that no one will read his books, that he won’t be remembered by future generations. He is very insecure about his writing because he feels that no one needs him to write; no one’s life depends on whether or not he expresses himself through the ideas in his books. He worries that his writing is merely decoration and not necessary to the whole of human culture and existence. He does not write to express himself or to find some meaning in human life, but rather, he writes to ease his insecurities, to establish some feeling of self-worth. He only writes so that others will believe he is important.

Lily Briscoe, however, does not paint in hopes of being remembered or deemed important. She is compelled to paint by the voice of Charles Tansley that continuously chants, “Women can’t paint. Women can’t write.” But she is compelled by something even greater than Tansley’s need to assert himself. Lily Briscoe’s paintings are physical renderings of her desire for unity, her desire to fill emptiness with shape, “the empty places. Such were some of the parts, but how to bring them together?” (151). She believes that connecting seemingly unrelated things and isolated people, reveals some whole truth and meaning behind life.

Lily tries to connect masses within her paintings. The painting she begins of Mrs. Ramsay and James remains unfinished for ten years, until she returns to the house at Isle of Skye after Mrs. Ramsay’s death. She doesn’t know how the masses in her painting connect. She doesn’t know the best way to lay out shape, light, and shadow. She doesn’t know how to relate or fill empty spaces, but she paints to uncover these relationships.

The empty places Lily refers to are the ones left by Mrs. Ramsay. She is the mass that light shines on, and everything and everyone else in her life are the shadows cast by the light hitting her form. Lily is angry at Mrs. Ramsay because she left behind empty spaces—the step she sat on, the kitchen table with the leaf pattern, and the old ramshackle house itself—with no clear way to unite them. Without Mrs. Ramsay, the house was “full of unrelated passions” (152). Her family came untied—there was no knot tying Cam and James to Mr. Ramsay anymore.

To the Lighthouse, like Lily’s painting, is made up of three parts that connect to form a greater whole. The first two sections—The Window and Time Passes—contain empty spaces; these spaces rely on Lily, in the final section, to step back and view everything from a distance so that all forms can be seen at once. It is only when different viewpoints and different relationships are observed that the true meaning of life can be discovered. Love, culture, art, and poetry are created from human relationships. ( )

Imagine Mrs. Dalloway with a lighthouse instead of a party. And they never actually get to the party. That's To the Lighthouse.