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To the lighthouse (1927)

To the lighthouse (1927). Virginia woolf and the high modernist novel. Virginia woolf (1882-1941). Overview. Georgian English family vacationing on the Isle of Skye ca. Summer 1910 & 1920, with interlude of WWI in between

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To the lighthouse (1927)

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  1. To the lighthouse (1927) Virginia woolf and the high modernist novel

  2. Virginia woolf (1882-1941)

  3. Overview • Georgian English family vacationing on the Isle of Skye ca. Summer 1910 & 1920, with interlude of WWI in between • Skye is in the Hebrides, a group of islands off western coast of Scotland • To the Lighthouse is a High Modernist novel • Fragmented and difficult, yet ordered. • About philosophical introspection more than plot • Plot: potential trip to a lighthouse in the bay, touches off a number of conflicts within/among the characters. • Interiority: We read mostly thoughts, observations, and memories of various characters. • Emphasis on perspective – how a person’s background and self determine how they see and understand. • Some preference seems to be given to the perspective of Lily Briscoe. • Her status as female, single, and artist marks her as an “outsider”

  4. Themes & Features • Threats and dangers come from within, more than without • Lighthouse – signal and promise of stability amid chaos of modernity (viii) • Cf. T.S. Eliot’s comment on the “immense panorama of futility and anarchy that is contemporary history” • Rhythm – “heterochronicity” – multiple modalities of time (ix) • Pattern of waking & sleeping, presence & absence, sound of the waves, stroke of the lighthouse, movements of celestial bodies • Reality is what looms; love what pervades (x) • Part 2 “Time Passes” – the house outside of human point of view.

  5. Techniques • Fragmentation / Perspective • Events related via characters’ interior experiences • Narration moves from one character’s perspective to another • Free Indirect Discourse • 3rd person narration seamlessly blended with elements of 1st person • See p.33, where narrator reports Mr. Ramsay’s thoughts about himself

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