================================================================The above is FB post I made a couple of days back, inspired a certain section in VW's To the Lighthouse. I have since completed the book, and will attempt to gather my thought around the book as much as I can...
Mrs. Dalloway and Jacob's room are the books I've read prior to this of hers', and both were comparatively less challenging, and carry more of a plot, amidst some use of a "stream of consciousness" ( in the case of Mrs. Dalloway).
To the Lighthouse, is much more, structurally, spiritually, existentially, but depends less on any kind of plot - or a story line. I am wont to believe that unless one is trained literature to appreciate what VW is attempting, the reader will be playing catch up - through the use of third party resources - to understand what the author is attempting here. But all is, definitely not lost for those who don't use reference essays ( I too used the introductions in the two versions that I have - and didn't read either from start to finish), for the book stays with you once you complete it, and the memories make the book more appreciated.
In a review I read from the Guardian (see note 1), which captured the books precisely in a way that I cannot, but in a manner I agree with ( other than the comparison to poetry - which I missed), the reviewer says " the literary equivalent to perching in the back of someone else’s mind, watching the to-ing and fro-ing of their thoughts and fears all from behind their eyes" - this is a spot on surmise of the book, and is indeed a literary position used by VW, that makes the whole exercise of this challenge of reading the book, rewarding.
One of the introductions I mentioned speaks of the brackets, and conversations in parallel - thoughts in parallel - all very natural when one analyses the the mindset of any given person. The recognizing of this use of how the mind works naturally to represent the text - for it is not a narration [ hence the long sentences ( sometimes leading to a whole paragraph ; some time a semi-colon used to offer branching off - sometimes a hyphen to give a different perspective )], but a stream of dialogue, observations, streams of thought etc.
A most beautiful, haunting passage of the book is the decade of decadence of the house, and how human dialogue, major incident (i.e. a death) is pushed to the background ( contained within brackets, whereas how nature causes havoc, out in the garden, and gradually inside the house too.).
I felt that the book attempts to conclude in peace, amidst "each of them perishing alone" - for that is what they can do. Lily, in her lifelong aim to prove herself as an artiste is finally satisfied with what she achieved. Did the apparition bring in an element which she was missing ? Did Mr. Ramsey's words of praise, break the barriers preventing a more healthy relationship between father and son, as the reached the shore - with the daughter only too glad to take a less rigid stance ?
I feel like I struggled through a difficult mathematics exam, which I know that I barely scraped through. But in hindsight I do realise the importance of each of the axioms, and why those have to used exhaustively to prove each case. The only way to understand the novel ( and the math) is to be patient, be generous with the time offered to the book ( and the math). But time is in short supply, for life "elsewhere" [ outside of books (and math)] intervenes.
Rating: ****1/2
International Reviews
1- Review by Foalan (20/12/2015) to The Guardian ( https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/dec/20/to-the-lighthouse-virginia-woolf-review )
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf – review
‘There was an odd kind of poetry in the writing, a sort of rhythm beating at the back of the sentences’
I read this book like I eat chocolate, always intending to indulge in just a little bit, then finding myself inexorably unwilling to stop. This was not due to any gripping plot twists, not to witty repartee or romantic involvements that I just had to find the end to. In fact, a common issue taken with Virginia Woolf’s writing is the way in which plot is perhaps passed over in favour of examining the minutiae, holding a microscope to a human emotion or, as in the central section in this book, the manner in which a house decays. Strangely, though I would generally describe myself as the finicky type of reader that requires consistency and depth in my stories, this didn’t bother me. I was more than content to sink back into the warm-bath quality of this book and this, I think, was due to the characters.
To The Lighthouse is written in what I’ve heard described as “dense prose” or “stream of consciousness”, but what I
think of as the literary equivalent to perching in the back of someone
else’s mind, watching the to-ing and fro-ing of their thoughts and fears
all from behind their eyes. The closeness with characters that this way
of writing gave me, the understanding of them that I felt I had, is the
thing that made them so engrossing. They were not extraordinary – in
fact, on the contrary, they were rather conventional, middle-class
intellectual-types, of the kind you find in arguably too many books. It
could even be said that they offered nothing new or exciting, nothing to
surprise or excite in a reader. Yet for me, the familiarity was proof
of the skill in which they are written – because everyone knows someone
like them. Virginia Woolf, in a few hundred pages, seemed to capture
exactly the essence of certain people – certain traits, quirks and
mannerisms that I can recognise from my life, from my world, despite it
being over eighty years from hers.
Everyone has experienced the feelings captured in the novel, from the intense anger and resentment felt for someone you love or the irrational but intense irritation at a stranger, to the longing to become something you never possibly can and the disappointment that follows. They feel so familiar because they are so realistic. As such, I wanted to read about their lives for the same reason that I want to hear what a friend got for a birthday, what happened to my Mum at work – I felt like I knew them and so the story was immediately more interesting to me.
As to the story itself, the book details the activities of the Ramsay family and a few acquaintances staying with them in their house on the coast, all in the context of a proposed trip to the lighthouse. I’ll be the first to admit that this is not an extremely promising plot summary, but far from the “style over substance” I was warned I might find, I found that this book conveyed so much in so little. The most memorable points for me included the passing of time as shown by the changing of the seasons and the way that a house deteriorates, and the most heart-wrenching description of a wife bending to the will of a husband that I have ever read. Then, throughout, Virginia Woolf used the shortfalls and eccentricities of her characters to create a spirited, wry kind of humour that made the novel so enjoyable to read.There was an odd kind of poetry in the writing, a sort of rhythm beating at the back of the sentences, tugging and pushing at the punctuation and drifting through the pages. Tension was built up into a great crescendo and then allowed to fizzle away into nothing, almost like the waves by the Ramsay’s house would gain momentum and crash onto the beach before trailing softly back to the sea.
Sometimes, I feel, Virginia Woolf is thought of as one of those unreachable, lofty kind of authors that can only be read by someone with an English Literature degree. I felt like that, picking the book of the shelf almost apologetically. How could I believe that I could appreciate a writer like Virginia Woolf? I asked myself; what made me think I would be able to understand it? But I think that I did understand and I know that I enjoyed it, and if I could do so, then it’s possible for anyone who likes to read. The idea that it was written for a select, serious few is bizarre and unnecessary because to me, this book is – above all – about humans. Our loss, our longing, our love. It captures those feelings so perfectly, so why wouldn’t we be able to relate?I really loved this book, and I think that many other people, if they put aside their apprehension or doubt, would be surprised at how much they enjoyed it too.
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2- A 1927 review of To the Lighthouse
https://bookmarks.reviews/a-1927-review-of-virginia-woolfs-to-the-lighthouse/
What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.
*
“The method of Mrs. Dalloway is substantially retained by Mrs. Woolf in this new novel, To the Lighthouse,
but though one encounters again her strikingly individual mingling of
inward though with outward action in which the ‘stream of consciousness’
style is liberated from its usual chaos and by means of selection and a
sense of order, made formally compact–one finds the method applied to
somewhat different aims.
“To the Lighthouse is a book of interrelationships among people, and though there are major and minor characters, the major ones are not, as Clarissa Dalloway was, the alpha and omega of the story, but more truly the means for giving to the story its harmony and unity, its focal points. Those who reject To the Lighthouse as inferior to Mrs. Dalloway because it offers no one with half the memorable lucidity of Clarissa Dalloway must fail to perceive its larger and, artistically, more difficult aims. They must fail to notice the richer qualities of mind and imagination and emotion which Mrs. Woolf, perhaps not wanting them, omitted from Mrs. Dalloway. They must fail to appreciate that as an author develops he will always break down the perfection he has achieved in an earlier stage of his writing in order to reach new objectives.
…
“It is the final portion of the book which is most perplexing. It seems to sound in the minor what the long first portion sounded in the major, to persist as an ironical mood, to re-establish a scene with the sorry changes time has wrought, to reduce a symbolical achievement when it is finally made to the level of negation. The long opening portion seems to be carrying you ahead toward something which will be magnificently expressive, and then this final portion becomes obscure, a matter of arcs, of fractions, of uncoordinated notes. By comparison with the rest this final portion seems pale and weak. Perhaps there is a reason for this, perhaps Mrs. Woolf meant to show that with Mrs. Ramsay’s death things fall apart, get beyond correlation. Mr. Ramsay is no longer interesting–can it be because he is no longer counterpoised against his wife? Life seems drifting, as the Ramsays drift over the bay in their boat, and all their physical vigor and all their reaching of the lighthouse at last conveys no significance.
The truth is that this final portion of the book strikes a minor note, not an intentional minor note which might still in the artistic sense be major, but a meaningless minor note which conveys the feeling that one has not quite arrived somewhere, that the story which opens brilliantly and carries on through a magnificent interlude ends with too little force and expressiveness.
At any rate the rest of the book has its excellencies. Like Mrs. Dalloway it is underlaid with Mrs. Woolf’s ironic feeling toward life, though here character is not pitted against manners, but against other character. Once again Mrs. Woolf makes use of her remarkable method of characterization, a method not based on observation or personal experience, but purely synthetic, purely creational. Clarissa Dalloway is a marvelous synthesis, and it is just for that reason that Mrs. Dalloway, which has been identified because of its modernity with the Ulysses school, differs from it in character fundamentals, for it is as objective as Ulysses is autobiographical and observational. There is nothing ‘photographic’ about Mrs. Woolf’s characters, here or in Mrs. Dalloway. Neither Clarissa nor Mrs. Ramsay has anything autobiographical about her; both are complete creations and both, for all their charm and graces, must suffer a little beneath the searchlight of Mrs. Woolf’s independently used mind and sense of irony.
In To the Lighthouse there is nobody who even approaches
Clarissa Dalloway in completeness and memorability, but on a smaller and
perhaps more persuasive scale Mrs. Ramsay achieves powerful reality.
The other characters are not fully alive because they are not whole
enough. Most of them are one-dimensional fragments that have been
created with great insight but insufficient vitality. They have minds,
moods, emotions–but they get all three through creative intellect. For
passion Mrs. Woolf has no gift–her people never invade the field of
elementary emotions: they are hardly animal at all.
“To the Lighthouse has not the formal perfection, the cohesiveness, the intense vividness of characterization that belong to Mrs. Dalloway. It has particles of failure in it. It is inferior to Mrs. Dalloway
in the degree to which its aims are achieved; it is superior in the
magnitude of the aims themselves. For in its portrayal of life that is
less orderly, more complex and so much doomed to frustration, it strikes
a more important note, and it gives us an interlude of vision that must
stand at the head of all Virginia Woolf’s work.”
- Louis Kronenberger, The New York Times, May 8, 1927
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