Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is in three sections. It opens with the Ramsay family in their rented summer house on the Isle of Skye. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay and their eight children are joined by six guests, including a painter and a poet. The family’s plan to visit the lighthouse is thwarted by bad weather. This first section is followed by an interim section called, “Time Passes.” The final section takes place ten years later when the surviving family members and their guests return to Skye. Mrs. Ramsay and two of the children have since died. Mr. Ramsay takes his two youngest children to the lighthouse. In other words, very little happens on the surface of the novel.
Although it lacks a conventional plot, the novel more than makes up for it with style and technique. Virginia Woolf’s remarkable skill as a writer is on display throughout. Her focus is on a character’s interiority where all the “action” occurs. Her sentences flow seamlessly from spoken dialogue to a character’s thoughts. She weaves in and out of their thoughts and internal debates as they question themselves; analyze one another’s actions and motives; explore relationships; brush against patriarchal constructs; ponder the meaning life, art, and beauty. She moves effortlessly from one character’s interiority to the next, the transition so seamless that it can be a challenge to discern who is thinking what.
The novel is much like a tapestry. A thread or motif early in the novel is picked up later and later still so that a clear pattern doesn’t emerge until the novel is complete. The impression created is a constant moving backwards and forwards in time, much like the ebb and flow of a wave. Her shifts from spoken dialogue to monologue frequently occur within the same paragraph to suggest one flows into the other, conveying the free-flowing movement of waves. This technique is reinforced by the frequent references to water throughout.
The middle section, “Time Passes,” is eloquent, poetic, and brilliant. It captures the inexorable movement of time and its impact on people’s lives and belongings. Through her detailed description of the house in Skye, Woolf illuminates the ephemeral nature of existence. A home that once housed the Ramsay family and their brood of rambunctious children and house guests now stands as a crumbling testament to the ravages of time: its condition deteriorating; their numbers declining.
The novel is at once challenging, eloquent, brilliant, poignant, and beautiful. Virginia Woolf somehow manages to capture the intensity and longing and aloneness of human experience in breathtaking prose that whirls and spins and ebbs and flows. Although it was written 100 years ago, the novel feels as fresh today as if Virginia Woolf wrote it yesterday. A mark of a true genius.
Highly recommended.