To the Lighthouse

The plot in less than 50 words

On a family holiday on the Isle of Skye, the Ramsay children ask their parents if they can go to the lighthouse. Their father says no. Ten years later, Mr. Ramsay takes two of his children to the lighthouse. Mrs. Ramsay is no longer alive.

The first paragraph

'Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow,' said Mrs. Ramsay. 'But you'll have to be up with the lark,' she added.

The structure of the book

The book is divided into three sections:

The Window (19 chapters, 130 pages, covering just one September day sometime between 1905 and 1910)
Time Passes (10 chapters, 22 pages covering the ensuing ten years)
The Lighthouse (13 chapters, 69 pages covering just one morning).

The cast

The Ramsay family

Mr. Ramsay is 61 in the first section, and 71 years old in the final section. A philosopher and don who worries that he might not be as good as he could have been. He is vain for glory, wanting to be recognized and remembered. Irritable and moody, he is sarcastic and cutting, but when he wants to be, he can be charming. He likes to chat with fishermen (salt of the earth types), but is aloof with society, and pays his children little attention. He is a tyrant in his own home. Described many times as being like a knife (hence 'cutting'). Based on Virginia Woolf's father.
Mrs. Ramsay, 50, is beautiful, and a philanthropist (a do-gooder who helps the poor and needy). She knits stockings for the lighthouse keeper's son. She worries about money (the repair bill for the greenhouse plays on her mind), and about the marriage prospects of her guests whom she tries to match make. She has 7 children (3 daughters and 4 sons) and loves James, her youngest child the most. He is 6.
Prue (very beautiful, dies in childbirth after only one year of marriage)
Nancy
Cam (7 at start; she and James are the only two Ramsay children to accompany their father to the lighthouse.)
Jasper (who shoots birds, much to his mother's dismay)
Andrew (who is very good at mathematics, but is killed by a bomb in France in World War One)
Roger
James (who resents his father for being such a coldhearted tyrant, but he still wants his approval, and is very glad when his father praises him on his handling of the boat when they reach the lighthouse). 'That bundle of sensitiveness' (page 48)

Charles Tansley is an academic (acolyte of Mr. Ramsay's) who has a chip on his shoulder about his lowly background. Ten years later he gets his fellowship, marries and lives in Golders Green.

Augustus Carmichael is a poet and an annual visitor to Skye where he is always a guest of the Ramsays. He made an unfortunate marriage (while at Oxford) and is henpecked. He dabbles in opium (?), and is usually to be found dozing in a chair in the garden with a book open. His poems become very popular in WW1 and he becomes famous. When Andrew Ramsay died in France, Carmichael lost interest in life (page 211), which leads us to believe he is gay and had a crush on the boy.

Lily Briscoe, 33, has Chinese eyes, and is to be too ugly to marry (or so thinks Mrs. Ramsay who tries to marry her off with William Bankes, but fails). Lily lives in the Brompton Road, but is a frequent visitor to Skye and the Ramsays. She likes to paint, but has little confidence in her own ability. Lily loves Mrs. Ramsay and misses her keenly after her death.

William Bankes is a widower in his sixties. He is an old friend of Mr. Ramsay, and is a botanist. He likes to dine alone. He and Lily get on well, but theirs is a friendship rather than a romance.

Marie (Marthe) is the Ramsays' Swiss maid whose father is dying from throat cancer back home.

Mildred is the cook, and puts the children to bed.

Minta Doyle is tomboyish, 24, and rather daring (vivacious). Her moral laxity is symbolized by the hole in her stocking! She goes for a walk with Paul Rayley, Nancy and Andrew on the beach (page 83), and is caught snogging with Paul by the children. As the tide comes in, she realises she has lost her brooch (it was her grandmother's). Paul says he'll come back and look for it the next morning at first light. She and Paul become engaged, much to Mrs. Ramsay's satisfaction, but their marriage is rocky (page 188). They both are unfaithful, but eventually settle down to be very happy together, with Minta happy to let Paul keep a mistress.

Paul Rayley (see above)

Kennedy is the handsome but lazy gardener

Mrs. McNab is the elderly woman employed by the Ramsays to look after their house on Skye while they are away (page 142). She is nearly 70 years old, and so there is a limit to the amount of upkeep she can do. As a result, the house falls into a state of disrepair in the war when the Ramsays do not visit for 10 years.

Mrs. Bast helps clean the house, and her son, George, does the garden (pages 151-152).

MacAlister, 75, and his son row the boat out to the lighthouse with James on the tiller.

What the book is about

Families, childhood, the class system, memory, death
VW's theme is primitive energies, how people attempt to hide away from them and how they break through, driving people whether they understand them or not.
The subject of VW's works is that level of mental experience which is beneath or behind our deliberate, logical thoughts. All of VW's writing serves one aim: to explore the non-rational controlling energies in her characters' minds. There is something inexpressibly primitive in control of our lives; yet we always struggle to understand and articulate it.

A quote (to give you the flavour . . .)

" But," said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, "it won't be fine."
Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr. Ramsay excited in his children's breasts by his mere presence; standing, as now, lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one, grinning sarcastically, not only with the pleasure of disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife, who was ten thousand times better in every way than he was ( James thought), but also with some secret conceit at his own accuracy of judgement. What he said was true. It was always true. He was incapable of untruth; never tampered with a fact; never altered a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, least of all of his own children, who, sprung from his loins, should be aware from childhood that life is difficult. (p 8)

Some characteristics of the book

Long sentences of description of place or feelings interspersed with very short sentences of direct speech. The longest sentences are very rewarding to analyse. Expect them to focus on the most intimate and deepest levels of consciousness in a character.
The use of language to create an impression of a continuous present experience. VW portrays a level of experience as close as possible to the chaotic and confusing present moment of life. It is more impulsive, less conscious and less logically organised than we are used to in other novels. It is full of interrupted or diverted thoughts. The long sentences imitate an illogical, non-conscious level of mental experience.
Characterisation: repetition, long sentences, internal debate, vagueness, omissions, imagery, "misfit words" which seem out of place (they act as a signpost, pointing to unconscious thoughts a character does not want to address).
VW's men are often preoccupied by dry questions and problems (that have nothing to do with their wives and families).
Trivial and irrelevant dialogue is a common feature of VW's writing. People do not say what they are thinking, but instead talk about trivial things, and in doing so, prevent any meaningful communication taking place.