Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse and the Ideal of the Eternally Feminine

Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse
Like a water spider skimming the surface of a pond, Virginia Woolf is accused by early critics as being an "elitist" and only focusing on the "sliver of life" of the middle-class in her work (Goldman 50). Woolf is also wrongfully portrayed by her harsher critics as a "sheltered, hypersensitive invalid lady" who cannot show the darker depths of life and reality (Minow-Pinkney ix). However, the more positive critics, such as Elaine Showalter, see Woolf's art as a presentation of a new theory of the female aesthetic; to refute the idea that women have "limited experience by defining reality as subjective"(Minow-Pinkney 2). Women do not learn nor relegate their knowledge only by what they have experienced. There is a much deeper understanding and connection to life as understood by women and I call this uniform aspect the feminine, or as Kelley describes it "an aspect of mind that achieves its own sort of knowledge"(78).

Additionally, I believe that Woolf is trying to show a new vision; a vision that presents the intuitive levels of knowledge existing in women that are not slaves or limited to the subjective or the expected and essential to the forwarding of mankind. In Woolf's To The Lighthouse, a story of the Ramsay family vacationing on a summer isle and experiencing life from all aspects, the main connection among all of the characters is the mother, Mrs. Ramsay. Mrs. Ramsay embodies the single unifying force throughout the entire novel. Although many readers believe Mrs. Ramsay is used as a symbol for Victorian stereotypes, Woolf is not using her to dispel such destructive myths. Rather, as Alice van Buren Kelley correctly assumes in To The Lighthouse: The Marriage of Life and Art, Woolf is setting Mrs. Ramsey as an example of the "essentially feminine in whatever age it appears"(56). Virginia Woolf's work is not an attempt to find a safe haven for the feminine aesthetic squirreled away from the masculine aesthetic, but instead as a new idea in which to "redefine [certain]conceptions of truth"(Raschke 288) about the knowledge and understanding of women.

Men have often generally been considered the more intelligent of the sexes because of their greater sanctioning of Reason and their disconnection from emotion. A wonderful example of such a masculine theory is how Mr. Ramsay perceives truth: "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"(TL 4). Thus, when Mrs. Ramsay compassionately tries to install some hope for the much longed for visit to the lighthouse by something of an untruth he is enraged by her. Compared to his own thinking, Mrs. Ramsay "flew in the face of facts, made his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies"(TL 31). Mrs. Ramsay also supports this when she flushes in embarrassment when her husband makes reference to her countenance while she was philosophizing about how "no happiness lasted"(TL 64). And instead of admitting to her thoughts, Mrs. Ramsay shamefacedly admits only to "wool gathering"(TL 68). Both Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay are unable to accept that Mrs. Ramsay just may be capable of thinking because of the strength in the ideals that men were the intellectual support. Thus is how Mr. Ramsay is an embodiment of the masculine influences crowding around Mrs. Ramsay daily.

Faced against men who prefer facts to compassion, Mrs. Ramsay represents an eternally inherent quality present in all women necessary for civilization. Through sacrifice of herself, Mrs. Ramsay inspires others to live and to create. In addition to such a quality, Mrs. Ramsay also embodies the "role of nurturer" as reserved for the female sex(Kelley 78). Whether such a role is reserved for women because of patriarchal rule and anciently held beliefs which imprison a women as caretaker of the home or because of some universal feminine quality meant to preserve beauty and unity, Mrs. Ramsay embodies what is "essential to the life of humankind and provides a healing, unifying force in the face of pain, separation, and confusion"(Kelley 80). Even Mr. Bankes shares this view when he describes the effect of Mrs. Ramsay, while in the maternal position of reading fairy tales to her son James, upon him as "barbarity [being] tamed, the reign of chaos subdued"(TL 47).

Although it is obvious throughout the last two sections that Mrs. Ramsey is able to affect everyone who knew her even after death, I prefer to focus on her effects before rigor mortis made her stiff. During her life, Mrs. Ramsay had to be constantly bombarded with preconceived notions of how women were expected to behave. The Victorian era elicited the ideal that women were to support the man through marriage, while the "man's intellect supports the woman"(Kelley 53). Alice van Buren Kelley astutely observes that Mrs. Ramsay represents the "anonymous, dark life of women" entrapped within their domicile prisons(57). Just as Virginia Woolf was expected to "assume the role of caretaker and comforter for [her] father"(McNaron 135) after her mother's death, so is Mrs. Ramsay required to undertake the same position as caregiver. However, the position of the woman is not valued on a monetary level, instead women maintain a virtuous social code which "smooths the surface of social relations between men and women and helps make civilized life possible"(Marder 43). Without such support and preservation chaos would surely reign.

One of the more antagonistic male characters is Charles Tansley. Mr. Tansley is portrayed as being an aggressively anti-feminist when he mocks Lily Briscoe by whispering in her ear that "women can't paint, women can't write"(TL 48). The fact that this refrain seems to haunt Lily and echo her own doubts as well as the opinion of the majority of the patriarchal society surrounding her, suggests that Mr. Tansley's opinion is indeed negative and quite the opposite of admiring. Mr. Tansley is even unable to freely discuss the characteristics of the paintings, and in essence art, on the quay because he repeats his doubts about his abilities in wondering "was that what one said?....was that what one said"(TL 13). Yet somehow Mrs. Ramsay is able to inspire and soften the hard core of Mr. Tansley.

Although he is an extremely self-conscious young man who is never happy until "he had turned the whole thing round and made it somehow reflect himself and disparage them"(TL 8), Charles Tansley feels "capable of anything"(TL 11) just by gazing at Mrs. Ramsay's beauty. But as a sixty-year-old woman, just how beautiful can she be to a young man of twenty-four? The answer: There exists within Mrs. Ramsay an eternal feminine characteristic which, according to Herbert Marder in Feminism and Art: A Study of Virginia Woolf, "can keep men on course toward spiritual illumination"(155). It is not through understanding the "ugly academic jargon"(TL 12) that Mr. Tansley converses in, but rather her encouragement and making him feel noticed that motivates Tansley. Thus, Charles Tansley's words become more poetic and reminiscent of a mythological comparison of "nonsense"(TL 14) as his creative power is fed by Mrs. Ramsay's own.

Unlike the way Mrs. Ramsay stimulates Charles Tansley, she sacrifices herself to the point of exhaustion and possibly even death in order to arouse and sustain her husband's creativity. Upon her marriage, Mrs. Ramsay was subjected to what Lily refers to as "degradation" and "dilution"(TL 102). It is the degradation and dilution of the human self as an individual and an "independent"(TL 17) person that Lily is talking about. Lily knows that she is independent and "saved"(TL 102) from such subjection as Mrs. Ramsay is. Yet, the "subject and object of the artist's[Lily's] gaze is feminine"(Goldman 169) and in that inherent feminity inhabits the ephemeral. Alice van Buren Kelley explains the ephemeral quality of Mrs. Ramsay in an honest way: "at the end of the day, nothing tangible remains[of her efforts]- ie. dinner cooked and eaten, children raised and released..."(56). Mrs. Ramsay herself realizes with her thoughtful perceptions that "in one quick doing after another that it was ephemeral as a rainbow"(TL 16). Unlike Mr. Ramsay who has his lectures, books, and discussions to give evidence to his existence and efforts, Mrs. Ramsay and all women in her role have no physical remains besides what lives on in her children. So, as Mrs. Ramsay goes about "in one quick doing after another"(TL 17) existing in a fragmented world, she appears to "pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies were being fused into force, burning and illuminating"(TL 37).

By giving back fertility to the "fatal sterility of the male"(TL 37) that plunged itself into her outpouring of feminity, Mrs. Ramsay is able to satisfy Mr. Ramsay with arbitrary words and renew his sense of peace and thoughtfulness. Immediately following her comforting of Mr. Ramsay, Mrs. Ramsay "fold[s] herself together, one petal closed in another, and the whole fabric fell in exhaustion upon itself"(TL 38). Thus, it is the infinitely continuous strain upon Mrs. Ramsay that causes her loss of energy and later on makes her "feel out of it"(TL 82) during the dinner scene. Even Lily notices "how old she looks, how worn she looks"(TL 84) when moments before she was descending the stairs like a queen accepting "their tribute to her beauty"(TL 82).

All of the pillars of support that Mr. Ramsay requires of Mrs. Ramsay are her human attributes of compassion, sympathy, and even exaggeration. Yet, it is only when Mrs. Ramsay is able to expunge "all the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal" attributes and become a "wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others"(TL 62) that she is able to be herself, just as she is represented in Lily's painting. In other words, Mrs. Ramsay must shed her human attachments and be "condensed into something invisible, limitless"(Kelley 80) that can not meant to forever be a bag of "unlimited resources"(TL 62) for everyone to make use of. Mrs. Ramsay believes that if one loses personality, "one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir" and things come together in a sense of "this peace, this rest, this eternity"(TL 63). Again Mrs. Ramsay sacrifices herself for her husband. For unlike Mr. Bankes who sees work as the only thing worth his time since he considers Mrs. Ramsay's life as "trifling"and "boring"(TL 89), Mrs. Ramsay fully and intentionally sacrifices herself as an individual woman in order to rise above the chaos and create through relationships with others. Because the men surrounding her need to have legacies left to praise them and physical objects left to remember them, Mrs. Ramsay will never be more than the inspiration given to the beauty and creativity used to create such genius.

Mrs. Ramsay's ability to give of herself and rise above secular restrictions is not evidence of "the individual having gained androgyny" as Tonya Krouse states in her essay "'I'd Rather Be a Cyborg Than a Goddess': Lily Briscoe, Mrs. Ramsay, and the Post Modern Sublime"(295). For it is not her retention of both male and female characteristics that make Mrs. Ramsay such an effective force in the lives around her, but the essentially feminine essence present within her. Maybe because women have been subjected to the role of nurturer and caretaker of mankind since even before my time, Mrs. Ramsay is able to incite unity and creativity.

The purely feminine attributes of Mrs. Ramsay are emphasized by the negative comments of the male figures surrounding her as pertaining to the female gender. Mr. Ramsay in particular can not understand why Mrs. Ramsay insists on feeding his children lies and untruths when they are not true(TL 4). And Charles Tansley charges women with the crime of making "civilisation impossible with all of their charm, all of their silliness"(TL 85). However, it is these exact qualities that are an inherent part of the feminine in Mrs. Ramsay and evident when she is dealing with her children. When Mrs. Ramsay is first introduced she is sitting with her son, James, in a protective cocoon "fringed with joy"(TL 3). James sense of comfort and joy in a proposed trip to the lighthouse is shattered by his father's accurate truth that the weather would be too foul to make the adventure. Mrs. Ramsay comes to the rescue in an attempt to nurture the pleasant hope alive within her son. Since James is so young and with his entire life ahead of him, Mrs. Ramsay wishes to protect him from the unavoidable fact that he will face the treachery and "suffering, death, the poor"(TL 64) that life inherently breeds.

Also, Mrs. Ramsay tries to show her daughters, Prue, Nancy, and Rose, the importance of their roles as women and thus nurturers. As she is knitting a "reddish-brown"(TL 4) stocking for the frail son of the lighthouse keeper, Mrs. Ramsay wishes to emphasize the sadness of the lonely existence of the keeper and the son stranded, isolated away from all other people especially their families. Mrs. Ramsay addresses "herself particularly to her daughters" and not her sons how "one must take them whatever comforts one can"(TL 5) as if it is to be their duty to follow in her footsteps. She is attempting to teach her girls something that must be inherent, yet instead of the children accepting the seemingly set futures, they dream to "not always be taking care of some man"(TL 7); which implies they do not wish to end up like their mother.

The desire to "sport with infidel ideas which they had brewed for themselves of a life different"(TL 6-7) from Mrs. Ramsay shows how the girls are beginning to become a new addition to the feminine. Their dreams of Paris and a "wilder life" come from questioning the way their mother's teaching fails to appeal to them and appears as a path of "deference and chivalry"(TL 7). Yet, there is an "essence of beauty"(TL 7) that calls to a part of the essentially feminine that is inherent in each of the girls. Thus, each of them "honour[s] her strange severity"(TL 7) and will always be affected and connected by Mrs. Ramsay's enlightenments. The girls' represent a "new sort of art.....that includes the past without being dominated by it, that escapes the limits of male or female to present something incandescent and whole"(Kelley 60).

In addition to her role as nurturer, Mrs. Ramsay also helps create a sense of unity among her guests. Not only does she show a connection among her daughters and herself, but she is able to create as an "artistic hostess"(Dodd 150) a spiritual connection during her dinner. When the children are given permission to "light the candles"(TL 96), Mrs. Ramsay initiates a setting perceptive to a more mellow and unifying atmosphere. As the people held within the circle of light are connected in a shared sense opposition to the "outside"(TL 97), so Mrs. Ramsay enforces a "colonial rule"(Lilienfeld 39) over her party. Even though they have been paying tribute to her queenly beauty, there is finally a unifying force that a "change at once went through them all"(TL 97). Mrs. Ramsay has "put a spell on them all"(TL 101) and arranged her domestic life so as to protect each individual's sensitivity. With her "antennae trembling out from her"(TL 107), Mrs. Ramsay is connected to each of the feelings of her guests and is able to sustain the beautiful scene. However, once Mrs. Ramsay leaves the confines of the dinner, the room changes and "shape[s] itself differently"(TL 111). Without the effect of her unifying force the "disintegration"(TL 112) sets in and the sublime is never recovered.

According to Kelley, Virginia Woolf's goal is to:

"reveal the order hidden behind the daily blur, to bring together through some delicate arrangements some central line, the opposing aspects of life"(75). In To The Lighthouse, Woolf exhibits the strengths of Mrs. Ramsay as she goes throughout her busy day and continuously exhibits qualities inherent in women and considered the feminine. Regardless of the fact that women are subjected to certain patriarchal dominance issues, Mrs. Ramsay creates in others a sense of beauty, nurturing, peace, comfort, and unity. Without the coalescence of unity manufactured by Mrs. Ramsay, her husband would forever wallow in self pity, Mr. Tansley would never know he had the imagination of a poet, her children would never realize the beauty in their lives to come, or have hope in the hearts in the present. Through self-sacrifice and a sensitivity to others' emotions, Mrs. Ramsay represents an essential aspect of life that is found in the feminine.

Bibliography

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