The theme of "To The Lighthouse"

The theme of "To The Lighthouse"

Prepared by: Dhaval Diyora

Roll No: 05

Paper – 09 : The Modernist Literature

M.A (English):  Sem -3

Enrollment No: 2069108420190013

 Batch:  2018-20

 Email: d.d.diyora@gmail.com

 Submitted to: Smt .S. B Gardi, Department of English,

MK Bhavnagar University.

Topic: Theme of "To The Lighthouse"

The theme of "To The Lighthouse"

Inadequacy of Human Relationships 

Virginia Woolf was fully conscious of the inadequacy of human relationships. Human beings seemed to her isolated and communication between them partial, often unsatisfactory, sometimes quite mistaken. To the Lighthouse shows us various fictional characters, trying, with varying degrees of success, to establish relationships with the people around them.

Silence: Its Expressive Power

More often than not silence is more expressive than words. Lily realizes this fully, and she feels in greater communication with Carmichael than if they had spoken. They sit on the lawn perfectly silent, but still, they seem to understand each other, and are in perfect sympathy with each other, without exchanging even a single word. Things are often spoiled by saying them. Silence is often a single word. more perfectly expressive.

Importance of the Trivial

Silence thus often leads to the establishment of satisfactory human-relationships. At other times, things apparently trivia are helpful in this respect. For example, Mr. Ramsay comes to Lily demanding sympathy. Lily is unable to say a single word. And then suddenly she praises his boots. At once he is pleased and satisfied. At once they in sympathy with each other. The praise of the boots is something trivial, even comic, but it helps to establish sympathy and understanding between Lily and Ramsay and brings them closer together.

The need of Emotional Sympathy

Satisfactory human relationships are necessary for happiness in life. Such relationships can be established not through logic, reason and intellect, but through the emotions. Union of hearts, emotional understanding and sympathy are needed for satisfactory relationships between mother and children and husband and wife. Thus Mrs. Ramsay who is in sympathy with her children and understands their psychological needs is loved and respected by them while they hate the intellectual approach. He tells James that it won't be fine o morrow and so he won't be able to go to the lighthouse. This is perfectly true, but the hopes of the poor boy are thus shattered and he feels like stabbing his father. Mrs. Ramsay, who is more warm-hearted and sympathetic, at once assures him that the wind might change and they might still be able to go on the expedition. Now, this is a lie, but such lies are essential for human happiness.

Tansley and Lily Briscoe: Satisfactory Relationship

His feelings and Lily's appreciation of them are displayed with irony and subtlety at the dinner make an impression on the conversation but lacks the self-confidence to make his own opening and sits despising Mrs. Ramsay and Bankes. Tansley desperately wants to the superficial chat of Lily understands his feelings and tries an experiment, typical of her own detached attitude to people; she expresses her antagonism to him by a teasing invitation to him to accompany her to the lighthouse and this produces a rude and childish reaction from Tansley, expressive of his sensitivity to criticism. Lily has to abandon this truth game, however, because Mrs. Ramsay, who wants things to go smoothly, silently implores Lily's help in making the party comfortable, and so, in nearly the same words, but with a change of feeling, she again asks him to take her to the lighthouse. He takes the opportunity and begins to blossom forth in talk; now his egoism is satisfied and he is able to shine, for he is intelligent and well-informed.

Satisfactory relationship between Charles Tansley and the others at the table are thus established and the party thus becomes a success. Both Lily's invitations to Tansley are lies; the first is recognized by him as a lie and he sees the true feeling of antagonism that produced sities of polite social relationships produce Lily's second invitation, the insincerity of which Tansley does not realize. Lily feels that their relationship is therefore falsified; the need for politeness has involved her in false behavior, which has not been seen as false: she had done the usual trick-been nice. She would never know him. He would never know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought.

Husband-Wife Relationship

Even in the most intimate and most fully explored relationship in the novel, that of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay,, there is a note of pre- tence, and falsehood. Mrs. Ramsay is forced to praise him to his face and to bolster up his confidence in a way she feels should not be necessary. His constant need to be reassured, his fear of failure, his resentment that he has achieved less than he should have and that his books will not last, pervert his judgment, leading him to see in praise of other men's works disparagement of himself. This aspect of Ramsay, emphasized by the impartiality of Bankes, puts a strain on his wife and she has to conceal things from him: "...to be afraid that he might guess...that his last book was not quite his best book...and then to hide small daily things, and the children seeing it, and the burden it laid on there-all this diminished the entire joy..." On his side to there is a reserve, her pessimistic But his dependence conviction of the misery of life distresses him, and he cannot communicate with her in her moods of sadness. But his dependence on her and her respect and reverence for him balance these areas of difference.

            The Window traces the pattern of their relationship from one extreme to the other. They are seen at their furthest apart when their disagreement about going to the lighthouse brings out the difference in their attitudes to life: 'Damn you', he said. But what had she said? Simply that it might be fine tomorrow. So it might. Not with the barometer falling and the wind due west. Mr. Ramsay, who believes that children must be taught to face facts and know that life is hard, is infuriated by what seems to him his wife's dishonesty: The extraordinary the irrationality of her remark, the folly of women's minds enraged him. She flew in the face of facts, made her children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies."

            Mrs. Ramsay, who believes in making people happy. protecting children from losing the contented innocence of childhood finds her husband's attitude equally repugnant: "To pursue truth with such an astonishing lack of consideration of people's feelings, to rend the veils of civilization so wantonly, so brutally outrage of human decency..." they immediately begin to come together again with Ramsay's apology, and the rest of The Window, moves towards the moment at the end, when the firm asperity of the masculine mind, which she admires in him, curbs her gloomy thoughts and she is able, though indirectly, to assure him of her love.

The Role of Mrs. Ramsay

            Mrs. Ramsay is one of those characters of Virginia Woolf who can create harmony between people and break down their isolation. She is a woman who by the exercise of love for people in general, endeavors to make life happy and comfortable for them; for the poor by her exercise of philanthropy, for her children by fostering their talents, for her husband by sympathy and reassurance: by encouraging people to marry or to get on well together she creates communication between them. Because her own view of life tends to pessimism, she is moved to make every endeavor to create what order she can from the chaos of life. She can establish satisfactory human relationships and this fact makes her a good mother, a good wife; and a good hostess.

Conclusion 

In short, To The Lighthouse may rightly be called a study of the ways and means by which satisfactory human relationships might be established.

Works Cited

NEOEnglish. The theme of To The Lighthouse is a study of Human Relationships. December 2010. <https://neoenglish.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/%E2%80%9Cthe-theme-of-to-the-lighthouse-is-a-study-of-human-relationships-%E2%80%9D-discuss/>.

sparknotes.com. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. <https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lighthouse/>.