Nayyab Naveed

Sarah Humayun
LAW 214: Reading Virginia Woolf
1 March 2020

Response 1
Archival Material for Virginia Woolf

In the diary entries for 19th January and 20th May from the year 1926, we see Woolf
describing her friend Vita Sackwell-West with both desire and longing, and this description
sheds light on and further enriches the relationship Lily Briscoe has with Mrs Ramsay in the
novel, To the Lighthouse.
In the entry for 20th May, Woolf ’s exclamation of Vita’s beauty and her mystery become
standing points for the reader to interpret a sense of deep love and attachment Lily feels for
Mrs Ramsay. Woolf writes, “..I like her [Vita’s] presence and her beauty. Am I in love with
her?..Her being ‘in love’ with me, excites and flatters and interests. Oh and then she gratifies
my eternal curiosity: who’s she seen and what’s she done..” This description of her deep
sexual desire for Vita somewhat reflects in Lily Briscoe’s relationship with Mrs Ramsay where
Lily has the desire to be “one” with Mrs Ramsay. Anne E. Fernald in her essay To the
Lighthouse in the Context of Virginia Woolf ’s Diaries and Life writes how Lily’s intense desire is much
like Woolf; childlike, sororal and sexual all at once (Fernald 2014). For Lily in To the Lighthouse
says:
Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs. Ramsay’s knees, close as she could get, she
imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart... tablets bearing sacred inscriptions . . .
What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret
chambers? ... the body achieve it, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of the
brain? or the heart? Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? (82–3)
From this passage from To the Lighthouse, one can draw parallels between Woolf and Vita and
Lily and Mrs Ramsay, where Lily also is excited and ‘flattered’ by the ‘sacred inscriptions’
lying inside Mrs Ramsay’s mind, much like Woolf is ‘eternally curious’ about Vita and who
she has met and what she has done. In fact, as Woolf laments in another Diary Entry dated
from Spring of 1926 saying, “Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it, once more, the
deceptiveness of beauty?” Woolf cannot answer these questions pertaining to the nature of
her love for Vita, much like Lily. Yet these entries serve as evidence for the complexity, nuance
and mystery of love. Similarly, a yearning is introduced in Woolf ’s diaries in Vita’s absence
where laments how she feels like a “dim November fog” whereas Vita’s presence makes the
atmosphere “rosy and calm.” She describes Vita as tapping “so many sources of life: repose

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and variety.” This mirrors the descriptions of Lily in the chapter The Lighthouse, where
everything is “silent” and Lily yearns for the warmth and life that was encapsulated by Mrs
Ramsay. Such stark parallels change my perception of Lily and Mrs Ramsay because, before,
I perceived their relationship as that of Mother and Daughter but reading Woolf ’s sensual
diary entires, a subtle sexual connotation is introduced in the two character’s relationships.
Again, this helps us see Lily and Mrs Ramsay as having a complex and nuanced relationship
of love and desires; which is maternal, sisterly, sexual and childlike at the same time;
enhancing the depiction of love and beauty as a theme in Virginia Woolf ’s To the Lighthouse.

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Appendix

1. Diary entry for 20th May 1926.

Waiting for L. to come back from chess with Roger: 11.25. I think nothing need be said
of the Strike. As tends to happen, one's mind slips after the crisis, & what the settlement is, or
will be, I know not. We must now fan the books up again. Viola & Phil Baker were both
struck on the wing. Viola comes, very tactfully, as a friend, she says, to consult after dinner.
She is a flamboyant creature—much of an actress—much abused by the Waleys & Marjories;
but rather taking to me. She has the great egotism, the magnification of self, which any bodily
display, I think, produces. She values women by their hips & ankles, like horses. Easily reverts
to the topic of her own charms: how she shd. have married the D. of Rutland. "Lord — (his
uncle) told me I was the woman John really loved. The duchess said to me 'Do make love to
John & get him away from —. At any rate you're tall & beautiful—' And I sometimes think if
I'd married him—but he never asked me—Daddy wouldn't have died. I'd have prevented that
operation: Then how he'd have loved a duke for a son in law! All his life was dressing up—
that sort of thing you know." So she runs on, in the best of clothes, easy & familiar, but
reserved too; with the wiles & warinesses of a woman of the world, half sordid half splendid,
not quite at her ease with us, yet glad of a room where she can tell her stories, of listeners to
whom she is new & strange. She will run on by the hour—yet is very watchful not to bore; a
good business woman, & floating over considerable acuteness on her charm. All this however,
is not making her book move, as they say. Eddy came in to tea. I like him—his flattery? his
nobility? I dont know—I find him easy & eager. And Vita comes to lunch tomorrow which
will be a great amusement & pleasure. I am amused at my relations with her: left so ardent in
January—& now what? Also I like her presence & her beauty. Am I in love with her? But
what is love? Her being 'in love' (it must be comma'd thus) with me, excites & flatters; &
interests. What is this 'love'? Oh & then she gratifies my eternal curiosity: who's she seen,
whats she done—for I have no enormous opinion of her poetry. How could I—I who have
such delight in mitigating the works even of my greatest friends. I should have been reading
her poem tonight: instead finished Sharon Turner—a prosy, simple, old man; the very spit &
image of Saxon. a boundless bore, I daresay, with the most intense zeal for "improving
myself", & the holiest affections, & 13 children, & no character or impetus—a love of long
walks, of music; modest, yet conceited in an ant like way. I mean he has the industry &

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persistency in recounting compliments of an ant, but so little character that one hardly calls
him vain!

2. Diary entry for Tuesday 19th January 1926 by Virginia Woolf. The Diary of Virginia
Woolf. by Virginia Woolf. Ed. Anne Olivier Bell. Vol. III (1925-1930). San Diego: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1980. 5 vols.

Vita having this moment (20 minutes ago—it is now 7) left me, what are my feelings?
Of a dim November fog; the lights dulled & damped. I walked towards the sound of a barrel
organ in Marchmont Street.  But this will disperse; then I shall want her, clearly & distinctly.
Then not—& so on. This is the normal human feeling, I think. One wants to fi nish sentences.
One wants that atmosphere—to me so rosy & calm. She is not clever; but abundant & fruitful;
truthful too. She taps so many sources of life: repose & variety, was her own expression, sitting
on the fl oor this evening in the gaslight. We dined last night at the Ivy with Clive; & then they
had a supper party, from which I refrained. Oh & mixed up with this is the invigoration of
again beginning my novel, in the Studio, for the fi rst time this morning. All these fountains
play on my being & intermingle. I feel a lack of stimulus, of marked days, now Vita is gone;
& some pathos, common to all these partings; & she has 4 days journey through the snow.

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 Citations

Fernald, Anne E. “To the Lighthousein the Context of Virginia Woolf ’s Diaries and
Life.” The Cambridge Companion to To The Lighthouse, 2014, pp. 6–18., doi:10.1017/
cco9781107280342.003.

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