Name: Shanzé Rashid

Roll no.MF19117

Semester: Bs English 6th(A)

Submitted to:- Ma'am Hina

Novel:-

"To the Lighthouse"

Summary
In a summerhouse on the Isle of Skye, James is enraged when Mr. Ramsay insists he won’t get to go to
the Lighthouse the next day. Mr. Tansley echoes Mr. Ramsay. Mrs. Ramsay tries to preserve James’
hope. She reflects on Mr. Tansley’s charmlessness, then recalls his confiding in her about his poverty.
Lily struggles to paint on the lawn. She agrees to accompany Mr. Bankes on a walk and they discuss the
Ramsays. Meanwhile, Mr. Ramsay argues with his wife about the Lighthouse again, aggravating James.
Mr. Ramsay meditates by the sea. After walking, Mr. Bankes admires Mrs. Ramsay and Lily considers the
vivacity distinguishing her beauty. Lily explains her painting to Mr. Bankes.Meanwhile, Mrs. Ramsay
wishes Cam and James could stay small, thinking she’s not pessimistic (as her husband says), just
realistic. She worries about Nancy, Andrew, Paul, and Minta on their walk. After James goes to bed, Mrs.
Ramsay watches the Lighthouse, thinking, a sight which saddens Mr. Ramsay. She walks with him,
chatting affectionately. Mr. Bankes and Lily walk, too, discussing painting, then the Ramsays. They come
upon Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay who seem suddenly symbolic in the spell of evening.

On the cliffs, Nancy, Minta, Paul, and Andrew have separated and reunited awkwardly on the sight of
Minta and Paul embracing. Their return is delayed by Minta’s lost brooch, which Paul chivalrously
determines to find. He has successfully proposed to Minta. Minta sobs for more, Nancy feels, than the
brooch.

At the summerhouse, Mrs. Ramsay lets Jasper and Rose help her dress and is relieved when the walk
party returns. Though she despairs at dinner’s start, Lily helps her manage small talk and the
conversation eventually carries the night into an orderly beauty that Mrs. Ramsay believes partakes of
eternity. Mr. Tansley and Mr. Bankes flounder, then find footing at the table. Lily feels burned by
lovestruck Paul’s indifference, and decides not to marry. After dinner, Mrs. Ramsay coaxes Cam and
James to sleep, sends Prue, Paul, Minta, Lily, and Andrew off on a walk, then joins Mr. Ramsay reading.
She feels transported by a sonnet. After reading, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay say little but still express their
deep love for one another.Nights pass, then the season. Mrs. Ramsay dies suddenly. The house stays
empty. Prue marries, then dies in childbirth, and Andrew dies in World War I. Mr. Carmichael gets
famous. Mrs. McNab eventually gives up on caring for the house, which falls into disrepair. Then, after
ten years, Mrs. McNab receives word to prepare the house and laboriously does so. Lily and Mr.
Carmichael return.

The first morning back, Mr. Ramsay forces the teenage Cam and James to go to the Lighthouse with him.
Lily fails to avoid him before they leave. During an awkward conversation, Lily feels Mr. Ramsay silently
pleading for her sympathy and feels like a defective woman for not giving it. Mr. Ramsay sets off with a
resentful Cam and James and Lily feels guilty. She tries to paint but is distracted by thoughts of Mrs.
Ramsay and questions life’s meaning.

At sea, Cam and James have a pact of silence against their father’s imperious bossiness. Cam doesn’t
break it even as she’s tempted to give in to her father’s attempts to engage her, admiring him as she
does.Lily considers Paul and Minta’s failed marriage and her own singleness and wants to show the
matchmaking Mrs. Ramsay how wrong her instincts were. Suddenly, Lily tears up at Mrs. Ramsay’s ghost
and life’s senselessness. She looks for Mr. Ramsay’s sailboat, wanting to give him her sympathy.At sea,
James inwardly contrasts his father and mother. Cam feels spontaneously joyous and loves Mr. Ramsay.

On land, Lily observes how little one can know of other people’s lives and reminisces about the Ramsays.
She reflects that the greatest skill is to see the world as simultaneously ordinary and miraculous.At sea,
Mr. Ramsay finally gives James the praise he craves, but James conceals his joy. Reaching shore, Mr.
Ramsay leaps eagerly towards the Lighthouse.

On land, Lily and Mr. Carmichael agree Mr. Ramsay has reached the Lighthouse. Lily paints a final line
and is satisfied, even knowing her painting will be forgotten. She has had her vision.

Stream of consciousness in "to the lighthouse"

Introduction
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is recognized by its utilization of the stream of consciousness
technique in expanding the narration of the novel. Before attempting to trace out the stream of
consciousness in To the Lighthouse, first, we have to clarify what stream of consciousness actually is.
Stream of Consciousness, also known as interior monologue, is a term first coined by William James
which means an unbroken flow of thoughts and feelings in the waking mind. This technique in the novel
was first used by James Joyce in his Ulysses. Woolf experimented with the technique in Mrs. Dalloway
and then in To the Lighthouse. In this novel, the stream of consciousness technique helps in the internal
development of the characters through their internal flow of thoughts and feelings, mingled with their
outward actions and utterances.

The following elements have been utilized to make characters alive through Stream of Consciousness.

 Direct Interior Monologue

Direct Interior Monologue is an inner realization and revelation of conscious and unconscious
development of thoughts through the minds of characters. Woolf has beautifully utilized this technique
to introduce us to the inner turmoil of Mrs. Ramsay of being bruised by the past during the dinner scene
in The Window. Then the omniscient narrator shifts towards the perspective of Lily Briscoe on how she
weighs Mrs. Ramsay's old age and worn-out condition. Similarly, in Time Passes, the death of Mrs.
Ramsay is announced through the direct interior monologue whereas, The Lighthouse (third part) opens
up Lily's inner thoughts of the feeling of completeness, harmony and triumph through direct interior
monologue when Lily finally completes her painting.

 Associative Thoughts

Associative thoughts is rather a Freudian analysis of the association of a certain thing, person or incident
in recollection of other things, person or incident. In To the Lighthouse, this association is shown by
different persons at different parts of the novel. For instance, in The Window, Charles Tansley performs
a comparison between Queen Victoria and Mrs. Ramsay. In the second part, Mrs. M'cNab remembers
the Ramsay family while cleaning up the house during the lethal season of war. In The Lighthouse
section, Lily Briscoe remembers Charles Tansley, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, and children freely while
painting.

 Repetition in Thoughts

Reoccurring thoughts, images and memories play a key role in the uninterrupted flow of the stream of
consciousness. To the Lighthouse is no exemption. In the first part, Mrs. Ramsay is consistently
presented as a pivoting force who keeps her family and guests united and connected. In the second part,
the repetition of the imagery of deaths and darkness helps reinforce the announcement of the deaths of
Mrs. Ramsay, Andrew and Prue Ramsay in the span of ten years. In the section of The Lighthouse, the
idea of harmony and accomplishment assists in the illustration of completing the journey towards the
lighthouse as well as the completion of Lily's long and ambitious quest to create a painting that depicts
balance and harmony.

Conclusion

Conclusively asserting, Virginia Woolf appropriately and beautifully incorporates stream of

consciousness and its elements that helps in getting into the minds of characters. Rowland aptly puts in,
by blending people’s inward feelings and keeping dialogue to a minimum, Woolf develops her many-
dimensioned characters uniquely and memorably.

Symbolism in novel "to the lighthouse"

Introduction:
Written from multiple perspectives and shifting between times and characters with poetic grace, To The
Lighthouse is not concerned with ordinary story telling. Rather through integrate symbolic web it reads
the mind and recounts the passage of multiple experiences of different characters in the novel.The key
symbols in To The Lighthouse are are – the sea, the lighthouse, Lily’s painting, the window, and the
personalities of Mrs. Ramsay and Mr. Ramsay. They are all woven together, along with many other less
important ones, into a central meaning, which suggests Mrs. Woolf’s conception of life and reality. Let
them study closely under the following heads.

 The eternal flux of time and life – The sea: The sea with its waves is to be heard throughout
the novel. It symbolizes the eternal flux of time and life, in the midst of which we all exist; it
constantly changes its character. To Mrs. Ramsay at one moment it sounds soothing and
consoling like a cradlesong, at others, “like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beating a
warning of death it brings terror. Sometimes its power “sweeping savagely in, “seems to reduce
the individual to nothingness, at others it sends up ‘a fountain of bright water” – which seems to
match the sudden springs of vitality in the human spirit.
 The Lighthouse – a whole cluster of suggestion: The lighthouse holds a whole cluster of
suggestions. It is a mystery, yet a concern for day-to-day living. It is at once distant and close at
the mercy of its destructive forces. The lighthouse surrounded by sea always illumines and
clarifies the human condition in someway. Farther, it is the quest for the values the lighthouse
suggests. The tower is frequently shadowed in mist, its beams are intermittent in the darkness,
the moments of assurance they bring the momentary, but upon these assurances reality rests,
by landing on the general doubts, something which seems to triumph over the eternal cycle of
change. To reach the lighthouse is to establish a creative relationship.
 Indeed, the lighthouse is the most important symbol and different critics have explained it in
different ways. For example Russel declares that the lighthouse is the feminine creative
principle. Jon Bennett calls the alternate light and shadows of the lighthouse the rhythm of joy
and sorrow, understanding and misunderstanding. F.L. Overcarsh, finds the novel as a whole an
allegory of the old and New Testements: Mrs. Ramsay is Eve, the Blessed virgin and Chirst; Mr.
Ramsay is among other things God the Father; the lighthouse is Eden and Heaven. The strokes of
the lighthouse are the persons of the Trinity, the third of them, long and steady representing the
Holy Ghost. The lighthouse as symbol has not one meaning, that it is a vital synthesis of time and
eternity: an objective correlative for Mrs. Ramsay’s vision, after whose death it is her meaning.

 The Window, a view to oneself: It is from the window that we have the little of the part-I of
To The Lighthouse. It is not a transparent but a separating sheet of glass between reality and
Mrs. Ramsay’s mind. Mrs. Ramsay experiences such moments of revelation and integration at
watching the window. It is the very symbol of the imperfection of our knowledge and riddle of
human mind. It is debates about philosophy, particularly theories about visual reality on the
three main philosophers of British empiricism, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.
The basic argument of empiricism is whether or not a person can be empirically certain that
objects have a distinct and continued existence apart from our perceptions of them.
 Mr. & Mrs. Ramsay: The characters are carefully arranged in the novel in their relation to each
other, so that a definite symbolic pattern emerges. Mrs. Ramsay pervades the whole book. Mrs.
 Ramsay is the mother of the Ramsay family who dies during the middle section of the novel. A
beautiful, caring woman, she means all things to all people, and each character of To the
Lighthouse has a different perception of her personality. Lily sees her as a mother, and doesn’t
think she has ever inspired romantic passion. William Bankes and Charles Tansley adore her, and
think she doesn’t realize how beautiful she is. The children see her as the “Lighthouse” of their
lives—the stable, warm force that protects and guides them. She is above all the creator of
fertile human relationships symbolized by her love of match making and her knitting; and of
warm comfort symbolized by her green shawl. Just as Mrs. Ramsay stands for creative vitality, so
Mr. Ramsay stands as the symbol of the sterile, destructive barriers to relationship. Just as Mrs.
Ramsay is described in images of fertility and the warmth and comfort of love and harmony with
others, Mr. Ramsay is evoked in images of sterility, hardness and cruelty and of deliberate
isolation. It is to be noted that Mr. Ramsay is the father of the family is the most misunderstood
character in the book, a man whose children hate him because they think he is viciously
unemotional and cold.
 Lily’s Picture: Lily sees that Mrs. Ramsay’s gift of harmonizing human relationship into
memorable moments is “almost like a work of art” and in the book art is the ultimate symbol for
the enduring ‘reality’. In life, as Mrs. Ramsay herself well knows relationships are doomed to
imperfection, and are the spot of time and change; but in art the temporal and the eternal unity
in an unchanging form-through, as in Lily’s picture, the form may be very inadequate. We
cannot doubt that Lily’s struggles with the composition and texture of her painting are a counter
part of Virginia Woolf’s tussles and triumphs in her own medium, but she chooses poetry as the
image that reminds mankind that the ever changing can yet become immortal. Lily is a
Postimpressionist painter, descendant of a poor family, and has spent most of her life taking
care of her father. In many ways, Lily is the chorus figure of the book—providing the histories of
the characters and commenting on their actions. The beginning and completion of her painting
form the frame of To the Lighthouse, and her final line, “I have had my vision,” is the final line of
the novel, acting as Woolf's own comment on her book.

 The Boar’s Skull :This is one of the important and mysterious symbols of the novel. It shows
the reality and universal truth. It leads toward right way of life. That death is ultimate reality.
After the completing of dinner party, Children went upstairs for plating some games. Then Mrs.
Ramsay went upstairs to find the children wide-awake, bothered by the boar’s skull that hangs
on the nursery wall. The presence of that skull is something unpleasant and disturbing. This skull
reminder us that death is always at hand. Even during life’s blissful moments. It explains that if
we are so happy in any time, we should keep in mind that we have to die at some moment of
life. We have to leave all things here. This symbol shows ultimate reality of this cruel life that we
can die any time..If we see in the play ‘Hamlet’ we can find that there is also a scene of Grave
Digging Scene. We can see that there is also a symbol of ultimate reality of life that A great
person were dead and their body convert into ashes. Thus we can say that Death is ultimate
 truth, no one can avoid it. Thus the symbol of boar’s skull is symbolized with death. Boar’s skull
points out about the futility of life and death.
 Rose’s arrangement of the grapes and pears (The Fruit Basket)
The arrangement of fruits in the basket by Rose, it symbolized some truth of life and death.
Metaphorically it gives message. This is very important symbol of the novel. Rose arranges a
fruit basket for her mother’s dinner party that serves to draw the partygoers out of their private
suffering and unite them. Although Augustus Carmichael and Mrs. Ramsay appreciate the
arrangement differently—he rips a bloom from it; she refuses to disturb it—the pair is brought
harmoniously, if briefly, together. The basket testifies both to the “frozen” quality of beauty that
Lily describes and to beauty’s seductive and soothing quality. The absence of fruit basket in 3rd
part signifies the transitory nature of beauty, art and truth.
 The Storm :The Storm is symbolized something horrible thing of life and death. As can see that
in the storm there is a element of Air and Wind. It contains both the thing in it. Both are the
constructive element of life. Air is representing the mind, and water is representing the emotion
of life. The Storm symbolized agitated thoughts and emotions. Metaphorically, storms are our
inner Demons which torment both our mind and subconscious.
 The rock, Reefs and Shallow water
 These symbols are showing certainty of life. The rock show the life is too hard to life. It gives
suffer, as Mrs. Ramsays survived her life. The rocks, reefs and shallow water symbolized the final
danger and miseries which seem to accompany the end of any turbulent voyage. Just as the
saying. “its always seems always darkest before the dawn”, things always seem the most
dangerous and hopeless as we reach the end of emotional turmoil. This is the point when we
feel like tossing up our hands and giving up.
 The Window
The Window, a view to oneself: It is from the window that we have the little of the part-I of To
the Lighthouse. It is not a transparent but a separating sheet of glass between reality and Mrs.
Ramsay’s mind. Mrs. Ramsay experiences such moments of revelation and integration at
watching the window.

Conclusion:

The uses of symbols serve the purpose of introspection, self-awareness, and openness to the
unconscious in the novel. Composed on the flow of sensations, thoughts, memories, associations, and
reflections in the ambit of symbol the action moves on normal constructional lines from scene to scene
and from the mind to mind. There is less complication. These shifts from one consciousness to another
and these movements are made further easy by allowing every incident to take place in close-knit
homogeneous world. To The Lighthouse is a masterpiece of construction through symbolism. It is an
organic whole.