Symbols in To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

In Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, a few critics have realized the

momentousness of symbolism, a corollary to its poetic and lyrical nature which
they may extol or censure but can’t come up to scratch to acquiesce in.

Virginia’s intuition is more abstract than that of Henry or James Joyce. She had an
almost mystic assurance of a “reality” behind and within the façade of the temporal.
She proclaims,

“I want to put practically everything in but made transparent”

In the novel, To the Lighthouse the emblematic design oversees everything but it
has no definite schema. It is rather like the great scroll of smoke.

Symbol of Lighthouse

All the symbols are interwoven and this great work of fiction concentrates on
them. In To the lighthouse, the light house is a substantial symbol that manifests
Mrs. Woolf’s central idea that she insinuates in the novel or upon which the whole
novel is woven. The tower is frequently shadowed in mist; its glints are intermitted
in the murk. Its light signifies reality or truth that strengthens its states even
through the twilight of nascence.
The lighthouse is an enigma but it also pertains to day-to-day living. It is
manmade, something is immutable and steadfast that man has built in the flux of
time to guide and overcome those at the clemency of its cataclysmic forces. From
this facet, it gives the impression to be related to the human tradition and its values,
which subsists from generation to generation and tell of both the integrity or
community and progression of man. Man tends to its light, which propels its
streaks out over the dark waters to those on the Island and so establishes
communication with them and illumines them.

Symbol of Window

To Mrs. Ramsay as she takes the seat and crochets in the window, it seems at one
moment the light of truth, stern, searching and beautiful with which she can unite
her own personality. The odyssey towards lighthouse is also emblematic. It is the
emblem of movement toward veracity, which Mrs. Ramsay preaches against the
factual truth.
Symbol of Ramsay’s Family Aptitude

Ramsay’s family’s aptitude at the lighthouse that they contemplate to go in the first
part of the novel, symbolizes the aptitude of an artist. If a person is an artist in true
aura, he must return towards reality or truth after imagination.

Firstly, Mrs. Ramsay and her family set out to stop by the lighthouse in the winds
but due to bad weather unfavourable climatic conditions, they have to set aside their
programme. In second chapter, though most judicious ménage pushes up the daisies
and Mrs. Ramsay herself kicks the bucket, but in the last part of the novel, remaining
persons, at length, succeed in visiting the lighthouse with flying colours.

Symbol of Lily’s Painting

Lily Briscoe’s accomplishment of her painting is also symbolic to a great extent. She
neither in first nor in second part of the work of fiction can be able to complete her
picture. In the whole period that contains more than a decade, she is perplexed about
to fill the gap of her picture, but at the lighthouse, she executes her production. This
symbolizes that an artist can be impeccable in his art when he reaches and finds the
final limitations of reality or truth.

Symbol of Ramsay’s knitting of stockings

Mrs. Ramsay’s knitting of stockings is also the symbol of the notion that she crochets
in her consciousness. The thoughts, through which she knits novel’s first part like
knitting stockings for lighthouse’s keeper’s son. Her analysis of every person or
character of the novel, her matchmaking, her role at the dinner party and many other
actions weave the novel as she knits the stockings.

Symbol of Sea

“The sea is to be heard all through it”

Mrs. Ramsay said, the sea is the symbol of eternal flux of life and time a mid which
all we exist. Life ceaselessly changes its characters. Sea is the sign of life as it has
altered its visitors from first part to third part of the novel. Mrs. Ramsay hankers for
its visit with his clan but she has been incapable to do so as a person in her life of
ten falls flat to frame her firmness of findings. After a decade, other characters
supplant her and visits Sea or lighthouse.

To Mrs. Ramsay, the sea at one moment sounds soothing and consoling like a cradle
song. Sometimes “Like a ghostly roll of drum constantly beating a warning of
death,” it brings terror, sometimes “a fountain of bright water which seems to match
the sudden springs of vitality in the human spirit”. As life is sometimes ravishingly
beautiful with all its munificence and blessing to human beings so is the case with
the sea according to Mrs. Ramsay.

In the long run, we can sanguinely remark that Virginia Woolf‘s symbols in the
novel “To the Lighthouse” revolve round life, flair and facts. In the point of fact, she
clears out her outlook of bond of life, art and reality.

Regard’s : Sami Bukhari