To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.97 You Save: $9.98 (72%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.18 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of To the Lighthouse
Book Review: Searching for the "meaning of life"
Summary: 5 Stars
Published in 1927, "To the Lighthouse" is Virginia Woolf's elegy for her parents--her attempt to describe and understand them through the prism of fiction. Two years earlier, Woolf had written in her diary that the book would be "fairly short" (it is) and that it would have "father's character done complete in it; & mother's; & St. Ives [the family summer home]; & childhood." It's impossible to overestimate the influence of Woolf's parents on the development of this book; a year after the book was published, she acknowledged that she "was obsessed by them both, unhealthily; & writing of them was a necessary act." As Hermione Lee put it in her biography, the novel is set in a "haunted house."
The remarkable empathy (and, to some extent, sympathy) for the novel's characters is testimony to Woolf's success: in powerful stream-of-consciousness passages told from ever-shifting perspectives, she re-creates from her own biography three entirely believable protagonists. Woolf's mother becomes Mrs. Ramsay, whose domain is largely confined to her home, her children, and her guests; like Clarissa Dalloway planning a party in Woolf's previous novel, Mrs. Ramsay sees the highlight of her day as carrying off a successful dinner for her family and guests--"she wished the dinner to be particularly nice." Her husband, a philosopher, remains aloof from his family and their social sphere; his abrasiveness is a source of occasional annoyance to Mrs. Ramsay, and his own obsession is nothing so fleeting as a dinner party but rather the legacy that will be left by his life's work.
Lily Briscoe, a young painter who is one of the guests, observes the family dynamics and critically regards the relationship between Mrs. Ramsay and her husband: "What was this mania of hers for marriage?" Lily also serves as a fictional alter-ego for Virginia Woolf herself. While working on a painting of Mrs. Ramsay reading to her son, Lily's lack of confidence is exacerbated by the opinion of another houseguest: "Women can't paint, women can't write"--a declaration linking Lily's timidity as a painter with Virginia's own qualms about the novel (she was anxious that it would be criticized as "sentimental"). Worrying unduly about what others think is inhibiting their talents.
It's become obligatory to mention the supposed lack of plot in this book--but that old saw ignores the transformation of the novel's characters and their pursuit for meaningfulness. Mr. Ramsay wants respect; Mrs. Ramsay wants to be happy in her marriage; their son James wants the approval of his father; Lily wants to be an artist--but all are thwarted in their search for happiness. One houseguest muses, "What does one live for?" Similarly, Mrs. Ramsay reflects as dinner starts, "What have I done with my life?" And Lily wonders while she works on her painting: "What is the meaning of life? That was all--a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years."
The novel's "action," then, is the quest to find the ever-elusive "meaning of life": both within a single day (during the first half of the novel) and then ten years later, after the first World War, when what remains of the shattered family returns to the summer home and finally makes a long-postponed boat-trip to the lighthouse. Not everyone finds what they are looking for, but at last Lily Briscoe, who remains behind at the cottage, understands that approval and contentment and artistic talent had been there all along--within herself. She never had to leave the shore.
Book Review: The Final Nail in Victoria's Coffin
Summary: 5 Stars
Virginia Woolf's novel "To The Lighthouse," is, as its title suggests, a multivoiced final journey from the 19th century into the 20th. What must be determined over the course of reading the novel and reflecting on it, is the function of the lighthouse. Are its probing, distant lights supposed to be a beacon of hope as its characters move from the repressive age of Victoria into the liberating age of technology? Does the lighthouse echo the arch of experience which Tennyson's Ulysses claims 'fades forever and forever when I move' toward it? Or is the lighthouse just a lighthouse?Mrs. Ramsay, the novel's main character and guiding principle, is herself a lighthouse, built on a foundation of tradition and stock 19th century notions of how people should interact in society and towards each other. Her matchmaking schemes are ever fainter echoes of the Victorian novel's marriage plots. Woolf undermines and qualifies Mrs. Ramsay's intentions by exploding the conventions of the 19th century novel - plot structure becomes amorphous, protean formlessness; narrative voice is shared between characters as narration becomes thought and smoothly passes from character to character, anticipating the stream of consciousness style.
Woolf also questions Mrs. Ramsay's social priorities - is marriage really a vital or necessary condition for women? Through close examination of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay's marriage, Lily Briscoe's determination to remain single, and the novel's myriad other relationships, Woolf severely problematizes any comfortable ideas about knowing other people. Another important issue is the social value of art - Frequent conversations involving the philosopher Mr. Ramsay, the doctoral student Charles Tansley, the poet Augustus Carmichael, and the painter Lily Briscoe, along with Woolf's own speculations on the permanence of human design in Part II ask us to consider the role of art in regard to humanity.
In a novel where the boundaries of time and space are consistently challenged, and the family unit is exposed, one must also focus on the erotics of storytelling. Love, hatred, admiration, and disgust permeate "To The Lighthouse." Our attempt as readers to understand the drive of the novel compels us to seek a reason for reading it among these four potential narrative scenarios. Does love, hate, or some combination of the two commit the characters to reveal their thoughts, and why do these thoughts involve us so that we feel a need to read to the end?
"To The Lighthouse" is a fascinating book - coming on the heels of such anti-Victorian masterpieces as Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" and Samuel Butler's "The Way of All Flesh," Woolf's novel through form and content seeks to put the 19th century to rest, while simultaneously dealing with the terrors of post-World War I existence. Concentrate and give Woolf your undivided attention. This novel deserves it.
Book Review: I FIND NO REASON TO REVIEW SOMETHING SO WELL EXPLAINED
Summary: 5 Stars
and understood over time EXCEPT that people living right now evidentally feel "superior" to their forbears who "broke" with custom (in the way Virginia did in "To the Lighthouse") to enable the types of experimentation with "thought" and "stream of consciousness" to be furthered, expanded, invented and BY NOW to be well known as a "genre." Internet writing IS by virtue of it's "nature" necessarily AT TIMES "stream of consciousness" in the chatrooms, at certain online venues. No Virginia Woolf does not interact back. For AOL users, her "ims" are blocked. She's dead, and you couldn't just start talking to Judith Krantz, John Grisham or whoever you wanted to talk with today anyway.One does not pick up "To the Lighthouse" to read contemporary american fiction of the late twentieth century. The "espoused formula" of many readers was precisely what Virginia Woolf flouted.
The misunderstanding of this woman's book by so many readers (many, American males) is a sad testimony to the state of "true literacy" and our "cultural legacy" in the United States.
"To The Lighthouse" will also stand as a historical marker. Perhaps it will help the ill comprehending "boring brigade" to know that there ARE no more "lighthouse keepers." The last "manpowered" Lighthouse in GreatBritain was evacuated and automated in the most recent of months (sometime around Christmas I believe of 1998 or the beginning of 1999).
This woman has made history now, more than once.
How could people NOT be interested in how other people think, in slowing down the pace, in the quiet rhythm of different places and times.
I am at a loss as to how so many persons misconstrued and misunderstood a great author like VW in a great book like "TTHLH" while greedily gorging on necrophilia by persons like Poppy Z. Brite.
Nato is still bombing Kosovo. Ms. Woolf committed suicide during WW2.
I understand the readers that feel FULFILLED by this amazing book. It is disheartening to know that there are people out there, with strange ideas of "literature" and well...that as to the group of persons with their negative opinions of "To The Lighthouse" I guess it's too bad I cannot understand you. You say tomatoe and I say tomahto but you know... To The Lighthouse is still a "Stellar" and an important book and will remain so as long as the "pundits of taste" and the "Canon" mandates. I can tell you that will be as long as this globe spins.
Read the book for yourself. I would only use capitals as some reader did...to stop someone from hurting themselves. A little culture never hurt anyone. Perhaps, the best one could hope to be by cultural illiteracy is (arching and eyebrow) amused.
Book Review: Moments and Memories
Summary: 3 Stars
"He would pick a flower for her, lend her his books. But could he believe that Minta read them? She dragged them about the garden, sticking in leaves to mark the place."
In my attempt to understand Virginia Woolf's life, it would seem appropriate to read more of her work and understand how she viewed life in its beauty and horror. In To the Lighthouse there are brief glimpses of beauty in regards to nature, feelings and experience. Yet, the underlying emotion in this book seems to be a subtle frustration. The frustration of the reader attempting to stay focused and connected with the main themes and the frustration of the young James Ramsay, who only wishes to visit a lighthouse.
"Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down."
Virginia Woolf's descriptions can at times appear as vivid recollections and there is almost a tension at the start as if at any moment a scene of emotional instability will break and the characters will fall apart. Yet, they remain calm in their own insecurities, never really drawing on our sympathies. A child dreams, a mother hopes, a husband tries to dash both the dreams and hopes.
Then Virginia seems to be stepping in an out of her characters lives, experiencing little nuances of their existence. This results in a swirling of temporary chaos as you try to find your way out of the emotional complexity and sometimes overwhelming lists of people she introduces briefly. Only a few characters remain until the end and many of the temporary characters fly in and out of the story so fast, we can't quite grasp the importance of their introduction.
The most interesting part of the book seems to be when the house starts to fall apart and is then rescued from the encroaching decay, swollen sea-moistened woodwork and rusting hinges.
Some movies are better when viewed the second and third time and it seems this book gains a new clarity on the second reading. In the end I was disappointed not to learn about James' impressions of the final destination and honestly wished she had spent more time on the main characters. In the end it feels like bits and pieces all connected in some jigsaw puzzle of experience.
If you love the sea and lighthouses, there are short moments of pleasure and the descriptions cause you to lose track of reality for minutes at a time. I did love the description of a star sliding in the sky and then the entire sea lighting up in red and gold. In her writing she seems to have the ability to paint pictures of the inner world in memorable ways.
~The Rebecca Review
Book Review: was Virginia Woolf the greatest WRITER ever....
Summary: 4 Stars
..... but perhaps not the greatest story teller?
This book is one of the hardest I've tried to rate. The ending with its multiple perspectives - those on the boat, and those on the shore - is wonderful, and with just the right mix of the visionary. It's almost a ghost story, but nothing like any other ghost story I've read.
No matter where I picked the book up, and took up reading again, I was fascinated. I could feel the holiday the characters were experiencing as if I was there at the seaside even though I have only had one short holiday in Britain. But, then, I suspect that family life and the desultory holiday experience was very similar here in Australia. I don't really mean desultory, but the routine holiday venue with its hours of no-work, no-school often had a strange feeling of tedium mixed with the 'excitement' of something different from routine. Unfortunately, reading this book also resurrected the feeling in me - the book too well records the feeling - and I quickly found myself drifting off into my own private world and not regarding the words as well as I should - only to be fascinated again as my attention snapped back.
The book is wonderful for its multiple perspectives. Here is an example of a change of view mid-paragraph (this sort of thing often had me re-reading as my attenton drifted).
"What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying down his spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had swept clean, as if Lily thought (he sat opposite her with his back to the window precisely in the middle of view), he were determined to make sure of his meals. Everything about him had that meagre fixity, that bare unloveliness. But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike any one if one looked at them. She liked his eyes: they were blue, deep set, frightening."
The stream-of-consciousness writing style used by Woolf as closely as anything I have experienced imitates the greatest attribute of fine music - counterpoint - the ability of the mind to track and appreciate many strands of experience at the one time, to flick back and forth between many voices. With music you can listen to the same work many times and explore the multiple voices in different ways each time without compromising your appreciation of the whole. I suspect you could do this with several readings of 'To the Lighthouse' too. Unfortunately it takes a greater commitment to re-read a book than it does to, say, listen again to a Mozart symphony.
Woolf does have a great ending to this novel - a really memorable mood piece. Unfortunately, to extend the musical analogy, I found her melodies not strong enough, the development of ideas at times pedestrian (detail got in the way), the orchestration inadquate and the harmony not strong enough (although there is one very strong moment in the novel).