Sem 3: Questions: To The Lighthouse
Dilip Barad
Unit 2: To The Lighthouse
1. Discuss the treatment of time and its effect on the plot of the novel To the Lighthouse.
a. Write about how narrative time and discourse time differes in Part 1 and part.
b. Example: "Five years passed", has a lengthy narrative time, five years, but a short discourse time (it only took a second to read).
2. What are the main symbols in To the Lighthouse? What do they signify?
3. What are the main themes of the novel?
a. The main theme of this novel is the effects of patriarchy on the creative lives of women (pinkmonkey study notes)
b. Discourse on Art and Time (pinkmonkey study notes)
c. The Transience of Life and Work
d. Art as a Means of Preservation
e. The Subjective Nature of Reality
4. Discuss the characters of Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe from feminist perspective?
5. Compare and contrast the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay.
6. Discuss the theme of human relationship and To the Lighthouse as family drama.
7. “In To The Lighthouse the stream of consciousness of one character enables us to see individual actions of other characters in their proper symbolic meaning.” Explain the stream of consciousness method employed by Mrs. Woolf in the novel.
8. Consider Virginia Woolf as one of the important novelists of our century.
9. “To The Lighthouse presents a careful weaving together of a character’s consciousness, author’s comment and one character’s view of another.” Show Mrs. Woolf’s technique as a novelist in the light of this remark. (Stream of consciousness)
10. Appreciate To The Lighthouse as Mrs. Woolf’s masterpiece.
11. Discuss the art of story-telling in Virginia Wolf’s To The Lighthouse. (Stream of Consciousness)
12. How far is the title of the novel justified?
a. Read from presentation on Symbolism
b. Read from Joseph Blotner’s article – last paragraph – symbolism of ‘Window’ and ‘Lighthouse’
13. Discuss the character of Mrs. Ramsay.
14. What is the relationship between the Lighthouse and the novel's narrator? Can the narrator or the author fully disappear from the work?
a. Just as lighthouse guides ships during turbulent times, narrator guides readers (indirect interior monologue - parenthesis – stream of consciousness)
b. Narrator is very much present – and the autobiographical element does not allow author to fully disappear from the novel – kunstlerroman novel records maturity of an artist, Virginia woolf)
15. What are the main symbols of the novel, and what do they signify? How does the narrative structure of this novel make symbols important?
16. How do men and women in the novel respond to the gender roles that they perceive or that are imposed upon them?
a. Key: Women can’t paint or write – ironically, it is Carmichael who is unable to write, it is Mr. Ramsay, Charles who are unable to write – Lily is able to complete her painting; Mrs. Ramsay understands her gender role and plays it well – her character – her endurance)
17. Write an essay on Stream of consciousness technique as used by Virginia Woolf in To The Lighthouse.
18. Generation gap between Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe. Its significance
19. What is Symbolism? What sort of symbolic meanings are conveyed through ‘The lighthouse, Lily’s painting, the Ramsays’ house, the sea, the boar’s skull and the fruit basket’?
20. “The novel ‘ To The Lighthouse’ is both a critique and a tribute to the enduring power of Mrs. Ramsay”. Justify with you reading of the novel, Mrs. Ramsay’s character and Lily Briscoe’s critique of her.
21. Is there any mythic pattern in ‘To The Lighthouse’? Elaborate with appropriate illustrations from myths and the novel.
22. What is Künstlerroman novel? Whose progression in the novel justifies ‘To The Lighthouse’ as Künstlerroman novel?
a. Key: An article by Andre Viola: Muscularity and Fluidity
b. It is in Lily Briscoe’s progression as painter that the novel can be justified as Künstlerroman novel.
23. “Lily has long been regarded as a secondary character, since, for decades, most critics seemed to limit their reading to part I of the novel and to Mrs. Ramsay's belittling comments. In the novel as a whole, however, if one considers the sheer bulk of text allotted to each character, Lily is statistically more present than Mrs. Ramsay. Gender-oriented criticism has recently restored the balance in her favor, but often with diverging conclusions, so that it now seems appropriate to assess the new perspectives, taking as their main theoretical support analyses by Melanie Klein and by Julia Kristeva.” In light of this remark by Andre Viola, would you like to conclude that the central focus and central space is given to Mrs. Ramsay or Lily Briscoe? Justify your answer will appropriate illustrations and observations.
24. What sort of significance do you read in the story of Fisherman and his Wife which is told as bedtime story to James by Mrs. Ramsay?
a. Allegorically speaking, the fisherman represents Mr. Ramsay, who is already facing crisis in his professional career is further tortured and troubled by demands of his wife, Mrs Ramsay who represents, the Wife in the story.
b. The story is actually subverted one. There is role reversal as in ‘Orlando’. Mrs. Ramsay is noble hearted Fisherman and the Wife is Mr. Ramsay - ever demanding and expecting to be pampered by Mrs. Ramsay.
c. Looking at the convictions and impulses expressed by Virginia Woolf in ‘Three Guineas’ and ‘A Room of One’s Own’, it is possible to read the story as indictment of Mrs. Ramsay. The misogynistic characteristic of the story being told by Mrs. Ramsay proves that Virgia Woolf chides her for being a role model of the womanhood which makes life for other liberal minded woman troublesome.
25. How is India represented in the novel ‘To The Lighthouse’?
26. What are some of the main symbols in To the Lighthouse, and what do they signify? How does Woolf’s use of symbolism advance her thematic goals?
27. If To the Lighthouse is a novel about the search for meaning in life, how do the characters conduct their search? Are they successful in finding an answer?
28. Compare and contrast Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. How are they alike? How are they different?
29. The novel ends with these words: “I have had my vision”. What is the vision in the novel To The Lighthouse as reflected in these lines given to Lily Briscoe?
a. Vision in To The Lighthouse by Glenn Pederson
b. Lily Briscoe's vision has revealed the resolution of the conflicts.
i. Mr. Ramsay knew "some one had blundered." The action has repeatedly shown that Mrs. Ramsay is guilty essentially because of her desire for selfhood.
ii. A matriarch encouraging an Oedipus complex in her son, she denies the husband and negates the father.
iii. Family integration is not possible while she lives; only after her death, when unconscious forces are exempt from her conscious dominion, does the family come to the best possible integrity. Only then can James go to the lighthouse. Then, on both the literal and symbolic levels, on the journey and in Lily Briscoe's vision, is James's desire, and in effect the whole family's, fulfilled.