To the Lighthouse
By Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse " is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel centres on the Ramsay family and their visit to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. The novel lacks an omniscient narrator. The plot unfolds through shifting perspectives of each character's consciousness. Virginia Woolf's method is more one of lyrical paraphrase. The lack of an omniscient narrator means that no clear guide exists for the reader and that only through character development can readers formulate their own opinions and views because much is ambiguous.
Now let us see the Frame study of the movie " To the Lighthouse " directed by Colin Gregg and written by Hugh Stoddart.
To the Lighthoue
♧ Frame 1st :-
The movie, To the Lighthouse is directed by Colin Gregg. And the original Novel, " To the Lighthouse " is written by Virginia Woolf in 1927. There are main three parts of the novel,
1. THE WINDOW
2. TIME PASSES
3. THE LIGHTHOUSE
Yes, there are some different in beginning of the movie and the beginning of the original novel. Above all Frames are from the movie. In which we can some one doll falls on the upstair. Then camera moves in the room where we can see James ( Six years child) pipping outside the window in upset mood. Suddenly the camera moves on the dinning table where the family of Ramsay takes dinner. Mr. Ramsey discusses his philosophy with their children and Mrs. Ramsay goes to the room of James where she hugs James cares him. These are the begging scene of the movie. While the begging of the original novel starting with the line,
" Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. " But you'll have to be up with the lark," She added.
Virginia Woolf used Stream of Consciousness technique in her novel.
♧ Frame 2nd :-
This is the second frame of the movie in which one can study the look of James very deeply. James is looking toward his father. Through this frame we can guess the relationship between the father and son ( James and Mr. Ramsey ) and also the relationship between the mother and son ( James and mrs. Ramsay ). The reason behind it is that Mr. Ramsey denied James to go for see the Lighthouse tomorrow. Virginia Woolf very beautifully portrayed the inner thoughts of James that how he is thinking about Mr. Ramsey when he denied to go,
Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father’s breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it.
This is what we can say the narrative style or the stream of consciousness technique used very beautifully by Virginia Woolf. The omniscient narrator of the novel takes the reader inner and out side of the characters.
♧ Frame 3rd :-
This third frame of the movie, " To the Lighthouse " portrays the picture of the situation of girl of that time. Where one girl child of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay stands out side beside the Summer house and looking toward Mrs. Ramsay and James who are sitting in the garden. Mrs. Ramsay is speaking with James. On the other side the girl breaks the flower petals. Through this frame we can say the behaviour and caring of Mrs. Ramsay toward their girls and boys.
♧ Frame 4th :-
After the scene of dinner table and gardening scene the camera moves on the side of beach where the Ramsay family and Charles Tansley are playing the cricket. This scene is also worth observing. When James is bolling he outs in first boll but he refuses for that. Mrs. Ramsay takes the side of James and asks Mr. Ramsey to give him one chance again but see here also Mr. Ramsey denied for that because he is umpire and according to him,
Out is out
Then camera moves on other side of the beach where we see Lily who is coming and observed the family and sea that Sea is full of eternal life yet threatenes with oblivion. Then we can see Mr. Ramsey and Charles Tansley who are discussing something important. Then we come to know that they are discussing about Charles's Ph.d thesis who came for the checking it by Mr. Ramsey. He says that he is not interested in all his ( Mr. Ramsey)family's issues and he is not here for playing cricket. He asks Mr. Ramsey to complete his work as soon as possible. But Mr. Ramsey is bit loos in doing all this things.
♧ Frame 5th :-
♧ Frame 6th :-
These two are the frame of Lily's painting. We can see Lily as a painter and Mrs. Ramsay's painting by Lily as a symbol. This was generally the time of the end of the Victorian era in which we can find the scope for women very less. In this movie and original novel in both Lily is always busy in her own work and painting. The painting of Mrs. Ramsay's painting is a symbol which indicates her desire to be known after her death. And also Lily who wants to be famous with her art of painting.
☆ References to India, Shakespeare and Philosophy in the novel, " To the Lighthouse " :-
♧ Reference to Shakespeare in the novel :-
Is he to be blamed then if he is not that one? provided he has toiled honestly, given to the best of his power, and till he has no more left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr Ramsay ironically staring at the hedge). What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare. His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still. (He looked into the hedge, into the intricacy of the twigs.) Who then could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after all has climbed high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing of the stars, if before death stiffens his limbs beyond the power of movement he does a little consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his shoulders, so that when the search party comes they will find him dead at his post, the fine figure of a soldier.
Above paragraph is about the fame of Shakespeare or the reference of Shakespeare in the novel, " To the Lighthouse." Mr. Ramsey is a philosopher and as a great philosopher his desire to become famous after his death aslo and desire to receive immortality is aptate. For that he is thinking about the fame of Shakespeare.
[Mrs Ramsay could have wished that her husband had not chosen that moment to stop. Why had he not gone as he said to watch the children playing cricket? But he did not speak; he looked; he nodded; he approved; he went on. He slipped, seeing before him that hedge which had over and over again rounded some pause, signified some conclusion, seeing his wife and child, seeing again the urns with the trailing of red geraniums which had so often decorated processes of thought, and bore, written up among their leaves, as if they were scraps of paper on which one scribbles notes in the rush of reading— he slipped, seeing all this, smoothly into speculation suggested by an article in THE TIMES about the number of Americans who visit Shakespeare's house every year. If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now than in the time of the Pharaohs? Is the lot of the average human being, however, he asked himself, the criterion by which we judge the measure of civilization? Possibly not. Possibly the greatest good requires the existence of a slave class. The liftman in the Tube is an eternal necessity. The thought was distasteful to him. He tossed his head. To avoid it, he would find some way of snubbing the predominance of the arts. He would argue that the world exists for the average human being; that the arts are merely a decoration imposed on the top of human life; they do not express it. Nor is Shakespeare necessary to it. Not knowing precisely why it was that he wanted to disparage Shakespeare and come to the rescue of the man who stands eternally in the door of the lift, he picked a leaf sharply from the hedge. All this would have to be dished up for the young men at Cardiff next month, he thought; here, on his terrace, he was merely foraging and picnicking (he threw away the leaf that he had picked so peevishly) like a man who reaches from his horse to pick a bunch of roses, or stuffs his pockets with nuts as he ambles at his ease through the lanes and fields of a country known to him from boyhood.] (page - 42)
This paragraph is also about the reference of Shakespeare in the novel. In this paragraph Mrs. Ramsay is thinking about the nature of Mr. Ramsey. After then the Americans who visit Shakespeare's house every year which portrays the picture of civilisation.
["Let us enjoy what we do enjoy," he said. His integrity seemed to Mrs Ramsay quite admirable. He never seemed for a moment to think, But how does this affect me? But then if you had the other temperament, which must have praise, which must have encouragement, naturally you began (and she knew that Mr Ramsay was beginning) to be uneasy; to want somebody to say, Oh, but your work will last, Mr Ramsay, or something like that. He showed his uneasiness quite clearly now by saying, with some irritation, that, anyhow, Scott (or was it Shakespeare ?) would last him his lifetime. He said it irritably. Everybody, she thought, felt a little uncomfortable, without knowing why. Then Minta Doyle, whose instinct was fine, said bluffly, absurdly, that she did not believe that any one really enjoyed reading Shakespeare. Mr Ramsay said grimly (but his mind was turned away again) that very few people liked it as much as they said they did.] (page 101)
♧ Reference to India in the novel, " To the Lighthouse :-
The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands.
But which was it to be? They had all the trays of her jewel-case open. The gold necklace, which was Italian, or the opal necklace, which Uncle James had brought her from India; or should she wear her amethysts?
Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were all the places she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. saw it.
as if she were going to meet some one round the corner, she told the story; an affair at Oxford with some girl; an early marriage; poverty; going to India; translating a little poetry “very beautifully, I believe,” being willing to teach the boys Persian or Hindustanee, but what really was the use of that?—and then lying, as they saw him, on the lawn.
for there was in all their minds a mute questioning of deference and chivalry, of the Bank of England and the Indian Empire, of ringed fingers and lace, though to them all there was something in this of the essence of beauty, which called out the manliness in their girlish hearts, and made them, as they sat at table beneath their mother’s eyes, honour her strange severity, her extreme courtesy, like a queen’s raising from the mud to wash a beggar’s dirty foot, when she admonished them so very severely about that wretched atheist who had chased them—or, speaking accurately, been invited to stay with them—in the Isle of Skye.
These are the references to India used by Virginia Woolf in her novel, " To the Lighthouse." We all know that India had very rich country of that time and the people of many countries had attracted toward the glory of India. In this novel the characters discussed about the India in between their conversation like the sand, empire and ruled people of India.
♧ Reference to philosophy in the novel, " To the Lighthouse "
"It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had one by one, firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q."
"He had not genius; he laid no claim to that: but he had, or might have had, the power to repeat every letter of the alphabet from A to Z accurately in order. Meanwhile, he stuck at Q. On, then, on to R."
♧ References :-
https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2014/09/worksheet-virginia-woolfs-to-lighthouse.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Lighthouse
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. New York, Columbia University Press, 1998.
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