“He smiled the most exquisite
smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams.”
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is
one of the most well known modernist
books. The novel was written in a stream-of-consciousness
style and it was set in three parts and the plot can be really quickly summed
up with:
The Window: Mrs. and Mr. Ramsay
with their children and guests spending time in their Scottish holiday home.
Six-year-old James wants to go the lighthouse, his mother agrees but Mr. Ramsay
states that the weather is not good enough for the boat journey. One of the
guests, Lily Briscoe is painting. Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle (two guests) get
engaged.
Time Passes: World War 1 breaks
out and the house is left abandoned. Everyone dies... Jokes – it just felt like
that. Mrs. Ramsay died suddenly, Andrew Ramsay (oldest son) dies in battle and
Prue (daughter) dies after giving birth. (Note: the deaths are all told in
brackets)
The Lighthouse:
Mr. Ramsay with his children (those that are still alive) and two of his guests
decide to go back to the house. Mr. Ramsay makes his children go with him to
the Lighthouse. Lily goes back to painting and this time manages to achieve her
vision.
Personally, the summary that I
just gave was exactly what a whole 227 page novel spent describing. But, if you’ve
read my review on Mrs. Dalloway, my lack of enthusiasm for Virginia Woolf
wouldn’t be surprising. For me, I need a plot that I can invest myself in.
However, one thing that I must give to Woolf is her sense of rhythm, like the repetitive and familiar lives of the
Ramsays as the waves come and go in their island. Only when I went back to the
introduction written by Hermione Lee in 1991 (it was included in the version I
borrowed) that I realised how much of a difference her editing and style really
made. Read the manuscript version to see for yourself:
