Intertwining Fact and Fiction in the Lighthouse

I am fascinated by many scenes that Woolf paints within her To the Lighthouse as many have been, are, and will be for generations to come. “Each generation must read everything over again for itself,” Woolf is noted for stating in Hussey’s introduction of her novel (lxv). Based on all of the critical analyses of her novel, which encompasses the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and today, I would say that these “generations” have read and re-read her 1927 masterpiece and presented their present day critique on the varying meanings that Woolf crafted upon writing her book. In addition to reading Hussey’s introductory essay, I also read Jane Lilienfeld’s essays, which were written (I believe) 26 years a part. In reading these essays, I find myself interpreting the text through biographical means.

I am the first to admit that I cling to an author’s biography and surrounding history in order to better understand his/her writing. However, I have also learned that as much as the author’s life and history may be incorporated into his/her works, there is also the craft of fiction. I have to allow myself to let go of the biography a bit. I have an extremely hard time doing this with Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and I am not the only one. Her fiction was intertwined with her reality it seems. Hussey asserts, “In any case, To the Lighthouse is the creation of a writer who had thought long and deeply about the relations between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction,’ and specifically about the dubious nature of claims to veracity made by the traditional biography” (liv). Both Hussey and Lilienfeld refer to Woolf’s essay “A Sketch of the Past” as a means to compare Woolf’s life memories with her fictional portrayals. Lilienfeld pulls from “A Sketch of the Past” as she incorporates Woolf’s factual encounter with incest and suggests that this encounter with a masculine violent attack threads through the novel’s fictional portrayal of abuse through James Ramsay’s eyes. Lilienfeld contends: “The use of James Ramsay as a fictionalized surrogate figure for the six-year-old Virginia Stephen would have provided the verbal “wall” that Woolf declared was necessary to stave off self-indulgent deployment of the biographical self…” (115). She further notes Woolf recalling in her “Sketch” essay, “ ‘At times I can go back to St. Ives…I can reach a state where I seem to be watching things happen as if I were there….” (115). Lilienfeld connects Woolf’s reality with her fiction.

She ties the Modernist author’s life history into her novel once more as she examines the Victorian marriage that existed between Julia and Leslie Stephen versus Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. “To [Sir Leslie] Stephen it was natural law that a wife should have no legal rights, no right to her own property or money, no training for any job, nor any hope for obtaining one. Though he bound Julia Stephen tightly, she resisted covertly” (Lilienfeld 151). The reader sees examples that compare to the fictitious couple throughout. Mrs. Ramsay has an “untrained mind” (Woolf 13) and Mr. Ramsay achieves “Q” (Woolf 37). At the end of the first section of the novel, however, Mrs. Ramsay “triumph[s] again,” and we are told that Mr. Ramsay “knew” that she had prevailed (126). This victory for Mrs. Ramsay and veiled resistance on Julia Stephen’s part stemmed from “mid-Victorian revolt…advocating marriage reform, the widening of women’s roles, political action for women, and an end to sex-role imprisonment for men as well as women” (Lilienfeld 150). We see a specific response to this “mid-Victorian revolt” in the lives of the younger characters.

The Ramsay girls “had brewed for themselves of a life different from [their mother’s]…; in Paris, perhaps; a wilder life; not always taking care of some man or other;…” (Woolf 10). Lily Briscoe was an artist who was disturbed by Charles Tansley’s admission, “Women can’t paint, women can’t write…” (Woolf 51). With the ellipsis at the end, one is left to wonder what else Mr. Tansley thought women incapable of doing and performing. Initially, I likened Lily to Virginia, but I believe she is a biographical blend of Virginia and Vanessa. Moreover, Lily, allegorically, represents a women’s ability to have an autonomous mind and an overall liberty to pursue whomever and whatever she wishes. Lily’s thoughts are independent and seek answers. She is bothered by the masculine perspective that deems women incapable. She presents a moment of discouragement as she imagines it “would be hung in the servants’ bed-
room…[or]…[would] be rolled up and stuffed under a sofa” and questions “What was the good of doing it then, as if she were caught up in one of those habitual currents in which after a certain time experience forms in the mind, so that one repeats words without being aware any longer who originally spoke them” (Woolf 162). It’s as if Woolf wanted to show her readers that all women were stifled by the unlabeled (albeit the reader understands it stands for men’s voices during her time) voice who repeats what a woman cannot do and, if she does, will not be recognized regardless. Fortunately, Lily’s perspective evolves and she ceases to care where her picture will eventually be hung—“…she thought it would be destroyed. But what did that matter” (Woolf 211). Seemingly, she reached a peace—a sense of autonomy that outweighed what her world wanted to convey to her—as she “had [her] vision” that considered the past and her present (211).