The Meaning of Life in 'To the Lighthouse' - Virginia Woolf

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Tanya Roddie

The Meaning of Life in ‘To the Lighthouse’

Virginia Woolf was never reticent about her atheism, stating that "certainly, emphatically, there is no God". This does not mean, however, that she did not feel the need for something that would give a purpose to life, and in ‘To the Lighthouse’, each of the characters appears to be searching for this. The apparently trivial details, to which she pays such attention, carry the weight of a struggle to draw form out of chaos, to grant shape and meaning to human experience. Each of the characters clings to one philosophy or another, be it art, scholarship or family duties, although they all lack the self-knowledge that previous literature had presented as the crucial form of wisdom. The ‘self’ in this novel is elusive, complex and volatile, but it is with this that the characters must discover the meaning in life.

‘An unmarried woman has missed the best of life’, argues Mrs. Ramsay, who has faith in marriage above all things. Marriage, she believes, is not merely a contract, it is an affirmation of order and stability. There is a clear demarcation of masculine and feminine domains in the novel. The feminine domain is the home, where Mrs. Ramsay fulfils her purpose as a woman by being a good wife and mother (‘She would be happy if always to have a baby in her arms’). She also has ‘the whole of the other sex under her protection’, not only due to admiration of them, but also because ‘she pitied men always as if they lacked something – women never, as if they had something’. There is, she believes, profound value in the traditional woman’s role.

Within this role, the process of establishing relationships between people is of paramount importance. In fact, drawing people together, overcoming their personal differences, has become her reason for being. She struggles against the complexity of life, described as ‘her old antagonist’, in order to act as a consoling presence for her family and friends. In XVII (The Window), she contemplates the meaning of her existence. All she has, she thinks, is ‘only this – an infinitely long table of plates and knives’. But she seems here to be standing separate from her life, for when she gives herself a shake, ‘the old familiar pulse’ begins to beat again, suggesting a return to life. That pulse is hospitality – without it she looked old and worn, but when she regains it, ‘it was as if the ship had turned and the sun had struck its sails again’.

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‘Mrs. Ramsay had given. Giving, giving, giving, she had died – and had left all this’, complains Lily. Helping the less fortunate was something that  Mrs. Ramsay’s lived for. Her compassionate nature made her alert to the plight of the poor and the suffering, and she desired to help in some practical way to alleviate their distress. In I, 1, she knits a stocking for the lighthouse-keeper’s son, who is unwell, and visits the home of a sick woman in the nearby town. She is active in promoting certain improvements in social welfare, which should ameliorate the lot of ...

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