In her novel To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf sumptuously constructs individual “realities” of several characters through a narration of their thoughts, impressions, perceptions, doubts and the silent processes of questioning which underlie the surface of human behavior. As a result, the reality of the book only exists as it is perceived. There is no finite, singular definition of "right," "true," or "real," only a collection of distinct moments and experiences expertly woven together to shape the rich tapestry of the novel's interior . There is a feeling that the characters feel in To the Lighthouse, not that they are actively living like in a traditional narrative. They are not defined by external elements or by oppositional categories of personality, unequivocally good or bad, altruistic or selfish, intelligent or simple. Because they are subject to ambiguity, nuance, and the vagaries of others' interpretation, which itself varies along a continuum of mood and impulse, characters are not empirically defining forms “identifiable”. The mind, then, is the source of forward movement in To the Lighthouse, the directing narrative agent. He exists both inside and outside the confines of the novel, provider of the subjective reality in which the “action” takes place, but also a character in his own right. If we view the author as the ultimate puppeteer and view the world of the book as an extension of his work on the strings (i.e. his creative process), "the mind" is recast as the critical subject of his artistic experience to develop a literature of conscience. According to The Norton Anthology of English Literature, in its introduction to 20th-century literary modernism, Virginia Woolf's new goal was to be "an ordinary mind on an ordinary day." The life that mattered most would now be a mental life… Some version of an inner flow of thought becomes the primary modernist access to “character.” » This structuring of a subjective reality, the careful arrangement and superposition of "reflections, momentary impressions, disjunctive pieces of recall and half-memory", such is the main artistic enterprise of To the Lighthouse. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay However, herein lies the interesting paradox of Woolf’s “modernist” tour de force. If, indeed, the only life worth understanding, the only questions or concerns of any real consequence, are mental or rooted in subjective experiences, why do the characters in To the Lighthouse yearn to connect to elements of their physical world, maintaining awareness? of themselves in relation to the corporeal? Why does Lily Briscoe, one of the main characters (or more aptly, points of view) through whom the novel is filtered, suddenly realize towards the conclusion of the novel that "it was the feeling of a body , not that of the mind… Wanting and not having”. sent throughout her body a hardness, a hollowness, a tension"? Moments later, Lily criticizes the very activity of consciousness in which she has been engaged throughout: "It had seemed so safe to think of she [Mrs. Ramsay]. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing that could be played with easily and safely at any time of the day... and then suddenly [Lily] reached out and squeezed his heart like this... Suddenly, [his environment] has become like curves andflourishing arabesques. around a center of complete emptiness… for the whole world seemed to have dissolved at that early hour into a pool of thought. the pursuit of a subjective reality, its exaltation of “mental life”. If such a reality is formed from within rather than from without, and varies depending on who is charged with the challenge of making sense of the object, chaos of feeling, "what" something "is" in a subjective reality is more a definition of the perceiver than of the object perceived. Therefore, the greatest goal or reward of this effort must be the acquisition of a strong sense of self. To this end, the deepest meaning and understanding are drawn from incongruity. The realization that people and places, although unchanged in an objective sense, impress us in a radically different way, is the foundation of any mature and fully formed identity. The physical therefore constitutes a crucial point of reference to mark this difference, to recognize and measure changes in one's own character. We can see this process most clearly in play with James Ramsay and his connection to his father and the titular lighthouse, as well as Lily Briscoe and her deep connection to Mrs. Ramsay's memory. A comparative study of these two relationships will reveal the seemingly contradictory, but nonetheless important, even necessary, ways in which the physical generates and then continually fuels subjective experience. An inescapable element of the “material” world in the most traditional and unambiguous sense, the Lighthouse is an example of how the physical permeates and fundamentally supports the subjective reality of the novel. In his youth, James Ramsay, his unbridled spirit of adventure, his vast and vivid imagination, were captivated by the Lighthouse, mythical in its appearance. The first lines of the text immediately establish his desire to visit the lighthouse as a major premise or focal point of the book's "narrative of consciousness." This will be the axis around which many of the characters' internal debates and emotional struggles revolve: "Yes, of course, everything will be fine tomorrow," Mrs. Ramsay assures her son, "to whom these words conveyed extraordinary joy, as if Once settled, the expedition was bound to take place, and the wonder he had been waiting for for years and years, it seemed, was, after a night of darkness and a day of navigation, within reach. tomorrow. "The opposing forces that attempt to thwart the dream, the destined mission, are the characters closest to the villains that the novel presents. James's father, Mr. Ramsay, is preeminent in this capacity. His rigid, mechanical pragmatism is so relentless in his attempt to inappropriately regulate – rather than cater to or encourage – the realm of infantile fantasy, which cruelty borders on tyranny. As a result, James hates his father and the oppression that demands. his vehement belief in his own “accuracy of judgment.” After all, “what did [Mr Ramsay] say was true? He was incapable of ever lying. fact; never altered a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, much less his children. James' conscience reveals boldly, in austere, unabashed honesty and in. mature language, the severity of his animosity towards Mr. Ramsay: "If there had been an ax at hand, or a poker, a weapon that would have made a hole in his father's chest and killed him …James would have grabbed it. Such were the extreme emotions which Mr. Ramsay excited in the breasts of his children by his mere presence. "Clearly, the Lighthouse and Mr. Ramsay, particularly Mr. Ramsay's attitude toward the Lighthouse mission, were the two main influencestrainers of the young James Ramsay. Together, they captured the essence of James' childhood, encapsulating his fantasies and disdain for the pragmatic. In other words, the perceived relationship between the Lighthouse and Mr. Ramsay was James's unique "version" of the first major psychological conflict a child faces, that frightening moment when the child is forced to urgently defend ( or finally to renegotiate) the illogic of his playful imagination in the face of an invasive and boring mentality of the “real world”. But above all, the lighthouse and Mr. Ramsay were simply powerful physical presences that aroused in James strong urges, unsettling feelings, and deep impressions. They served as a puzzle upon which James was able to piece together his redefinition of concrete forms. once he has reconciled them with his interiority. The process of inviting the objective into the subjective, reworking the disparate elements together, and then returning the result outward from within, is an exercise in identity creation. It is an organic, living exercise that will inevitably be remembered as time passes, circumstances change with age, and notions of identity must be renegotiated to retain their meaning. James faces this challenge when he is introduced to the lighthouse, his father, and their relationships with each other later in the novel. The second half of To the Lighthouse takes place approximately ten years after the end of the first "narrative" section ("The Window"). Life has changed along the picturesque Scottish coastline (the book's main setting): the war has fallen on Europe, the characters have aged, some have died (notably Mrs. Ramsay) and some have gone to explore worlds beyond Ramsay's domain. James is now a young man, no longer caught up in. the rapture of an idealized imagination, overflowing and full of enthusiasm It still has its beacon; nature has not eroded it to oblivion, humanity has not razed it. The action of the second half of the novel focuses on finally realizing the trip to the Lighthouse that James had cruelly denied as a child. It is, however, a wish fulfillment that came too late, because this structure. unchanged physicality no longer resembles the image of James's childhood, no longer resonates in a familiar way. He observes: “The lighthouse was [in its childhood] a silvery, misty tower with a yellow eye, which opened suddenly and softly in the evening. Now… he could see the whitewashed rocks; the tower, austere and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see a window inside; he could even see laundry spread out on the rocks to dry, couldn't he? » Despite the disappointing and sobering transformation. An impression resulting from the passage of time, from the transition between the naivety of childhood and the realism of adults, James recognizes that his previous perception “was also the lighthouse”. In the subjective reality of Woolf's novel, the two images, although oppositional, coexist harmoniously. Their relationship of “harmonious contradiction” serves a unifying purpose. Together, these disjointed fragments define the greater “whole” of James’ adult self-concept. Highlighting and further contributing to the "refreshed" mature identity that James realizes for himself, his conscience (and therefore the most accurate reflection or statement of his interiority) reveals startlingly new impressions and opinions about his father. James continues to view his father as a figure of oppression against whom he must make a firm commitment to “implement the greatest pact – to resist [Mr. Ramsay] tyranny unto death. The figurative language of blades and knives (for example, in contemplating his father, James expresses hisdesire to “hit him in the heart”) persists, thematically linking the boy of the past to the young man of the present. However, the older James differs from his younger incarnation in that he allows himself to have an alternative, more generous and rational view of his father's harshness. He reasons: “It was not him, the old reading man, whom he wanted to kill, but it was the thing which fell upon him, without him perhaps knowing it: this sudden ferocious harpy with wings black, with its claws and wings. beak all cold and hard, which hit you and hit you (he felt the beak on his bare legs, where it had hit when he was a child) and then fled, and there he was again an old man, very sad, in reading his book. That he would kill... “Children often invest the tangible, the easily knowable, with unequivocal veracity. They do not feel the need to look beyond the immediate surface in order to arrive at an answer or conclusion that fits perfectly within the parameters of their limited worldview. That James demonstrates such an intimate (if perhaps nascent) understanding of human nature, that he recognizes his father as somehow outside of the elusive and powerful forces that dictate behavior, are acts that indicate maturity of identity. Even more, this moment of recognition embodies the reward, the fulfillment of the rather exceptional goal inherent in life within a subjective reality. James was able to use his external environment to trigger the activity of his inner consciousness. His interpretations, informed by his unique personality, are projected as finite definitions of the “real world.” But the only world that has any value for James is the world of his impressions; in this context, the subjective assumes supreme importance and becomes objective and empirical. Therefore, the Lighthouse and Mr. Ramsay, their concrete presences in James' life, are the catalysts for the meaningful experiences and inner monologue through which he structures his subjective reality. At the end of To the Lighthouse, James Ramsay gains self-awareness and wisely understands the differences his mature self has endured. However, without the function of central physical elements to arouse feelings and measure or illustrate changes in a developing identity, the process of transformation and character construction of subjective reality would never occur. Lily Briscoe encounters precisely this obstacle, this sort of temporary suspension of consciousness. His struggles to achieve a complete and well-defined sense of self later in his adult life clearly reinforce the importance of the physical, even in the "mental" sphere of subjective reality. Due to the emotional and literal distance provided by separation of space and the passage of time, Lily Briscoe, at the beginning of the second half of To the Lighthouse, demonstrates a very weak, fragile, and tenuous self-image. Lily has returned to the Ramsays' seaside home, an older, slightly sadder woman, overcome by an emptiness of feeling she cannot understand. Once so “mentally” expressive, once so “articulate” by the fluidity and conviction of her thoughts, Lily now discovers that the clarity of her consciousness eludes her: “What does that mean? she thought vaguely, for she could not, that first morning with the Ramsays, contract her feelings, she could only resound a sentence to cover the emptiness of her mind until those vapors had subsided. Because really, how did she feel all these years. …? Nothing, nothing – nothing she could express at all. » Questions of relative meaning and personal purpose elude Lily. She feels helpless, butcannot access the source of his desire, cannot isolate the seductive feelings that cause him such discomfort. Without the ability to “contract her feelings” and give order and substance to her confusion, to her fragments of thought (the “emptiness of her mind”), Lily feels incomplete. Without the ease of expression, Lily is fundamentally unanchored. His ability to engage in the creative process and exist in a subjective reality has been shut down; as a result, she lost her sense of self. An important question then arises: why, at this late stage, does Lily stumble, caught in an impasse between mental sensation and sense, between emotion and understanding? The reason behind Lily's disconnection clearly illustrates the crucial function of the physical in all subjective reality, especially as it relates to culture and the reinforcement of identity. She has lost her footing in the novel's framework precisely because she cannot relate to her environment. Immediately upon her return, the change in environment registers with Lily and triggers feelings of confusion and alienation from the familiar. Very aware of her difficult relationship with the outside world: "The house, the place, in the morning, everything seemed foreign to her. She had no attachment here, she felt no relationship with her, anything could happen, and whatever there comes, a step outside, a voice calling him." ...was a question, as if the link that usually held things together had been severed... "Without the ability to recognize elements of one's former environment, to integrate them into the tapestry of one's subjective interpretation, and then to reconnect in a way that unifier, Lily But more importantly, unlike James Ramsay, who always has the presence of the Lighthouse and his father to viscerally move him and to serve as a guide to follow the changes in his character, Lily is missing. its “beacon” equivalent in the form of Mrs. Ramsay. For Lily, Mrs. Ramsay had been such a powerful influence, the defiant figure at the forefront of her thoughts, because Lily identified in the older woman a certain essence that resonated with her artistic sensibilities. Lily's main personal challenge throughout To the Lighthouse, the goal that underlies and shapes her subjective experience, was the completion of a painting. This picture, a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay and the seaside landscape, when completed, would become the realization of Lily's "vision," a celebration of her achievement of a satisfying sense of oneness with the outside world. The completion of the painting would be the defining moment of his character. In Mrs. Ramsay, Lily saw a woman already possessing the qualities she hoped to achieve through her work; namely the capacity to make permanent the small moments that collectively make up life: “But what power was there in the human soul!... This woman sitting there, writing under the rock, resolved everything in simplicity; she made these angers, these irritations fall like old rags; she gathered this and that and then this, and so made out of this wretched stupidity and wickedness... something... and there it remained in the mind, affecting almost like a work of art. In this way, Lily projected onto Ms. Ramsay's blank canvas her own need to preserve the ephemeral components of life through her art, "to make the moment something permanent." She further reflects: “Amidst the chaos, there was form; this eternal passage and flow (of intangible thought)…has been struck by stability. Life ends here, Ms. Ramsay said. "Mrs. Ramsay!" Mrs. Ramsay,” she said. » she repeated. She owed him everything. “At this point in the novel, however, Mrs. Ramsay has died. Her concrete presence, currency that she provided to.