To the Lighthouse is a novel about Mrs. Ramsay; its ways, its tricks and its lasting impact. Even though she dies with half the novel to read, there is no doubt that, whatever Woolf's intention, Mrs. Ramsay is the main character because she is certainly the protagonist. The role of antagonist therefore falls entirely on her husband, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Ramsay is not as likable as his other half, but he is just as complex. He is perhaps even more so when he examines the actual influences, and their number, that contributed to the construction of his character. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The novel is largely autobiographical. The Woolf family is represented, demographically, in an almost perfect clone. In the novel, the Ramsay family consists of the parents and eight children (Woolf 14). Woolf's family also included eight children, counting half-siblings (Dalsimer 4). Such a fact could be simply insignificant, except for the decrease in family size. For the Ramsays, the mother died, followed by Prue, then Andrew (Woolf 128, 132, 133). Similarly, Woolf's mother died first, when she was 13, then a half-sister, then her brother Thoby died (Dalsimer xiii). Woolf was young when her mother died, so it's hard to guess where the character of Mrs. Ramsay came from. and Woolf's mother find their correlations. She herself says that “it’s a child’s vision of her” (Dalsimer 98). Certainly the Ramsay children preferred their mother to their father, and likewise the Stephen children (Woolf's maiden name) much preferred their mother's sense of humor and ability to praise her children. Since the novel takes such an autobiographical approach to its plot and character, one might assume that each character is an account of Woolf's childhood. This is not the case as certain liberties were taken to facilitate the telling of the story. Most notably, the Ramsay parents show no evidence of having been previously married. In Woolf's family, her parents were both widowers, resulting in four half-siblings (Dalsimer 4). By neglecting to include this element of the story, it was probably easier to show the love Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay had for each other by promoting the idea that these two could love each other. and only each other. Additionally, pre-existing emotional baggage would have changed the reader's perception of both the characters, their children, and the reader. This is not the only time Woolf changes the story to create better fiction. The character traits of different family members also differ; particularly the differences between the traits and beliefs of Mr. Ramsay and Woolf's father, Sir Leslie Stephen. That's not to say there aren't similarities; indeed, there are many. In the novel, Ramsay was famous for his achievements, and some considered him "the greatest metaphysician of his time" (Woolf 37). Stephen was also famous for his respective achievements; in truth, one must be quite influential to be knighted. However, simply being respected is not enough to qualify Stephen as Ramsay's inspiration. We must consider their respective relationships with their families. Ramsay was a tyrant in his household, so much so that his two youngest, Cam and James, made a silent pact "to resist [his] tyranny unto death" (Woolf 163). Ramsay was a difficult man to live with. He “always demanded sympathy,” looking for compliments to ease his mind (Woolf 37). He screamed and swore for apparent transgressionsharmless, such as when he cursed his wife for continuing to tell James that the weather would be nice, or when he "lost his temper and stormed out of the room" when Nancy forgot to order sandwiches. (Woolf 145). At many points, the reader is told that James hates his father, and if one were reading about Woolf, that person would discover that Ramsay is not alone in being the object of hatred. On the occasion of her late father's birthday, Woolf wrote "he would have been 96 years old today...he might even have been 96 years old, like other people we have known: but fortunately, it wasn't. His life would have ended mine entirely." (Rose 159). Woolf could not tolerate her father and “his exasperating domestic tyrannies” (Rose 158). Like Ramsay, Stephen demanded that his wife be “constantly available, constantly supportive, constantly working to put her life in order” (Rose 158). Like Ramsay, who considers himself a failure, Stephen's "overbearing demands for sympathy were his sense of failure" and he also "exaggerated his self-pity" in order to extort from [his wife] some of her delicious compliments”” (Gordon 25, 26).Certainly, Stephen inspired part of Mr. Ramsay's personality, but Ramsay is not a biographical figure. The two men had their share of differences, particularly in terms of their professional careers. Ramsay is, of course, a metaphysical philosopher concerned with “the nature of reality” (Woolf 23). Stephen was “a historian of thought, a biographer, a literary critic, and a moral philosopher, roughly in that order of importance” (Rosenbau 338). The philosopher was listed on his resume, but that's not where he gained his notoriety, nor is his ethical philosophy similar to Ramsay's epistemology. A further difference emerges when we examine a central moment, as well as the opening scene, of the novel in which a small character a key debate about the weather takes place. In the novel, Mr. Ramsay tells his son and his wife that the weather will not allow them to go to the lighthouse in the morning. Mrs. Ramsay insists that the weather will be nice, but Mr. Ramsay is right and the family stays home the next day. This argument is based on a real situation in which Woolf's father and mother have a similar argument, but the sides are reversed. “It was Mrs. Stephen who protested that it was raining and objected to their departure, while Mr. Stephen, along with the children, were eager to leave, whatever the weather” (Dalsimer 37 ). Woolf juxtaposes the parents' roles in order to reinforce Ramsay's cruelty. Breaking with the facts, although Ramsay was not capable of doing so, was something Woolf would happily do in order to facilitate her writing process. Woolf's willingness to move away from her father's factual traits to construct Ramsay's family ties and personality characteristics, while adhering to certain realities, calls for further investigation: where did she find inspiration for Ramsay's professional attributes? The first answer that comes to mind is Ramsay's pseudo-namesake, the mathematician Frank Ramsey (hereafter known as F. Ramsey, to assist the reader). There are good correlations between the two, and not just in their names. First, Mr. Ramsay was a young man when he achieved his fame: 25 years old as Mr. Bankes states (Woolf 23). Similarly, F. Ramsey was 23 when he rose to fame with his 1925 work The Foundations of Mathematics (O'Connor and Robertson 2003). There is also a correlation between what both men did after their breakthroughs. Mr. Bankes tells Lily "Ramsay is one of those men who does his best before he is forty" andcalls Ramsay's later work "amplification, [and] repetition" (Woolf 23). F. Ramsey achieved his greatest success before the age of forty also, becoming a Fellow of Cambridge University; in fact, this was the only time he achieved success, as his life ended at the age of 27 (Mellor 2004). Like Ramsay, his later works, particularly his philosophy articles, did not meet with the success of his earlier works. This may have led Woolf to believe that F. Ramsey's career, at least in philosophy, would be unsatisfactory, and thus created Mr. Ramsay's professional difficulties. Woolf could not have known that F. Ramsey's work would be rediscovered and praised almost 20 years later (Mellor 2004). With the restrictions that time imposes on knowledge, she could have assumed that F. Ramsey would live to a ripe old age, like his father, and that his career would never reach "R", as Mr. Ramsay put it, in reason for the immediate reception of his works. This could suggest that F. Ramsey was the main inspiration for Mr. Ramsay's professional appearance. However, consider F. Ramsey's work Truth and Probability, in which he states that "actions are not caused by beliefs alone, but by combinations of factors." beliefs and desires, and any action can be caused by several of these combinations” (Mellor xvii). "When people say it's probably going to rain, for example, at least part of what they mean is that they believe it will rain more than that it won't rain. But this What they do because of this belief – for example, whether or not they take umbrellas with them when they go out – also depends on what they want” (Mellor 2004). the first scene, a scene coincidentally involving rain, in which Mr. Ramsay contradicts his wife, convinced that the weather will not allow them to go to the lighthouse the next day. His action is to say so, because there is none. There is no debate in this regard; what is at issue is his willingness to say this for "the pleasure of disillusioning his son and ridiculing his wife" (Woolf 4). This may not be the case. Mrs. Ramsay's action was to repeatedly tell her son that the weather would be fine, despite conflicting evidence; she ignores his belief and takes action, wanting to return his son; happy son in the short term. It only delays his disillusionment, because he will wake up the next day and will not be able to leave. Mr. Ramsay appears to be trying to spare his son the heartache and prevent James from becoming suspicious of his mother. This could be his desire. According to Mr. Ramsay, one must always act based on belief and not desire. Mrs. Ramsay is his opposite, willing to suspend her beliefs in order to make others happy. In this case, F. Ramsey and M. Ramsay differ. While Ramsay does not hesitate to contradict his wife, with something he knows to be true, F. Ramsey would not have done that. He is described as having "abstained almost entirely from argumentative controversy... He felt too clear in his mind, I think, to want to refute others" (Richards quoted in Mellor xvi). Mr. Ramsay seems to spend his time trying to prove others wrong; his actions flow from belief. F. Ramsey, however, was confident enough to suspend his belief, out of a desire not to offend anyone; we discover on the second page of the novel that this is not Ramsay's mentality. Although personality and philosophy are distinct categories, Ramsay does not philosophically believe that desire must contradict belief, and therefore modify actions. Since he does not consider actions as "combinations of beliefs anddesires,” his philosophy and that of F. Ramsey are not correlated (Mellor xvii). Furthermore, as similar as their careers may be described, there are differences in this regard that show that Mr. . Ramsay is not entirely based on F. Ramsey. First, F. Ramsey's later works were not reformulations of his earlier works, as was the case with Ramsay. F. Ramsey delved into several fields: philosophy, mathematics, and economics, and mastered all of these (Mellor xi). With these disparate fields, it would be difficult to imagine Woolf giving F. Ramsey's work the description of "amplification, [and] repetition" (Woolf 23). They were not well received, not because of their resemblance to older arguments, but because his "work was difficult to understand...because it was so profound and so original" (Mellor xvi). Furthermore, most of F. Ramsey's philosophical works, although written before Woolf began To the Lighthouse, were not published until the 1930s (Sahlin 2001). She could not have access to such papers. F. Ramsey may have had some influence on Mr. Ramsay's character, but it is most likely minor. To find the true philosophical mind behind Mr.Ramsay, one must know who would have produced such revolutionary work, giving Woolf enough time to read and use it. In this case, the man under investigation is George Edward Moore. Moore's work, The Refutation of Idealism, was first published in 1903, which gave Woolf ample time to read it and shape her opinions based on her novel. He was well known at the time of Woolf's writing and attributed many characterizations to Mr. Ramsay, the first being the summary of their careers. Like Mr. Ramsay, Moore was a young man when he first achieved status through his work Principia Ethica. . Ramsay was 25 when he published his first major work, and Moore was 30 (Rosenbau 339). Although it was only speculation about what Woolf thought would be the outcome of F. Ramsey's career, she could be far more certain that Moore's "later career was a disappointment to some of his friends" (Rosenbau 339). . The last part of this sentence sounds particularly Ramsay-like, for it is his friend Mr. Bankes who tells Lily "what came after [Ramsay's first work] was more or less an amplification, a repetition" ( Woolf 23). Woolf would not have needed to presume the fate of Moore's career; she was already in a downward spiral by the time she started writing her novel. Furthermore, “Moore was also a teacher, colleague, and interlocutor like Frank Ramsey” (Schultz 2003). This brings to mind images of Ramsay's relationship with Charles Tanlsey. F. Ramsay is described as a “militant atheist” and his wife emphasizes that he was not an agnostic (Mellor 2004). Tansley is also an atheist (Woolf 5). Furthermore, F. Ramsey was above all a mathematician. Coincidentally, Tansley is working on a preface “to a certain branch of mathematics” (Woolf 7). However, as is Woolf tradition, these are not carbon copies. Ramsey was a man who “abstained almost entirely from argumentative controversy” (Richards cited in Mellor xvi). Rather, Tansley was the type who would not be satisfied until he "turned it all around and made it reflect on himself and denigrate them" (Woolf 8). They are similar in some ways, and Woolf could not have known F. Ramsey's mannerisms in a personal way, so she could have speculated about his personality. Moore seems more likely to be Mr. Ramsay's inspiration, if one is to judge a person based on. 1981.