Feminism in the novel ‘To the Light House’

Introduction

One of the most prominent literary figures of the twentieth century, Woolf is widely admired for her technical innovations in the novel, most notably her development of stream-of-consciousness narrative. In To the Lighthouse (1927) Woolf sought to come to terms with her parents' stifling Victorian marriage and events of her own childhood, as well as to explore such feminist issues as the necessity, or even desirability, of marriage for women and the difficulties for women in pursuing a career in the arts. A striking mix of autobiographical elements, philosophical questions, and social concerns, To the Lighthouse is generally considered to be Woolf’s greatest fictional achievement.

Three phases of Feminism

In her book “A Literature of Their Own” Elaine Showalter writes on English women writers.  She says that we can see patterns and phases in the evolution of a female tradition.  Showalter has divided the period of evolution into three stages.  They are:

1.      The Feminine,

2.      The Feminist, and,

3.      The Female stages.

1)      The first phase, the feminine phase dates from about 1840-1880.  During that period women wrote in an effort to equal the intellectual achievements of the male culture.  The distinguishing sign of this period is the male pseudonym.  This trend was introduced in England in the 1840’s.  It became a national characteristic of English women writers. During this phase the feminist content of feminine art is typically oblique, because of the inferiority complex experienced by female writers.

2)      The feminist phase lasted about 38 years; from 1882 to 1920.  The New Women movement gained strength—women won the right to vote.  Women writers began to use literature to dramatize the ordeals of wrong womanhood.

3)      The latest phase or the third phase is called the female phase ongoing since 1920.  Here we find women rejecting both imitation and protest.  Showalter considers that both are signs of dependency. Women show more independent attitudes.  They realize the place of female experience in the process of art and literature.  She considers that there is what she calls autonomous art that can come from women because their experiences are typical and individualistic.  Women began to concentrate on the forms and techniques of art and literature.  The representatives of the female phase such as Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf even began to think of male and female sentences.  They wrote about masculine journalism and feminine fiction.  They redefined and sexualized external and internal experience.   

Female Characters

After reading Virginia Woolf’s, “To The Lighthouse”, readers are left with the disturbing reality of the role of a woman during this time period.  The characters of Mrs Ramsay and Lily Briscoe portray these demeaning roles. Both are giving different polar areas of the woman in the novel. They are portrayed with the stream of conscious technique. There are other minor female characters too. However, instead of completely giving in to the domination of men, they are starting the woman’s movement of resistance in the period of the beginning of World War I.

    Mrs Ramsay

Mrs Ramsay is the character who is constantly present not only as worldly presence but also in the mind of the other characters. Beautiful, charming, and nurturing, Mrs Ramsey holds the Ramsay family together as she holds together every social context she enters by her charisma and instinct for putting people at ease. Mrs. Ramsay also holds To the Lighthouse together, for the novel’s shape is structured around her: her perspective dominates Chapter 1 and, even after she dies in Chapter 2, Mrs Ramsay remains central in Chapter 3 as the surviving Ramsays’ manage their grief and Lily revisits her memories of Mrs Ramsay and makes peace with her ghost. For her own part, Mrs Ramsay exalts in the beauty of the world and, though she insists she is no thinker, frequently reflects on the nature of time and human experience. An eager matchmaker, Mrs Ramsay is also, as Lily sees an artist who can make out of the fleeting moment “something permanent”

She is the character who used to take all the responsibility of their family. Carefree, calm graceful lady she is! She is the perfect homemaker. Always she is buffering the situation between the Mr.Ramsay and the children. Mrs Ramsay is a good wife & creater of the comfort for everyone. Mr Ramsay failed to treat her with chivalry.  She is the means to satisfy his male ego, physical needs as well as needs of the family. And sometimes when he realizes he cannot help her and that, astoundingly, her remoteness irritates him. So consistently does he get things wrong. On the other hand family is everything for Mrs Ramsay. Her constant concern about small and basic needs of family keeps her alive after her death too.  For in Mrs. Ramsay’s impulse to call to her husband is the essence of her life, the sensitive  and idiosyncratic alchemy of feminine intuition, along with the terrifying notion that the very act of being a woman, a wife, a mother, enervates, and far worse, may even kill. But here a question rises that is it necessary to be so concerned for needs to be in someone’s memory and heart? If she is an independent woman just like Lily Briscoe would she not be missed by family?

Ultimately, as is evident from her meeting with Mr. Ramsay at the close of “The Window,” Mrs. Ramsay never compromises herself. Here, she is able—masterfully—to satisfy her husband’s desire for her to tell him she loves him without saying the words she finds so difficult to say. This scene displays Mrs. Ramsay’s ability to bring together disparate things into a whole. In a world marked by the ravages of time and war, in which everything must and will fall apart, there is perhaps no greater gift than a sense of unity, even if it is only temporary.

But beauty was not everything. Beauty had this penalty — it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life — froze it. One forgot the little agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognisable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth that all out under the cover of beauty.

 According to Lily Briscoe she was great at pulling together her family. But by doing so, she smoothed over all of the complexities and individual interests of her children and her friends in favour of a greater whole. Mr. Ramsay is an overt bully, but Mrs Ramsay quietly influences people to take the shape that she wants them to take, in the name of a greater idea.

    Lily Briscoe

In Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, the struggle to obtain and assert female autonomy is constantly threatened or undermined by a society built upon the foundations of patriarchy. The clash of gender ideologies permeates much of the novel and Woolf emphasizes a subversion of traditional female gender roles through the character of Lily Briscoe. She represents an idealized feminist woman who challenges male hegemony to achieve a sense of individuality. Her finished painting and epiphany at the end of the novel serves to establish her role as a truly liberated female artist.

The desire to break away from conventional female cultural norms and stereotypes in order to achieve autonomy can only be fully realized when she experiences the “vision” after the completion of her painting at the end of the novel. Woolf is keen to stress Lily’s role as an outsider attempting to analyze and comprehend her precarious social predicament. Her status as a middle-aged woman, who values artistic achievement over the prospects of marriage becomes increasingly difficult to maintain against the circumscribed expectations of society. The pressure to conform to specific female gender roles weighs heavily upon her conscious:

“Even while she looked at the mass, at the line, at the color, at Mrs. Ramsay sitting in the window with James, she kept a feeler on her surroundings lest someone should creep up, and suddenly she would find her picture looked at”.

 Lily suffers from a moral crisis over her desire to pursue art as a vocation because of gender inequality and male prejudices imposed upon women. She is challenging the status quo by picking up a paintbrush and experiences a pervasive sense of guilt as if committing a heinous crime. Lily is fully aware of the gender stereotypes and impediments of circumstance that society places upon women, which explains her shrewd disposition to remain inconspicuous. Considering that she is adamant to conceal her painting from prying eyes suggests that her art is essentially metaphorical: a radical political statement of feminist ideals. Yet, she is not confident enough in her abilities to showcase this controversial work to a judgmental public. Her personal independence from the negative influences of male hegemony is directly linked to the aesthetic development as an artist; thus, it is only after reaching a satisfactory level of creative expression that the submerged metaphor becomes most vivid.

Indeed, since Lily is unable to obtain an empowering sense of female liberation until she has finished the painting at the end of the novel, the first section emphasizes the juxtaposition between her destabilized sense of self as an artist and as a woman living in a world ruled by patriarchy. The tenuous relationship between the subjective and the objective self is a cause of great psychological distress because of her shifting attitudes towards female gender roles. Lily’s first appearance in the novel provides a suitable qualification of her social status as an outsider. She is introduced through the perspective of Mrs. Ramsay sitting in the openly transparent window of the cottage with James, her youngest son. They are both having their portrait painted by Lily who is looking at them through the window from a position outside on the lawn.

Mythical References

In this novel Dr. Joseph M Blotner reads mythical connections with female characters. According to him three mythic female figures are traced in the designing of the characters. Thay are : Zeus(Rhea) ,Demeter & Persephone. 

Mrs.Ramsay is the symbol of female principal in the life. She is not merely goddess but more than this. We can say that she is the meaning of the novel. Rhea is the daity who bore the God children of God Zeus. Rhea has six children. Mrs. Ramsay resembles Rhea. She has eight children.Many a times she is relates with nature.

Female Gender Roles

Many women in To the Lighthouse either overtly or silently subvert conventional female gender roles. Lily Briscoe, for example has no desire to marry but rather wants only to dedicate herself to her work. She is independent and self-sufficient, and she is able to disregard Mr. Tansley’s prejudiced comments about women being unable to paint. Despite Mrs. Ramsay’ persuasion, she holds her ground throughout the novel, refusing to become any man’s wife. These choices and ideas were very unconventional in the early 20^th century.

Three of Mrs. Ramsay’s daughters also silently reject the life that their mother chose for herself, in all of its domesticity. They know that they want their lives to be different and more complex then what they perceive as limited realm of wife-mother and they are stubborn and adventurous.

Moreover, the novel promises only misfortune for the woman who accept the roles carved out for them. Mrs. Ramsay dies unexpectedly at a relatively young age. Prue, shortly after getting married, dies as a result of childbirth. Even Minta, who had been a somewhat unconventional lady, suffers in her marriage, for Paul leaves her for another woman. The novel seems to punish the women who accept positions as wife and mother, while it abounds with young women who are sure that want a different existence.

 Thus, the characters themselves stand for feminism. During that period woman are considered as of substantial or derogatory. For Mrs Ramsay we can connect the Indian Shloka of Manusmriti-

Karyeshu mantri Karneshu dasi, Shayneshu Rambha bhojaneshu mata,

This shlok shows the very role played by Mrs Ramsay in the novel. Her character is juxtaposed with Lily Briscoe’s character who is an independent individual and creative artist as well as sensible lady.  The feministic view has only one question that Why cannot the woman be allowed to be herself, why she is not at the ease and have to carefree for every person’s minor needs, why can’t she get comfort or feeling of emotional support from the man in her life, doesn’t she need that?