UNIVERSITÄT TRIER, FB II: Anglistik
Hauptseminar: Virginia Woolf
SS 2004, Eingereicht am: 27.09.2004

Motifs and Symbols in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

von: Simone Petry

Index

1. Introduction 1

2. The Use of Motifs and Symbols in Virginia Woolf’s Works 2

3. Lighthouse and Light as Major Symbols in the Novel

3.1 The Function of the Lighthouse 3
3.2 The Lighthouse as a Symbolic Image 4
3.3 The Lighthouse Beam 7

4. The Elements of Sea and Land 8

5. The Ramsay’s Holiday Residence 10

5.1 The Garden 10
5.2 The House 11

6. Cutting Objects and Knitting Needles 12

7. The Alphabet 12

8. The Green Shawl 13

9. Conclusion 15

Bibliography

1. Introduction

Virginia Woolf’s fifth novel To the Lighthouse, which first appeared in 1927, captures its readers with its characterisation of the Ramsay family and their guests who meet at their holiday home on the Isle of Skye, an island near the Scottish mainland. The novel is set in a ten year period with the first section taking place on a day before the First World War, a middle period in which all the action happens “off stage” during the war and a last section taking place on a day after the war.

Virginia Woolf uses stream of consciousness narration which, unlike traditional linear narration, records thoughts in the order in which they arise without bringing them in a rational or chronological context. This sort of narration can make it difficult for the reader to follow the story. Therefore, the novel is structured round a series of images which help to bind the prose into coherence in the absence of a strong story. These images can be regarded as motifs, recurrent elements which assist our understanding of the novel. If certain meanings and associations cluster around them, these motifs become symbols. In this way, “external objects can become symbols for one’s own feelings. As such they become a means of investigating one’s feelings or providing a focus for them.”¹

If we are alert to the imagery, frequently we will see images, as simile or metaphor, gradually
acquiring symbolic weight; and once a symbol is established, it is often possible tot race the
novel’s narrative progress through the extension and expansion of that symbol. By moving into
the province of poetry, Mrs Woolf was able to surmount many of the difficulties indigenous to
prose expression.²

To the Lighthouse is full of symbols which have been interpreted in many different ways by various critics. Many of those interpretations deal with the central image of the novel, the lighthouse. It has been said to represent a religious symbol by some critics, a phallic symbol by some others. It has been connected with Mr Ramsay in some essays, with Mrs Ramsay in others.³ But just as James says in the novel: “Nothing is simply one thing.”⁴ As a consequence, the symbols in the novel can have several different meanings. The following paper will closely examine the major motifs and symbols in To the Lighthouse. First of all, a short introduction will be given about Virginia Woolf’s use of motifs and symbols in her work. Then, the lighthouse image will be looked at, taking into consideration its function, its different symbolic meanings and separating it from the lighthouse beam which has a special function in the novel. As a third point, the different elements of land and sea as well as their impact on the different characters will be examined. The next chapter of this paper will then focus on the holiday residence of the Ramsay family. First of all, the function of the garden, especially of the hedge, will be analysed. After that, the focus will be on the house, especially on the most significant components of the house which are the windows. After that, the opposition between cutting objects and knitting needles and its function in the novel will be very briefly examined. Finally, the paper will look at two other important images in To the Lighthouse which have grown to symbolic potential, namely the alphabet and the green shawl.

2. The Use of Motifs and Symbols in Virginia Woolf’s Works

Symbols and motifs are very important in the writings of Virginia Woolf. “She knew how an image could grow to symbolic potential in order to carry her narrative forward; and she was sensitive to the way poetic connotations accrue to define the numerous inflections upon which the meaning of her novel would rest.”⁵ Virginia Woolf seems to have dedicated a large amount of her time and thought determining the nature and scope of symbols. In her diary as well as in her critical essays, she worked out a theory about the use of symbols. One important aspect which she stresses in one of her essays, entitled “On Not Knowing Greek”, is that “a symbol should have some similarity to the thing symbolised, which it should make splendid”⁶. There must be some community between the thing symbolized and its meaning because, otherwise, it would not be a symbol but only empty imagination.

By the bold and running use of metaphor he will amplify and give us, not the thing itself, but
the reverberation and reflection which, taken into his mind, the thing has made; close enough
to the original to illustrate it, remote enough to heighten, enlarge, and make splendid.⁷

Furthermore, Virginia Woolf states that “the intuitive realization that a symbol imparts to us should be instant, because we start doubting the real and the symbolical if we do not apprehend symbol and meaning simultaneously”⁸.

[...]

1 T.E. Apter. Virginia Woolf – A Study of Her Novels. London: Macmillan Press, 1979, p. 75-76.

2 Mitchell A. Leaska. The Novels of Virginia Woolf – From Beginning to End. New York: John Jay Press, 1977, p. 150.

3 A survey of some interpretations by various critics can be found in: Christoph Schöneich. Virginia Woolf. Darmstadt: WBG, 1989, p. 60-64.

4 Margaret Drabble, ed. Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse. New York: OUP, 1999, p. 251. (From now on, quotations taken from the novel will be indicated with: To the Lighthouse + page number.)

5 Mitchell A. Leaska, p. 150.

6 N.C. Thakur. The Symbolism of Virginia Woolf. London: OUP, 1965, p. 2.

7 Ibid., p. 2.

8 Ibid., p .3.