Similarities between Mr and Mrs. Ramsay

When we first started reading the book, one of our first discussion questions was about similarities within the novel. At first, I saw no similarities; afterward I reread the text closely and found similarities between William Banks and Mr. Ramsay. Similarly, I found that Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe had a lot of things in common as well. I still didn't find any comparisons between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay.
My first impressions of the Ramsay family ended up being the complete opposite of what Woolf had intended. I thought that Mr. Ramsay was a pompous, self-absorbed and extremely bitter man. Surprisingly, after further readings I've come to realize that he really isn't as harmful as he seemed; I realized that he was actually very respectable , loving and kind.

"he could not help noting, as he passed, the sternness at the heart of her beauty. It saddened him, and her remoteness pained him, and he felt, as he passed, that he could not protect her, and when he reached the hedge, he was sad. He could do nothing to help her." (Woolf p.54)

Mr.Ramsay clearly displays his affection and emotions toward his wife. Perhaps he is intimidated by her, or scared to show her how much he cares. But, one can see as the text continues more details about how he feels about her. He clearly cares for her greatly and wants to be the man that James claims he could never be. However, I don't think he knows how to express those emotions. I think that Mr. Ramsay is actually a lot more timid than the beginning states.
From the first passages, he takes on the role of being conceited and mean because his son, James, dislikes him. However, I realized that James' opinion isn't the only person who knows Mr.Ramsay's character; actually Mrs. Ramsay seems to be quite fond of her husband, and revers him greatly.
Similarly, Mrs. Ramsay isn't the same character I thought she was either. At first, I thought of Mrs. Ramsay as this angelic, loving and family-oriented woman. However, as I continued on in the text I was shocked to see that she was almost the complete opposite of what I thought she was. Mrs. Ramsay, once alone, is a dark and gloomy character who is extremely pessimistic, claiming that all lives remain in the "lords hands".

"This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no one saw it. They could not stop it, she thought, exulting. There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles), but as a wedge of darkness. Losing personality one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came togetrher in this peace, this rest, this eternity," (Woolf p.53)

The idea that she seems so loving and kind isn't necessarily false, maybe she is. However, I believe she puts on a mask while with her children. When she's alone, she seems to be depressed and almost trapped; Mrs. Ramsay acts as though she hates her life and wants another one. The impression the reader gets after this passage is that she craves something new, she craves stability and personality, this essentially means that she believes she doesn't have stability or personality. When she's alone, she seems to crave even more solitude. However, when she's with her family she acts almost as if she is a completely different person.
While I believed Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay to be like polar opposites, I ended up finding a very strong similarity between the two. Both Mr and Mrs. Ramsay are shy and conceal themselves, but, the strongest idea that shone through was beauty. They both describe each other, in secret, as beautiful.

To The Lighthouse Response: Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay

Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay, although they bond over their love for their children and the love they have for each other, are extremely different in the way they live their everyday lives. Mr. Ramsay, an introvert, is immersed deeply within his philosophical search, blinded by his need for fame and greatness. He craves power and superiority and as a result, treats the people around him in a firm and cruel manner, especially with his children, in order to feel on top. Mrs. Ramsay on the other hand is, for the most part, an extrovert and a provider for everyone in the story who all seem to need her in some way or another. Mr. Ramsay needs her to boost his ego and is thus presented in a pitiful, even pathetic light He is in need of sympathy partly because he reached his greatest success in his twenties and has since produced only mediocre work. He is mostly in need of this sympathy because he is having a type of crisis. He is doubting his thoughts, his work, and his ability to continue to make the philosophical progression through the alphabet to Z. He also has a great desire to have phenomenal fame and success but I don't think he is entirely sure why he really wants this at all. He puts a great deal of pressure on himself to reach 'R', "A shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over the intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of darkness he heard people saying-he was a failure-that R was beyond him. He would never reach R." (31) and it seems as though he thinks the people around him, Mrs. Ramsay, his children, won't really appreciate him unless he reaches this type of enlightenment. In reality, however, Mrs. Ramsay would go on loving him no matter what, and would be content if Mr. Ramsay simply was nicer to James. She knows that he is struggling, that "his last book wasn't his best" and she is okay with that. Similarly, James would be happy if his father might merely entertain the idea of going to the lighthouse. He and the rest of the children would probably stay content even if their father wasn't the next Aristotle but simply less abrasive and more father-like.

What is the Lighthouse?

The Lighthouse holds a special place in the novel so far, as the place everyone looks toward with longing but can't get to. The lighthouse seems to mean something different to each of the three main characters in the Ramsay family (Mr Ramsay, Mrs Ramsay, and James) but surely there is some common attraction to the lighthouse that motivates all the characters. It is from Mrs. Ramsay's perspective that we first get a concrete description of the lighthouse. "The hoary lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst [of the great plateful of blue water]," is how Mrs. Ramsay first describes the lighthouse. This reflects what Mrs. Ramsay sees in the lighthouse: isolation. Even though her nature and position leads her to surround herself with people, among them her husband, 8 children, and all the poor house-guests she invites in (it seems that all of them are people with nowhere to go). Mrs. Ramsay, as expressed on page 52 needs alone time to just think, and for her the lighthouse promises the quiet, austere, cerebral atmosphere she desires. That she thinks this is evident in the image of her sitting and knitting, thinking all the while, and noticing the beam of the lighthouse through the window. This image of the lighthouse as litterally a light in the dark is very powerful in the way it reveals what Mrs Ramsay truly thinks and feels about the lighthouse.
Mr Ramsey too looks out to the lighthouse with longing. We learn from Mrs. Ramsay that his favorite view from their summer home is that of the lighthouse from the terrace where he takes his evening walks. Mr Ramsay seems to wish to go to the lighthouse for the same reasons as Mrs Ramsay, except that for him the lighthouse seems to represent some greater truth, something which can only be attained by going there. Mr Ramsay often in his musings mixes together the idea of the lighthouse and the idea of his progression from Q to R and then beyond. It is interesting to note that Mr Ramsay seems to temper his desire to go to the lighthouse with his rational understanding that tomorrow the weather will prevent him from traveling there. This is very unlike Mrs Ramsay and James, who still hope for good weather even when they know it will not be.
James, a 7-8 year old boy, sees the simple mystique of adventure in the lighthouse. It's described as a place of legend, as though it were right out of a story...

Influence

Central to this novel, To the Lighthouse, is the theory of relationship. Mr. Ramsay, a man as much loved as he his hated for his philosophies, is studying “the influence of something on somebody,” (pg14). The reader, while Mr. Ramsay himself is pondering the intricacies of his philosophies, notices that clearly it is the relationships between characters that most obviously influence each individual. In order to further research this concept, one has to first examine this description of Mr. Ramsay’s work in more detail. At first glance, it is extremely vague, without connection to the broader context of the novel. However, if one then reviews the reading so far, this ambiguity reappears, except, this time in the musings of Mrs. Ramsay, and her observations of another relationship. Mrs. Ramsay gives this simple insight into her own relationship with her husband stating: “Marriage needed—oh all sorts of qualities (the bill for the greenhouse would be fifty pounds); one—she need not name it—that was essential; the thing she had with her husband.” (pg 50). This leads the reader to observe, as Lily Briscoe does, what lies beneath the “apparitions, the things you know us by…” (pg 53), and discover what that essential quality of human relations is, what gives relationships meaning. Furthermore, in connection with Mr. Ramsay's study, if one can derive the meaning of the relationship, one can then understand that influence that the "certain qualities" has on each individual. Once that has been revealed, one will know why it is Mr. Ramsay, "resolved,no; he would not interrupt her..." and from what "he wished, she knew, to protect her." (pg 55). It is this influence of each character on another that is so striking in this novel, and a theme that reflects the true aims of the author, one of which appears to be how relationships affect human nature.

Retreat

The idea of retreat is essential to the plot and relationships that characters develop in To the Lightouse.
The concept behind retreat is to take time out of daily habits. Having removed themselves from their working environments, the characters reveal themselves in their interactions with others and Woolf's introspection into their minds.
The first character who rejoices in his vacation is James. He eagerly sits and cuts out pictures from a catalogue hoping to visit the Lighthouse, all his actions filled with his excitement of the short journey. In contrast to James' anxiety to travel is Mr. Ramsay's cold logic and Tansley's echoing sarcasm. Their attitudes show that even during this break, they still have not relaxed but remain tense and overbearing. They take themselves too seriously and add up the success of their arguments and their achievements to a sense of self-import. Thus is the role of Mrs. Ramsay, the great neutralizer who notes the difficulty of seclusion and relaxation that Tansley is "the hundred and tenth young man to cahse them all the way up to the Hebrides when it was ever so much nicer to be alone." The need to be alone and contemplate is something that pervades all the characters, each using the time to understand themselves but to comtemplate their purpose and appreciate natural untangible things that feeds the mind. On page 14, Mrs. Ramsay describes the view of the Lighthouse which her husband so greatly enjoys yet puts off visiting and how the scenery is so eden-like that even artists venture there to paint. The fact that Mr. Ramsay avoids the Lightouse I think has to do with his P,Q argument of logics and his inability to reach R. What's important here is that Mr. Ramsay is brooding these things while he is not in his academic environment, not discussing what he fondly calls 'nonsense' but undergoing a self-evaluation during holiday. Perhaps the Lighthouse is a threshold, an unachievable end until he comes to terms with himelf, perhaps visiting the Ligthouse is his climatic ascent to R. Stylistically, Woolf paces her writing slow, out of time and place, here the continual work of being at home or study has no power but instead the power of relaxation lays bare the flaws of duty and work in the real world.

James

Throughout the reading I have been attracted to James. His burning passion of hatred of his father has drawn me to him. He has this raging passion to murder his father and this has caused me to analyze him. James seems like a warm loving person when he is around his mother. All he shows his love and affection towards his mother. Once he is with his father it seems that all this love dissipates and he is filled with burning desire to kill his father. "But his on hated him. He hated him for coming up to them, for stopping and looking down on them; he hated him for interrupting them; he hated him for the exaltation and sublimity of his gestures; for the magnificence of his head" (pg. 33). James can be very moody at times and refuse to associate with the world. His father causes him to feel this way because of Mr. Ramasays continual emotionless love towards James. James only has a burning desire to kill his father is because he doesn't show the same love that his mother does. James is searching for the same love his mother provides. Mr. Ramasy not only doesn't show any real emotion, but he intrudes on James' relationship with his mother. James feels that his father is polluting the relationship with his mother and feels that he is competing for the love and affection of his mother.

Lilly Briscoe

Lily Briscoe has appeared to be a very important character in "To the Lighthouse." First described by Mrs. Ramsey with her "little Chinese eyes and her puckered-up face, she would never marry; one could not take her painting very seriously; but she was an independent little creature." Lily is a houseguest at the Ramsey's house, and has developed intense feelings towards not only Mrs. Ramsey, but also the life that this family leads. Lily is very in touch with her surroundings, and very aware as to what is going on at all moments. On page 18, the reader receives the first piece of writing from the perspective of Lily as the narrator. It is evident that she is very aware of her scenery at all times, "even while she looked at the mass, at the line, at the color, at Mrs. Ramsey sitting in the window with James, she kept a feeler on her surroundings lest someone should creep up, and she should find her picture looked at." This is a very clear example of how Lily is aware of her surroundings. Through Lily's awareness, she is very in touch with the family and can therefore develop a connection to them and their lives. Along with being a houseguest, Lily is a painter. In the first few chapters we are introduced to the fact that Lily is attempting to paint a picture of Mrs. Ramsey, and that she feels the need for every brush to be perfection. Through being a guest at the Ramsey household, Lily has developed a strong sense of connection with Mrs. Ramsey. This connection is almost to the extent that she wanted to, "fling herself at Mrs. Ramsey's knee and say to her- but what could one say to her? 'I'm in love with you'? But, that was not true. ' I'm in love with this all', waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children?" It is not Mrs. Ramsey herself who Lily has developed the connection towards, yet to the life that she leads. Lily yearns for this idealistic life that she feels she witnesses at the house. While Lily is alone, with no kids or husband, Mrs. Ramsey shares the company and love of a husband and eight individual children. Lily appears to have become infatuated with the life that Mrs. Ramsey leads, " for she is in love with them all, in love with this world." Another love that we have witnessed Lily experience is the love towards William Bankes, another houseguest of the Ramsey family. On page 23, Lily describes in length her feelings towards Mr. Bankes, "she felt herself transfixed by the intensity of her perception; it was his severity; his goodness. I respect you." Overall, as a reader we are just being introduced to Lily Briscoe and have only seen a glimpse of who she appears to be.