Friday, December 7, 2007
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.
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2 comments:
Mr. Ramsay is going through a mid-life crisis and this only heightens his abrasive personality. He hopes to help the world and be a great man but he cannot even manage to be well respected by his own children. James hates all the time that his father devotes to himself and the way he takes his mother away from him. Mr. Ramsay seems to think of James as somewhat of a protégé, "James will have to right his dissertation one of these days". James hated the comparison of himself to his father and he became immediately infuriated.
But is Mr. Ramsay necessarily the cause of all conflict in the book? I think that it's unfair to cite him as the sole cause of all the family's conflicts, for it is apparent that Mrs. Ramsay has internal conflicts as well. I think that by focusing on making HIM happy, she neglects her own happiness in life, which causes the strain on their relationship to be greater.
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