Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse: Lagniappe to lesson 5 of Write it! How to get started

Thoughts on that and why you should write!

Today, with this thought on why YOU can make art: You may think, golly, Virginia Woolf was famous. Directors even made movies from her books long after she died by walking into the River Ouse with rocks sewn in her pockets. Maybe the work is risky. And it is. But, you’re alive. She’s not writing anymore. You’re reading this! Here some advice from a writer I love:

Riddles of Existence: “On Re-Reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.” That will appear soon under “Essays on the arts. film”.

A retired Navy physician wrote me recently with thoughts, questions about the novel and took me back to Woolf’s evocative novel To the Lighthouse.

He said, “The themes of meaning, loss, desire, and time are abundantly clear, but part of the allure of Woolf’s writing is the philosophical nature of her themes and the mystery that surround them.”

I address exactly that in an essay “Moral Ambiguity: Why We Make Art” that appears here:

Moral Ambiguity

I wrote about Woolf’s To the Lighthouse when I had the flu, was stuck in bed and re-read the novel I’d read when I was in my twenties—great book to read in your fifties, btw.

The novel resonated for me. If you’ve read it or—more likely had to read it in college, it might not have resonated for you. So, tell me what you think about that or anything else below. I love to tango in the comments. So, let’s dance: talk to me.

The Navy physician went on to argue what he calls “The Woolf Riddle.” I’m not sure what he means by “riddle” as my view is that the elusiveness of the novel is its strength.

Let’s examine my reader’s specific questions about the novel (slightly rephrased for clarity here):

1.     Why does Lily Briscoe, the lovely artistic house guest, move a tree to the center of a painting she works on outside on the lawn of Mrs. Ramsey and her husband’s summer home on the Isle of Skye in Scotland with a view of the lighthouse from the window and at bay’s edge?

2.     Why does Lily at one point place a salt shaker in the middle of the kitchen table in the Ramsey’s home to remind her of what she will do with her painting?

My reader argues that Lily Briscoe seeks unity: Here’s what he asserts, “I think the answer has something to do with the theme of unity, as in the unity of everyone at the kitchen table, compared to the unity of the table and the tree … .”

My view is this: To focus on “unity” strikes me as the direct opposite of what Woolf is about in To the Lighthouse. I pose in response this problem for readers of great fiction or, in fact, viewers of great art:

To try to make so-called “symbols” in creative work “speak” is to misread the originality of the questions posed. All great art and, indeed, philosophical thought, ask the primal question: Is a coherent narrative for our lives possible? And if we have no clear answer to that question, what then?

Virginia Woolf in To the Lighthouse, allows Lily Briscoe, the struggling artist, to help us. Lily paints against all odds. Note: Mr. Tansley, another character in the novel, and also a house guest at the summer home, has told Lily this, “Women can’t paint, women can’t write … ”

And here is Woolf’s answer: Lily continues through the novel to do just that, to paint. And, of course, we have the direct paradox of the novel itself: Woolf writes. So, clearly, women can write—and paint.

To try to place the word “unity” on what Lily does, as my reader appears to assert, by placing the salt shaker in the middle of the table is to misread Lily’s journey to finish her painting. Whether or not the tree ends up in the middle of the painting is Lily’s choice. Her choice to create is, to my mind, a large part of finding her way through existence, knowing as Mrs. Ramsey tells us, “It will end. It will all end.”

And as to that kitchen table: Mrs. Ramsey’s son Andrew explains to Lily what his father’s books are about: “Subject and object and the nature of reality.” Here’s how that struck Lily, “Heavens, she had no notion what that meant.” Andrew explains, “Think of a kitchen table then when you’re not there.” In Lily’s mind this table ends up scrubbed and in a pear tree. The vision of the table remains at the end of the novel, in Lily’s mind as “something bare, hard … uncompromisingly plain”—much like existence revealed in the novel.

To try to find the answers to my reader’s so-called “riddles” is to refuse to acknowledge that the work of living is, as my father once asked before he died, the struggle to find meaning and to answer the question, “What am I here for?”

This is the question we as human beings who know life has limits, the ultimate limit being death, must ask as we move forward through our years. The search for meaning with this knowledge is the work of creating, of making something.

You may think, Why should I try? Write? Finish what I started? You gotta be kidding. Who would care?

Annie Dillard gives us the answer in Living by Fiction—and yes, I used this quote in Lesson 2 of “Write it! How to get started”. But, geez, Annie is sooo good.

Should You Sell Direct?

Credits:

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, 1927.

Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, Columbia University Press, 1993.

Annie Dillard, Living by Fiction, Harper & Row, New York, 1982.