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Vision In To The Lighthouse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Glenn Pedersen*
Affiliation:
Seattle, Washington

Extract

“Some one had blundered.” The vision of Lily Briscoe reveals that it was Mrs. Ramsay.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1958

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References

Note 1 in page 585 All references to the novel are from the Harcourt Brace Modern Classic edition of 1927; parenthetic numerals indicate page numbers; italics in quotations are mine.

Note 2 in page 587 Follow her concern in Mr. Carmichael (19), in “the subjection of all wives” to their husbands' labors (20), in Lily Briscoe and William Bankes (42, 109, 157), in Prue (293, 205), and particularly in maneuvering the marriage of Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle (92, 118, 175, 260).

Note 3 in page 588 Does it strain the artistry of the novel to suggest that R is Ramsay, the Ramsay family? How to integrate the family is the problem, and splendid as Mr. Ramsay's mind is, he is only a “steady goer,” not a “genius.” “He would never reach R” (55).

Note 4 in page 590 Compare her sadness when he sees her reading to James (104).

Note 5 in page 593 The complex of character involved here is admirably explained by C. Kerenyi who says that the pig is “the ‘uterine animal’ of the earth,” that “the decomposed bodies of pigs” used in Greek mythological cults mean a “state of fruitful death” (C. G. Jung and C. Kerenyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, New York, 1949, pp. 165-166). Joseph Blotner, who showed the Kore characteristics of Mrs. Ramsay in “Mythic Patterns in To the Lighthouse” (PMLA, LXXI [Sept. 1956], 547-562), could have developed the symbol of the pig as a symbol of Demeter and thus of Mrs. Ramsay. Kerenyi says also, “the pig is Demeter's sacrificial animal.”

Note 6 in page 594 See Kerenyi, pp. 141 ff.; consider also her mania for marriage for everyone.

Note 7 in page 594 In image the sunlight suggests the lighthouse, Mr. Ramsay, and the dark shadow is named by Lily Briscoe as being Mrs. Ramsay. Subsequently, the “purple” foot also identifies Mrs. Ramsay's guilt as James exonerates the wheel, Mr. Ramsay.

Note 8 in page 600 See also 62, 146.

Note 9 in page 600 It is possible to trace the same resolution in Virginia Woolf's images of land and sea.