Art of Characterization in To The Lighthouse Paper no 09 Modern Literature

Art of Characterization in To The Lighthouse

Name :     Gohil   Hetalba  I.

Std      :     M.A. – 2  Sem – 3

Sub     :     Paper no ( 09  ) The Modern Literature

Roll no :      08

Topic  :      Art of Characterization in To The           

Lighthouse

Submitted to :  Dept. Of English

                             Maharaja Krishna Kumarsinhji Bhavnagar university  

Source :               The real text

                                Class note

                               Cliff note of the real text

 Year :            [ 2013 – 2014 ]   

                              

Art of  Characterization in To The Lighthouse

Virginia Stephen ( Woolf ) was born in London, on January 26, 1882. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was the author critical, biographical, philosophical essays and the friend of scholars and men of letters during a brilliant period of English literature. Virginia Woolf  in her Memories stresses the atmosphere of freedom in their family life.

                    “ The right to think one’s own thoughts and

                        to follow one’s own pursuits.”  

Virginia married Leonard Woolf. Two years after Virginia’s marriage the first world war broke out. Virginia was sensitive. War was a horrible and never shattering experience for her. She was weak sick and suffered from depression. She worked hard produced great novels and was honoured by Bloomsbury Group.

    No writer can escape, the influence of his or her environment social, cultural, political, and intellectual same was with Virginia Woolf.

1. Factors affecting Woolf’s Writing 

Ø Rapid Industrialization :

                                            Industrialization brought urbanization people of  the rural areas rushed towards, the cities in order to get education and work. Their agriculture did not earn them much.

Ø Urbanization

   This phenomenon brought chaos in the cities. People of the cities faced problems like housing shortage, rise in crime rate, fall in moral standard.  Social and moral order broke down in the society.

   Doubt and uncertainty, aestheticism, feminism, pessimism also affected her writing.

  Woolf life was dominated by mental illness. Her parents died when she was young. She attempted suicide, throwing her out of window. She ended her life drowning herself in the River Ouse.       

     

v  Style

Woolf’s writing bears the mark of her literary pedigree as well as her struggle to find meaning in her own unsteady existence. Written in a poised, understand and elegant style, her work examines the structures of human life, from the nature of relationship to the experience of time. Yet her writing addresses issues relevant to her era and literary circle. Thought her work she analyzes the Bloomsbury group ( values ) of aestheticism, feminism and independence. Her style allows the subjective mental processes of Woolf’s characters to determine the objective content of her narrative.

                      To The Lighthouse ( 1927 ) is her experimental work. In the novel the passage of time is, modulated by the consciousness of the characters rather than by clock. Woolf’s experimentation has much to do with the time in which she lived; the urn of the century was marked by bold scientific developments. Charles Darwin’s theory and Sigmund Freud’s theory influenced her writing.

v   Structure   

To The Lighthouse is largely traditional in its structure. It is divided into three parts, part-  I is “ The windows describes a house party on the island of Skye. Professor Ramsay and his wife are on holiday with their children and some friends. Mrs. Ramsay has promised to take their youngest son James to see a lighthouse. The father predicts unsuitable weather conditions and the journey  is postponed. Part  - II is “ Time passes”. ‘describe how during the long years of wars the house is left to dust and silence and loneliness.’ Then the family without Mrs. Ramsay and two of the children return. Part – III, ‘ The Lighthouse’ describes the visit to the lighthouse after the passing of the years. The quiet, efficient and thoughtful personality of Mrs. Ramsay has a similar position in this novel to that of Clarisisa Dalloway in the previous book.

v Conventional Technique

Mrs. Woolf fails to provide in her novels a memorable gallery of portraits such as we, get in the works of other novelists. Conventionally since the time of fielding, novelists have adopted two methods of portraying character.  

 They have sketched their characters through set description. We are told directly what a character looks, like hoe he dresses up, what are his oddities, and what are the salient qualities of his head and heart. Secondly, characters have been visualized and made real through their own words and actions as well as through, what others have to say about them. However Mrs. Woolf regarded such methods of characterization as superficial. She adopted new technique and rendered the psyche of her characters.

v  Stream of Consciousness

 Woolf describes her character indirectly. The characters never reveal them selves.

  “ We derive our impression of them from the effects they produce on the minds of other characters in the novel. Her methods is cumulative, and her characters cannot be taken out of the context and judged in isolation. Woolf builds the personality of her character step by step. She depicts the past and present of her character. In this way Mrs. Ramsay is characterized, she receives our sympathy. One character throws light on the other character of To The Lighthouse. Lily gives us information of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay ,same way James give us some information about his father’s dictatorial nature.

v use  of the important Moment

Virginia Woolf’s characters are thrown in such moments that brings out their personality and their inner conflicts. For eg . Mr. Ramsay has to deal with his wife, children, students and guests. We can easily make out his despaired and love for reality from his character.

vThe Multiple point of view

“ There is continual shifting from mind to mind, so that we as often perceive the impression given by one to another as the experiences each receives.”

Certain situations are selected which throw a character into high relief the scene in the bedroom in ‘ To The Lighthouse ’, for example highlights Mrs. Ramsay’s tact and motherly love sympathy and understanding. She emerges as a fully rounded character because we know her as she is reflected in several minds – her husband, William Banks, Lily Brisco and servel other we also shore the memories of her servants and Augustus Carmichael. The novelists also throw light upon James and Cam’s thoughts about their father. His character has been further, realised by his habit of reciting lines of poetry to dramatist his scene of loneliness and desolation. We can say that Mrs. Woolf can realism a character with perfect economy. She conveys the actual sensation of living and suffering and she has fully succeeded in doing so.

v   Woolf’s Limitation :

Woolf communicates limited number of human experiences. Most of the character in ‘ To The Lighthouse’ are of upper – middle class which Woolf belonged to. It should be noted that Woolf creates a limited range of intellectual and moral types. There are the disinterested scholars and intellectuals who can not fall in love with other sex. There are also women of tact and sensibility like Mrs. Ramsay, who have a gift of creating harmony.

  R.L.Chambers says “ When a man has to do something, she sends him off to India and all his achievements take place in that remote mysterious country.

    G.S. Frazer in his book ‘ The Modern writer and His world, writers  “ She offers as a lyrical abstraction from the pain with which she felt the world, the quality of her mind and spirit has a distinction that will make some readers always grateful to accept the offering .”

 Woolf cannot be called the best English novelist but we cannot deny the fact that, “ She is a delicate and subtle, artist, who upheld spiritual and aesthetic values in a coarse, materialistic age.”

  R.A. Scott, James writers, “ After, her in her own country, the serious novel could never again be just what it had been before”.

v   Female characters

Mrs. Woolf was a woman and she is  the best at caricaturing female characters. She successfully readers the essential quality of female experiences where it differs from the male.

  Joan Bennet writes –

    “ But she discerns more clearly, perhaps, than any other novelist, the peculiar nature of typically feminine modes of thought and apprehension, and their peculiar value as the complement of masculine modes”.

        Mrs. Ramsay does not understand what Charles Tansley is studying. She simply says that his dissertation is about the influence of somebody on somebody. Cam has no idea of the four sides of compass Tansley speaks for the novelist her self when he says “ Women can’t paint woman can’t write”. There is certain vagueness a certain muddle headedness about their minds; they are all indifferent to fact. But even then her women are complements to her men folk. This is because they have a special honesty, honesty which comes of self knowledge and the power of distinguishing the essential from the accidental and the non – essential. Mrs. Ramsay and Mr. Ramsay are the natural complements of which other, together enjoying a fuller life than would have been possible for them separately.

v     Conclusion

Compared with the plot driven. Victorian novels that came before it, ‘ To The Lighthouse ’ seems to have little in the way of action. Indeed almost all of the events takes in the character’s mind. Although “ To The Lighthouse “ is a radical departure from the nineteenth century novel. It is like its moral  traditional counterparts, intimately interested in developing characters and advancing the plot and themes. Woolf’s experimentation  has much to do with the time in which she lived. Scientific invention marked the age and Woolf’s novels too.  Mrs. Ramsay is a beautiful and loving woman with wonderful abilities of handling things.

  Mr. Ramsay is her husband who is a prominent metaphysical philosopher. He is harsh and a bit selfish.

  Lily Briscoe is single painter. The  is the youngest  son of the Ramsay.

  Paul Rayley is young man who visits Ramsays on the Isle of Skye. He later on marries Minla Doyle at Mrs. Ramsay’s wish.  

 Charles Tansley is philosopher and pupil of Mr. Ramsay. His nature is strange.

 William  Bankes is a botanist and old friend of   Ramsay. He is close friend to Lily.

  Augustus Carmichale was eidcted to opium. He became popular by writing poems during war.

Andrew , Ramsay Vasper, Ramsay, Roger Ramsay, Prue Ramsay, Nancy Ramsay, Cam Ramsay are Mr. and Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s children .   

 Mrs. McNab, Macalister and Macalister’s boy are some minor character delineated by Mrs. Woolf in ‘ To The Lighthouse’  for Virginia Woolf the novel is –

         “ Neither, a criticism of life.” In the Annoldian sense, nor an entertainment in the popular sense, but a rendering of life in all its fluidity, complexity and subtlety. Virginia Woolf is one of the great thinkers, who sought to give to the English novel a new direction , a new form , as well as spiritual awareness.