To the Lighthouse

Brief Biography of Virginia Woolf

Born into a prestigious literary family (her grandfather was William Thackeray), Virginia
Stephen became an important part of London’s literary scene at a young age. She married the
writer Leonard Woolf with whom she founded the Hogarth Press in 1917, which published
all of her later novels as well as works by T.S. Eliot and other literary luminaries of the time.
Woolf’s experiments with prose marked a radical departure from the tradition of the
Victorian novel and created fresh possibilities for the novelistic form. Her works such
as Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves, and To the Lighthouse, are to this day widely influential.
Following the early deaths of her parents and sister, Woolf suffered periodic nervous
breakdowns throughout her life and, in 1941, fearing another breakdown, she drowned
herself in the River Ouse.

Historical Context of To the Lighthouse

At the turn of the nineteenth century, new scientific developments usurped long-held
worldviews and raised new questions about the nature of reality and human experience.
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection subverted traditional beliefs in a
world governed by God, and, as Darwin’s work contradicted people’s understanding of the
world around them, Sigmund Freud’s theories of the unconscious undermined people’s
understandings of themselves by pointing out a mysterious region of the mind to which no
one had conscious access. In To the Lighthouse, Woolf’s interest in the equal unknowability
of the world and the human brain reflect the influence of such contemporary scientific
theories.

Other Books Related to To the Lighthouse

The novel’s most closely related literary works are Woolf’s other novels, including Mrs.
Dalloway and The Waves, also written in the stream of consciousness form that
characterizes To the Lighthouse. Yet, around the time of Woolf’s writing, other novelists
were experimenting with stream of consciousness, too, and their resultant works – including
Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage, James
Joyce’s Ulysses, and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury – serve as productive
points of contrast and comparison with Woolf’s own prose experiment.

Key Facts about To the Lighthouse

  Full Title: To the Lighthouse

 When Written: 1925-1927

 Where Written: London and Sussex

 When Published: 1927

 Literary Period: Modernism

 Genre: Novel of Consciousness

 Setting: Isle of Skye, Scotland 1910-1920

 Climax: Mrs. Ramsay’s vision of eternity at the dinner table

 Point of View: Multiple

Summary

In a summerhouse on the Isle of Skye, James is enraged when Mr. Ramsay insists he won’t
get to go to the Lighthouse the next day. Mr. Tansley echoes Mr. Ramsay. Mrs.
Ramsay tries to preserve James’ hope. She reflects on Mr. Tansley’s charmlessness, then
recalls his confiding in her about his poverty. Lily struggles to paint on the lawn. She agrees
to accompany Mr. Bankes on a walk and they discuss the Ramsays. Meanwhile, Mr. Ramsay
argues with his wife about the Lighthouse again, aggravating James. Mr. Ramsay meditates
by the sea. After walking, Mr. Bankes admires Mrs. Ramsay and Lily considers the vivacity
distinguishing her beauty. Lily explains her painting to Mr. Bankes.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Ramsay wishes Cam and James could stay small, thinking she’s not
pessimistic (as her husband says), just realistic. She worries about Nancy, Andrew, Paul,
and Minta on their walk. After James goes to bed, Mrs. Ramsay watches the Lighthouse,
thinking, a sight which saddens Mr. Ramsay. She walks with him, chatting affectionately.
Mr. Bankes and Lily walk, too, discussing painting, then the Ramsays. They come upon Mr.
and Mrs. Ramsay who seem suddenly symbolic in the spell of evening.

On the cliffs, Nancy, Minta, Paul, and Andrew have separated and reunited awkwardly on the
sight of Minta and Paul embracing. Their return is delayed by Minta’s lost brooch, which
Paul chivalrously determines to find. He has successfully proposed to Minta. Minta sobs for
more, Nancy feels, than the brooch.
At the summerhouse, Mrs. Ramsay lets Jasper and Rose help her dress and is relieved when
the walk party returns. Though she despairs at dinner’s start, Lily helps her manage small talk
and the conversation eventually carries the night into an orderly beauty that Mrs. Ramsay
believes partakes of eternity. Mr. Tansley and Mr. Bankes flounder, then find footing at the
table. Lily feels burned by lovestruck Paul’s indifference, and decides not to marry. After
dinner, Mrs. Ramsay coaxes Cam and James to sleep, sends Prue, Paul, Minta, Lily, and
Andrew off on a walk, then joins Mr. Ramsay reading. She feels transported by a sonnet.
After reading, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay say little but still express their deep love for one another.

Nights pass, then the season. Mrs. Ramsay dies suddenly. The house stays empty. Prue
marries, then dies in childbirth, and Andrew dies in World War I. Mr. Carmichael gets
famous. Mrs. McNab eventually gives up on caring for the house, which falls into disrepair.
Then, after ten years, Mrs. McNab receives word to prepare the house and laboriously does
so. Lily and Mr. Carmichael return.

The first morning back, Mr. Ramsay forces the teenage Cam and James to go to the
Lighthouse with him. Lily fails to avoid him before they leave. During an awkward
conversation, Lily feels Mr. Ramsay silently pleading for her sympathy and feels like a
defective woman for not giving it. Mr. Ramsay sets off with a resentful Cam and James and
Lily feels guilty. She tries to paint but is distracted by thoughts of Mrs. Ramsay and questions
life’s meaning.

At sea, Cam and James have a pact of silence against their father’s imperious bossiness. Cam
doesn’t break it even as she’s tempted to give in to her father’s attempts to engage her,
admiring him as she does.

Lily considers Paul and Minta’s failed marriage and her own singleness and wants to show
the matchmaking Mrs. Ramsay how wrong her instincts were. Suddenly, Lily tears up at Mrs.
Ramsay’s ghost and life’s senselessness. She looks for Mr. Ramsay’s sailboat, wanting to
give him her sympathy.

At sea, James inwardly contrasts his father and mother. Cam feels spontaneously joyous and
loves Mr. Ramsay.

On land, Lily observes how little one can know of other people’s lives and reminisces about
the Ramsays. She reflects that the greatest skill is to see the world as simultaneously ordinary
and miraculous.
At sea, Mr. Ramsay finally gives James the praise he craves, but James conceals his joy.
Reaching shore, Mr. Ramsay leaps eagerly towards the Lighthouse.

On land, Lily and Mr. Carmichael agree Mr. Ramsay has reached the Lighthouse. Lily paints
a final line and is satisfied, even knowing her painting will be forgotten. She has had her
vision.

Theme Analysis
Time

To the Lighthouse explores time at every scale, tracking the intricate thoughts and
impressions within a single lived second while also meditating on the infinity of geologic
time stretching back into the past and forward into the future beyond the span of human
knowledge. Between these two extremes, the novel presents the different measures of time
out of which individual experience is composed. Part 1, The Window, and Part 2, The
Lighthouse, occur almost in “real time,” as the action described takes place within a period
more or less equivalent to the period of time it takes to read the section. Within these
sections, each character’s perspective picks up on an immense range of detail and the
observant Mrs. Ramsay and Lily are especially conscious of the unique specificity of each
moment. The novel also explores the vacation time of the Ramsays and their guests, for
whom the scenes of the novel are lived within a “break” from their normal lives in London,
and the circular, ritual time of communal activity and habit, as the characters repeat the daily
routines of walks and dinners, react to one another in predictable ways, and repeatedly
profess long-held opinions. Zooming out from daily life, To the Lighthouse reflects on time’s
larger frameworks as Mrs. Ramsay considers the irretrievable time of childhood and she,
along with Mr. Ramsay and Lily, confront human tininess in the course of the Earth’s
existence. Yet Mrs. Ramsay and Lily (and, though he has his doubts, Mr. Ramsay) believe
that it is possible to make “something permanent” out of the moment, and thus Lily paints to
partake of eternity as Mrs. Ramsay orchestrates lived experience until it becomes as
transcendent as art. In Part 2, Time Passing, the “real time” of The Window accelerates to
breakneck speed and the section spans a whole decade in just a few pages. Without much
attention to detail, this view on time lacks the particularity and complexity of time in The
Window and is characterized only by a barebones framework of events. Thus, the enormity of
Mrs. Ramsay’s, Prue’s, and Andrew’s deaths, and of World War I, are reduced to one
sentence parentheticals.
As committed as it is to capturing an experience of lived time, To the Lighthouse is just as
interested in the relics that linger after experience, and the novel holds up many different
forms of memory. There is the history book memory of impartially and sparely recounted
event as demonstrated in the bullet-like plot points of Part 2, Time Passing. There is the
circular memory Mrs. Ramsay has thinking back on her youth, recognizing in her children’s
youth their own future memories, and feeling life to be a cycle of marriage and childbearing
passed on from generation to generation. There is the living memory of Mrs. McNab and
Lily as their recollected images of Mrs. Ramsay appear visible on the surface of the present
world.

To the Lighthouse ultimately demonstrates the inadequacy of clock time to measure human
experience: life is not felt, Woolf shows, second by orderly second. Instead, one minute
seems to drag on an eternity while the next two decades speed by. One is one second aware
of a human lifespan as a long, luxurious stretch and the next second perceives it to be an
infinitesimal fraction of Earth’s much more enduring existence. Memories return in the
present and live on, sometimes seeming never to have passed.
The Meaning of Life

Characters throughout To the Lighthouse question life’s ultimate meaning and supply
different answers based on their own perspectives and on the circumstances that surround
their questioning. Mrs. Ramsay understands the meaning of life to be family and domestic
happiness, while Mr. Bankes and Mr. Tansley understand it to be work and professional
success. Mr. Ramsay vacillates between these answers, finding ultimate meaning sometimes
in family, sometimes in philosophy. Lily thinks life’s greatest meaning lies in making art.

Yet even as each character’s thoughts and behavior seem to present a loose argument for each
“meaning,” no character ever feels personally confident or satisfied with one answer. Their
moments of conviction are always shadowed by doubt. Thus, Mrs. Ramsay despairs at the
start of dinner in The Window, feeling her marriage, her family, and her life are hollow and
worthless. Thus, Mr. Ramsay continually doubts himself, one moment disparaging his family
life, the next moment his professional life, and forever relying on Mrs. Ramsay for sympathy
and praise to soothe his spirits. Thus, Mr. Tansley experiences bitter anguish and hurt at the
dinner table, proving how much weight he actually gives to the very world of human relations
he calls meaningless. Thus, Lily repeatedly turns on herself, belittling her life choices and
criticizing her painting.
No matter where the characters of To the Lighthouse find meaning in their lives, those
meanings are integrally related to the theme of Time. A character’s perspective on life is
always affected by that character’s relationship to time. When characters feel that human
action transcends mortality to endure the ages or when they are able to luxuriate in the
present moment and feel the breadth of a human lifespan, then they are able to feel life is
meaningful, worthwhile. Thus, reading Sir Walter Scott, Ramsay feels that the ongoing torch
of human accomplishment passed from person to person is much more meaningful than the
identity of each individual torch carrier. Thinking this way, he no longer worries about his
own achievements and feels happy knowing that his work in philosophy will be carried on by
other thinkers in the future. On the other hand, Mr. Bankes, on tasting Mrs. Ramsay’s beef
dish at dinner, is finally grounded in the pleasure of the present moment and can thereby see
the merit in domestic rituals he’d previously considered meaningless.

There is, ultimately, no one meaning of life and, instead of reaching for one, the novel shows
that meaning is subjective, contingent upon circumstance and perspective. Each life, then,
contains many “meanings,” which shift and change from year to year, from moment to
moment.
The Nature of Interior Life

Written as a stream of consciousness, To the Lighthouse constantly investigates the contours

and patterns of human thought through its form and style. While writing within the
perspective of a single character, Woolf’s sentences leap back and forth between various
impressions, memories, and emotions, formally illustrating the associative nature of an
individual mind. Lofty thoughts stand on par with everyday ones. Mrs. Ramsay’s mind alone
leaps between thoughts on the nature of compassion, the relationship between men and
women, household budgeting, her children’s futures, the state of her society, and the state of
the beef dish she’ll be serving at dinner. Emotions, too, flash quickly in and out so that Mrs.
Ramsay’s indignation at Mr. Ramsay’s exclamation “damn you” is restored to admiration
just a few seconds later when he offers to double-check on the weather he has so adamantly
insisted will be poor. While capable of such quicksilver change, the mind is also capable of
extended preservation, so that Mr. Tansley’s insult floats in Lily’s mind ten years later even
after she’s forgotten who said it.

Over the course of the novel, Woolf is also constantly leaping back and forth between the
minds of different characters. Though everyone’s mind shares an associative, eclectic
tendency, individual minds are also distinguishable enough from one another that Woolf
sometimes doesn’t even have to indicate that she’s leapt from one person’s perspective to
another’s, as when the text jumps from Lily’s to Mrs. Ramsey’s mind at the end of dinner in
The Window. Likewise, Mr. Ramsay’s stream of consciousness is immediately
distinguishable from Mrs. Ramsay’s in its lack of particular, material detail (the flowers,
stars, and other such quotidian beauties that Mrs. Ramsay laments his inability to notice). As
it slides in and out of different characters’ minds, the novel’s figuration further suggests that
the divide between internal and external life might not be so rigid after all. Repeating
metaphors of the mind as a pool of water and as a beehive transform abstract, private thought
into a concrete, shared element of the natural world.

Every aspect of the novel speaks to the diversity of interior life: the diversity of disparate
thoughts within an individual stream of consciousness as well as the diversity of different
thoughts and thought patterns that characterize different individuals’ streams of
consciousness. Lily’s reflection towards novel’s end that in order to see Mrs. Ramsey clearly
a person would need “fifty pairs of eyes” (since each of those pairs would have such different
insights into her character) can be read as a description of the novel itself: written through
many separate pairs of eyes to achieve the most complete possible vision.
Art and Beauty

As it examines the nature of interior life, so To the Lighthouse examines the nature of art and
beauty, giving credence to commonly accepted understandings even as it puts forth
alternative definitions. Weaving in pieces of a Sir Walter Scott novel and the lines from a
Shakespeare sonnet, To the Lighthouse showcases the beauty of canonical art masterpieces,
and in the person of Mrs. Ramsay, the novel presents a traditional ideal of human beauty.
Indeed, Mr. Bankes imagines her “classical” beauty on the other end of the telephone.

The power of such beauty—in both art and humans—can work for good. The literature the
characters read gives joy and consolation, as Mrs. Ramsey delights in the loveliness of the
sonnet’s words and Scott’s prose frees Mr. Ramsey from anxiety about his public image.
Further, such artworks can inspire faith in an all-encompassing human project. After reading
Scott, Mr. Ramsey no longer cares whether it is he or someone else who “reaches Z” –
someone will, he knows, and that’s enough. Mrs. Ramsay’s human beauty likewise consoles
and inspires: those around her admire her and feel strengthened by her spirit. Mr. Tansley is
filled with happiness just by sharing Mrs. Ramsay’s presence and attempts to be kinder and
more generous for her sake. Paul attributes his courage to propose to Minta to Mrs.
Ramsay’s effect upon him. Still, beauty can also exert less positive influences. Lily observes
that beauty can reduce and obscure, concealing the complexity of life beneath it. Admiring
Mrs. Ramsay’s beauty, Lily tries to see past it to “the living thing” that so animates her.

As it considers the nature of beauty, the novel also considers beauty’s makers. The characters
of Mr. Carmichael and Lily afford a view on art in the process of being created by as-yet
unestablished artists. In each case, beauty springs unexpected from unlovely circumstances.
Out of the opium-addicted, shuffling Mr. Carmichael of The Window springs the
incongruous sublimity of his poems, which meet with such apparent success subsequently.
Through Lily’s meager existence, self-doubts, and despair arrives the painting she completes
in the novel’s last section. Yet the novel does not limit the making of beauty to the production
of fine art objects. It understands human conduct and daily life as a form of art also. Thus
Mrs. Ramsey’s orchestration of herself, her family, and her guests is repeatedly described in
terms ordinarily applied to artistic composition and Lily recognizes Mrs. Ramsay’s person as
an aesthetic force, a masterpiece.

In broadening our understanding of art and beauty, the novel shifts the emphasis from
finished product to process – rather than limiting “art” to concrete, enduring, delimited
artifacts, the novel shows that art can also be a spirit, a frame of mind, a form of vision. Thus,
Lily ends the novel satisfied even though she knows that her painting itself will not be
immortalized, will almost certainly be forgotten. She feels content knowing that she has
participated in art and beauty just by making the painting, just by having “her vision.”
Gender

Though the novel’s stream of consciousness jumps from perspective to perspective, the
theme of gender remains in focus as each character considers gender roles and relations from
his or her own standpoint. Mrs. Ramsey delights in her womanhood, successfully fulfilling
the traditional female roles of caregiver, homemaker, beauty, comforter of men. Lily, on the
other hand, resents those same traditional roles, resisting the pressure to fill them and then,
when she succeeds in such resistance, feeling her defiant pride undercut by anxiety and self-
doubt. Having successfully refused to give Mr. Ramsay the female sympathy he craves in
The Lighthouse, for example, Lily thinks she must be a failure as a woman and, wracked by
regret, spends the rest of the morning trying to make it up to him. Among the male
characters, Mr. Tansley and Mr. Ramsay aspire to strength, chivalry, and intellectualism,
trying to inhabit the traditional male role of female protector and evincing an enduring
prejudice against female “irrationality” and “simplicity.” Still, even as the men look down on
women, they depend on them. Mr. Tansley and Mr. Ramsay are both utterly reliant on Mrs.
Ramsay and other female characters for praise and crave female sympathy to keep their egos
afloat. Even when Mr. Ramsay recognizes this need as a weakness in himself, he remains
unable to overcome it and thus demands of Lily in The Lighthouse the same sort of support
he’d demanded from his wife ten years earlier in The Window.

Aside from considering men and women’s individual gender roles, the novel also considers
the gender relations within a marriage and presents two models of domestic union. Mr. and
Mrs. Ramsay represent the conventional ideal (indeed, Lily thinks they have suddenly
transcended themselves and become a symbol as they stand on the lawn). Though the
marriage of course possesses its gender-bending quirks—Mr. Ramsay is emotionally needier,
Mrs. Ramsay, more emotionally restrained—it generally operates as a conventional
heterosexual romantic partnership: Mr. Ramsey is the “rational” breadwinner, Mrs. Ramsey
the “comforting” homemaker. They love one another deeply and act as a team. Within this
model, both are happy. Mrs. Ramsay especially praises the virtues of marriage and her eager
matchmaking attempts to set up all single characters in a marriage like hers.

Though not seen first-hand, Minta and Paul’s marriage as imagined by Lily in The
Lighthouse presents a point of contrast with the Ramsay marriage. It’s hinted in The Window
that Minta is not entirely happy about being betrothed to Paul, and the subsequent marriage is
rife with struggle and argument. Yet, over the years, relations between Paul and Minta are
repaired by something that would traditionally be considered a marriage disaster: Paul takes a
mistress and, thereafter, he and Minta are a team again. Remembering Mrs. Ramsay in The
Lighthouse, Lily imagines holding up the example of Minta and Paul as well as of her own
contented, unmarried life as evidence that Mrs. Ramsay was wrong to advocate so single-
mindedly for conventional marriages. Indeed, the novel presents marriage and gender alike as
complex, continued negotiations between the sexes, each facing a set of expectations that
seldom fit but are nevertheless worked around, worked through, and reinvented.

Characters
Mr. Ramsay

As brilliant and passionate as he is petty, bossy, and demanding, Mr. Ramsay is a victim of
his own mercurial moods and is always shifting in the opinion of those around him.
Characters loathe his… read analysis of Mr. Ramsay

James Ramsay

One of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s children, James is as bitter and resentful of his father as a
six-year-old in Chapter 1 as he is as a sixteen-year-old in Chapter 3. Yet, by Chapter… read
analysis of James Ramsay

Minor Characters

Cam Ramsay

One of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s children, Cam is a wild seven-year-old girl in Chapter 1 and

in Chapter 3, a dreamy seventeen-year-old who imagines fantastic adventures and secretly

admires her father despite his imperiousness.

Charles Tansley

An impoverished, priggish, self-absorbed, and charmless student of Mr. Ramsay’s who stays

at the summerhouse in Chapter 1. Despised by everyone, Mr. Tansley tries desperately to

“assert” himself and is self-righteous about his financial independence, snobbery, and

parsimoniousness.

William Bankes

Even-tempered and judicious, Mr. Bankes is a bachelor botanist and old friend of Mr. and

Mrs. Ramsay who stays at the summerhouse in Chapter 1. Though Mrs. Ramsay hopes he

will marry Lily, he and Lily instead enjoy a lifelong platonic friendship.

Nancy Ramsay

One of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s children, Nancy accompanies Andrew, Paul, and Minta on

their walk along the cliffs and intuits Minta’s inward desperation, though she is too young to

fully understand its cause.

Paul Rayley
A dumb but good-hearted young man—what Mrs. Ramsay affectionately calls a “boobie”—

Paul is a visitor at the summerhouse in Chapter 1 and is inspired by Mrs. Ramsay to

propose to Minta. The lovestruck Paul’s utter indifference to Lily defines Lily’s lifelong

understanding of romantic love.

Mr. Carmichael

A dreamy opium addict and unknown poet in Chapter 1, Mr. Carmichael’s poetry meets

unexpected success during World War I and he is famous by Chapter 3. Yet, in both

chapters, Mr. Carmichael is most often seen sitting in a sleepy, silent daze on the

summerhouse lawn.

Andrew Ramsay

The most intelligent of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s children, Andrew is a budding mathematician

in Chapter 1 of whom Mr. Carmichael is especially fond. Soon after Mrs. Ramsay’s death,

Andrew dies in World War I.

Minta Doyle

A golden and voluptuous tomboy of whom Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay are both extremely

fond, Minta stays at the summerhouse in Chapter 1. At Mrs. Ramsay’s encouragement,

Minta is engaged to Paul Rayley, though the marriage turns out to be a failure.

Prue Ramsay

The most beautiful of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s children, Prue is just on the verge of entering

womanhood in Chapter 1 and admires Minta wonderingly. In Chapter 2, Prue marries soon

after Mrs. Ramsay’s death, then dies a few months later in childbirth.

Rose Ramsay

One of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s children, Rose has a sophisticated aesthetic sense despite

her young age and arranges the fruit bowl on the dinner table in Chapter I to breathtaking

effect.

Jasper Ramsay

One of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s children, Jasper shoots birds with little remorse as a young

child in Chapter 1 and is said to care for Cam’s puppy a decade later in Chapter 3.
Roger Ramsay

One of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s children, Roger is wild and adventurous, like Nancy.

Mrs. McNub

The world-weary caretaker and housekeeper for the summerhouse who maintains (then

abandons) the house in the Ramsays’ absence and prepares it for their return.

The Swiss Maid

A young maid in the summerhouse, the Swiss Maid’s melancholy about her father dying in

the mountains touches Mrs. Ramsay to the core.

Macalister

A Scottish fisherman and native of the Isle of Skye, Macalister accompanies Mr.

Ramsay, James, and Cam to the Lighthouse.

Macalister’s Boy

A Scottish fisherman and native of the Isle of Skye, Macalister’s Boy assists Macalister and

accompanies Mr. Ramsay, James, and Cam to the Lighthouse.

Mrs. Bast

A native of the Isle of Skye, Mrs. Bast helps Mrs. McNub prepare the summerhouse for

the Ramsays’ return after ten years have passed.

Mildred

The cook at the Ramsay's house on the Isle of Skye.

Symbols
The Lighthouse symbolizes human desire, a force that pulsates over the
indifferent sea of the natural world and guides people’s passage across it. Yet even
as the Lighthouse stands constant night and day, season after season, it remains
curiously unattainable. James’ frustrated desire to visit the Lighthouse begins the
novel, and Mrs. Ramsay looks at the Lighthouse as she denies Mr. Ramsay the
profession of love he wants so badly at the end of Chapter 1. James, finally reaching
the Lighthouse in Chapter 3 a decade after he’d first wanted to go, sees that, up
close, the Lighthouse looks nothing like it does from across the bay. That misty
image he’d desired from a distance remains unattainable even when he can sail right
up to the structure it’s supposedly attached to. The novel’s title can be understood as
a description for experience itself: one moves through life propelled by desire
towards the things one wants, and yet seems rarely to reach them. One’s life, then,
is the process of moving towards, of reaching, of desiring. It is “to” the Lighthouse,
not “at” it.

The Sea
The sea symbolizes the natural world and its utter apathy towards human
life. The natural world – which encompasses time and mortality – proceeds
as usual regardless of whether humans are happy or grieving, in peace or
at war. Like the incontrovertible fact of death gradually claiming human
youth and beauty, the sea slowly eats away at the land, dissolving it minute
by minute. Like the relentless progression of a clock’s hand, the waves
beat ceaselessly on the beach and slow for no one. The sea itself is
unchangeable, and the many different descriptions of the sea throughout
the novel in fact describe shifting human opinions. As if it were a mirror,
people see in the sea a reflection of their own state of mind. Thus,
when Mrs. Ramsay feels safe and secure, the waves sound soothing, but
when she feels disoriented, the sound of the waves seems violent and
ominous. Thus, during World War I, the ocean appears senseless and
brutal, but in peacetime it appears orderly and beautiful.