To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf How did To the Lighthouse ever get its reputation as one of the classics of mod- ernism? Good salesmanship.
Not on Virginia Woolfs part. She was on the right track when she merely asked of her diary, 'Is it nonsense?' No, she left all the claims as to her novel's status to the novel itself, which is its own best self-publi- cist. A subtle analysis of the passing of time? The book is already ahead of us; events are forever being described as 'sub- tly intertwined,' subtly mingling', or exhibiting 'some subtle change'. Subtle it is, then.
An intense meditation on the workings of consciousness, perhaps? Certainly lots of intensity in there somewhere — Mrs Ramsay feels 'an intensity that brought tears to her eyes'; the painter Lily Briscoe hears a cry of 'the utmost intensity'; and the novel ends with another — or maybe subtly different — 'sudden intensity'. What else? A novel of exquisite poetry? No doubt about it. We get 'exquisite abandonment,' exquisite courtesy,' and 'exquisite scent,' the most exquisite smile,' an 'exquisite' profile, and then to top it off, at Briscoe's climactic epiphany, an 'exquisite pleasure'. Exquisite . • . extraordinary Can extraordinary joy', an 'extraordinary emotion') . . . certainly one of the two.
The book works, in other words, by the novelistic equivalent of auto-suggestion.
'I'm telling you, The Sun can have a vet), damaging effect on your skin.'
Describe often enough the contents of your novel as being subtle, and the weak-willed will ascribe the same quality to the novel itself. Repeated descriptions of exquisite intensities of various sorts, and half-wits will think your prose capable of the same. The tactic resembles that of the party host- ess who goes around introducing everybody as the most interesting people they've met, in the hope that some of it may rub off on them. Effective with people riddled with social insecurities, just as Woolf's work takes a viral hold on those insecure about their ability to spot literature.
How else explain such handy symbolism pointers as this:
And suddenly the meaning which, for no rea- son at all, as perhaps when they are stepping out of the tube or ringing a doorbell, descends on people, making them symbolical, making them representative, came upon them ...
Who would have guessed this symbolism malarky to be so easy?
In fact, Woolf has no idea of what makes a character or characters genuinely repre- sentative, meaningful or universal. Her method is to start out with some rather obvious symbol (the lighthouse=order, the sea =disorder, the window= the gates of perception) and then, embarrassed by the prospect of impending revelation, muss it up to pre-empt the reader's disappoint- ment; her idea of universality is simply blurred particularity. To the Lighthouse is a novel which constantly signals its move- ment to some higher truth, but when it gets there it comes gift-wrapped in smog: the novel boasts five mists, one 'thin mist', one 'yellow haze', one straight 'haze', and then a climactic vision of lighthouse which 'had melted away into a blue haze'.
My favourite bit of authorial sleight of hand: Lily Briscoe stands painting in the Ramsays' garden, when the daughter, Cam, suddenly tears past. Woolf writes:
She was off like a bird, bullet, or arrow, impelled by what desire, shot by whom, at what directed, who could say?
Don't look at me. There are some things on which even the most compliant, the most helpful, readers are humbly depen- dent on the authors they are reading.
Tom Shone
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