James Baquet

    We’ve talked before about Virginia Woolf and her pro-feminist works “Orlando” and “A Room of One’s Own.” But one of her novels, “To the Lighthouse,” is No. 15 on our list of “The 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century.”

    Woolf had been a frail and sickly child, and much of her education was nothing more than reading through the extensive library of her father, Sir Leslie Stephen (himself an author) — well, that reading, plus the conversations in a house that played host to such guests as writer Henry James, poet James Russell Lowell, and Virginia’s own great-aunt, the renowned photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

    The influence of being so well-read shows up in the blending of great literary themes into her fiction. Although “To the Lighthouse” is arguably to some extent autobiographical, based on experiences the budding author had when her family summered at St. Ives, Cornwall, where they visited the Godrevy Lighthouse, it is also built on the foundations of Western civilization.

    At the very beginning of the novel, Mrs. Ramsay agrees that the family may visit the lighthouse tomorrow, “if [the weather] is fine.” Her 6-year-old son James is thrilled — until his father puts a damper on his joy by saying, “But... it won’t be fine.”

    Note James’s reaction: “Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father’s breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it.”

    Woolf has not-so-subtly introduced the Oedipal theme. You may recall, it was foretold that Oedipus would kill his father and sleep with his mother; Freud thus used the name to describe the feelings of a young boy for his mother, and against his father. This contributes to the continuing deterioration of James’s relationship with his father, shown most clearly in parts one (“The Window”) and three (“The Lighthouse”) of the novel. In part two, as the title says, “Time Passes.” The lighthouse itself has also been seen as a Freudian symbol; its phallic shape suggests male authority, something James seeks outside of his father’s stern control.

    Woolf, as always, mines the depths of psychology and literature to make her point.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. in part, not entirely

    2. grandparent’s sister

    3. heavy tool used for stirring a fire

    4. discourages

    5. weak

    6. harsh, overly-serious

    7. cut, torn

    8. spent the holiday

    9. developing, growing

    10. predicted, prophesied