Mr. Ramsay is described as brutally honest, in light of the “uncompromising” nature of reality and “lean as a knife.” James, the Ramsays’ young son, who appears to be fully in the grips of his Oedipal complex, believes his mother is “ten thousand times better in every way” than his father and he fantasizes about killing him.
To the Lighthouse – 1
To the Lighthouse – 2
Mrs. Ramsay feels protective towards men because of the boyish reverence “something trustful, childlike” they offer her and other women. In reflection, she contrasts this with what she thinks her daughters feel, the “infidel ideas which they had brewed for themselves of a life different from hers; in Paris, perhaps; a wilder life; not always taking care of some man or other.” This association between Paris, the mecca for Western expatriates, and the rejection of traditional gender roles goes to the very heart of modernism.
To the Lighthouse – 3
A young, overly-serious man named Mr. Tansley longs for Mrs. Ramsay’s recognition. Woolf writes, “He would like her to see him, gowned and hooded, walking in a procession.” This desire for recognition seems comparable to James’s devotion to his mother. Mrs. Ramsay is literally a mother and the archetypal mother figure.
To the Lighthouse – 4
William Bankes remembers walking along with Mr. Ramsay one day when they happened upon a hen and her chicks. Seeing how this scene affected Ramsay, who said “Pretty–pretty” as he looked at the birds, Bankes associates this image with Mr. Ramsay’s decision to settle into the “clucking domesticities” of life with Mrs. Ramsay and their eight children.
To the Lighthouse – 5
Seeing that Mr. Ramsay is upset, Mrs. Ramsay won’t interrupt him but “She stroked James’s head; she transferred to him what she felt for her husband.” This perhaps unintentional reference to transference can be associated with Freud.
To the Lighthouse – 5
Freud’s family drama is on full display between James and his mother and father. Woolf writes of Mr. Ramsay, “But his son hated him. He hated him for coming up to them, for stopping and looking down on them; he hated him for interrupting them” and by ignoring Mr. Ramsay, James “hoped to recall his mother’s attention.”
To the Lighthouse – 6
When her daughter interrupts their reading, Mrs. Ramsay is somewhat annoyed. Woolf writes, “Mrs. Ramsay went on reading, relieved, for she and James shared the same tastes and were comfortable together.” This description recalls the Lacanian idea of the young child not being fully differentiated from his or her mother. The idea that this sense of unity allows the child to experience an imaginary sense of fulfillment that is impossible later is echoed by Mrs. Ramsay’s thought, in a subsequent scene, that James “will never be so happy again.” This scene becomes even more resonant with Lacan’s idea when Mrs. Ramsay remembers that her husband was angry when he heard her say this. Like the archetypal Lacanian father, Mr. Ramsay is responsible for disrupting the contented sense of unity between the mother and her child, so that the child can develop his ego and become independent.
To the Lighthouse – 7
Mrs. Ramsay’s feelings about God can be associated with a modernist lack of faith. “How could any Lord have made this world? she asked. With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor.”
To the Lighthouse – 8
Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay alternate between their individual identities and their symbolic, archetypal significance. For instance, in one passage, Woolf writes, “And suddenly the meaning which, for no reason at all…descends on people, making them symbolical, making them representative, came upon them, and made them…the symbols of marriage, husband and wife.”
To the Lighthouse – 9
Nature is described as if it is unconcerned with humanity, as if there is nothing in it for people to appeal to, which seems consistent with the modern worldview. As Mrs. Ramsay puts her youngest children to bed, Woolf writes “she got up, and pulled the window down another inch or two, and heard the wind, and got a breath of the perfectly indifferent chill night air…” Nature’s apparent indifference can be compared to humanity’s philosophical disdain for itself, reflected in Mr. Bankes’s thoughts: “Why, one asked oneself, does one take all these pains for the human race to go on? Is it so very desirable? Are we attractive as a species?”