To The Lighthouse

Allison Andrew
April 7, 2008


Since this class has had a strong focus from the very beginning on images and visual representations of literature as can be seen with our visual journal assignments, weekly power points, and the emphasis on photographs of members of the Bloomsbury group, a discussion of To The Lighthouse as a scrapbook—a visual compilation—seems long overdue. However, what is most intriguing, I believe, is the way in which that behavior or craft is gendered. Also, to continue with the theme of scrapbooking in Woolf’s novel, “[s]crapbooks were used as a way of teaching children to organize and classify information and to develop an artistic sense” (qtd. in Sparks 3). The connection, then, to the action which appears to underwrite the entire narrative is threefold: the coding of the pastime as feminine, the idea of and importance of the creation of art, and the education and interaction with children.
First, there is the connection to the action of creating a scrapbook with women, although, I am not sure if this is a result of the woman being relegated to the domestic sphere or part of the reason why such a categorization has occurred. The separation of the public world and the private or domestic seems to be reinforced via the family dynamic and Mrs. Ramsey’s role as mother and wife, yet it is also disrupted by her character as she must constantly build up her husband. Woolf paints Mr. Ramsey as a dysfunctional and extremely insecure husband who, despite being described by some as “the finest human being that I know” (39), begs for affirmation of his greatness from his wife, who rarely gives it to him in the specific fashion that he prefers. Furthermore, Mrs. Ramsey considers it an achievement when she is able to give her husband what he needs without saying or doing things that she does not wish to do. Here, what Woolf presents us with, how we are to view gender and gender roles in To The Lighthouse is conflicted. It is not easy to determine who is the head of this household and who has the majority of the power, Mr. Ramsey or his wife.
If we pay particular attention to James, the youngest of the Ramsey children, his father, whom he doesn’t like very much, is feared and his mother, who he cherishes, there seems to be a hint regarding who holds the majority of the power. James attempts to distance himself from his father, but has a strong desire to remain fused with the mother. In several instances, the young boy clings to his mother, literally tries to merge with the maternal body. For example, James is described as standing “stiff between her knees” (60). When James occupies spaces like these, places which position him as strongly aligned with the mother, it may be Woolf’s way of commenting on the need to move beyond such strictly gendered relationships as women occupying the domestic space and men occupying the public realm. Such separations, which remain rigid at many points in the novel, are vexed with regard to the young boy’s association with his mother and his refusal to embody, emulate, or embrace his father. His behaviors and tendencies seem to be coded as feminine although his biological sex would seem to suggest otherwise.
To further solidify the gendered distinctions in this book, we can observe the juxtaposition of James and his sister Cam. The two children, six and seven, respectively, are already employing the gendered behaviors—perhaps mirroring is a better word—that is seen in the adults. There is one particular incident in which a skull prevents Cam from being able to sleep and the possibility of its removal riles James, also leaving him awake. The skull, of course, is not real, but it stands in, I think, for the danger and adventure that boys are supposed to embody and which girls are to shy away from. Woolf illustrates these exact behaviors in the children’s differing reactions: “Cam couldn’t go to sleep with it in the room, and James screamed if she touched it” (171). The simplistic picture we get of boys and girls, more narrowly James and Cam, is reinforced by the behaviors of their parents and those with whom Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey associate. All the while Lily is hard at work creating art, or at least trying to, and Mrs. Ramsey is making a home and keeping the children. However, it is Mr. Ramsey who appears to have the final say regarding both these matters. It is the father who decides they will not go to the lighthouse, and James hates him for that, even though the mother would appear to know what is best for the children for which she cares daily, given the dynamics of a woman’s work at the time of the narrative.