To the Triptych

Mark Hussey's most illuminating point (one of many) in his Introduction to To the Lighthouse for me is his observation that the novel operates "as a triptych whose central 'panel' simultaneously divides and unites the other two parts" (lxi). This particular depiction is a loaded one considering the work's preoccupation with visual art, the relationship between subject and object, and the passage in time. A classic, Renaissance triptych may traditionally consist of biblical events in a linear fashion, commonly Christ's birth, death, and resurrection. Woolf's own work both constructs and critiques this meta-structure: though the novel's three sections do correspond to a beginning, middle, and end, her placement of nunhuman, natural processes in the central portion (Neely, Woolf and the Art of Exploration, 210) deconstructs the sort of positivist, objective mode of thought portrayed through Mr. Ramsey. Indeed, while Mrs. Ramsey is often objectified by the narrative as part of a setting (her Madonna & child consecrating Mr. Ramsey's thoughts or pictured as a shadowy triangle), her husband's worldview "subjects" nature to its domination. For example, Lily Briscoe's understanding of his "splendid mind" is comprised of imagining a table hanging incongruently in a tree. It is interesting that the man-made table, structured and pulped down from its original form, derives from the life-giving (to Mrs. Ramsey's birds), dynamic, natural tree; Mr. Ramsey's table could not exist without Mrs. Ramsey's tree. The table interrupts and disrupts its background, in a similar fashion to Mr. Ramsey's interruptions of Lily's painting and his wife's thinking.

Woolf further satirizes arbitrary structurality of thought (and its distracting consequences) by Mr. Ramsey's attempt to string all the letters of the alphabet together to reach Z by the force of his will and dedication (as well as his recollection of Scott's Arctic voyage, according to Neely). This syllogistic method perhaps further represents and parodies the educational system's use of Greek or classic thought, privileging males who would be more acclimated to it. However, I would hesitate to say that Mr. Ramsey is a wholly unsympathetic (though perhaps dislikeable) figure. After all, the surrounding women from Minta to Mrs. Ramsey to even Lily coddle and enable his need for attention and stature, leading to the quite pitiable figure of the bereft, unloved father and widower.

Once again, the women in the novel are far from in need of him, while his very essence must both dominate and rely upon them. It is Captain Obvious to now relate his character to Woolf's relationship with her widowed, dependent father, moreover, Lily's attempt to capture the essence of her own emotions and relationships while maintaining a critical distance probably parallels Woolf's own.

Lily's "line in the center" (211) that completes her painting and leads to an artistic epiphany may correspond to Woolf's own "center" in the novel, "Time Passes," which I mentioned previously. I found this segment to be the most lengthy to digest and difficult of the work, yet its depiction of a house's entropy towards a natural state and window into the mind of the servant Mrs. McNab is what differentiates it from a more "sentimental" or "old-fashioned" work. It also de-privileges the upper-class "presence" of the other characters, and complicates their importance or relevance to their contemporary events of WWI, encroaching modernity, and the fragmentation of the Victorian familial structure/gender relations. "Time Passes" additionally appears to utilize the "Waste Land's" motif of a barren, depersonalized realm lying in wait for either life or rebirth. "The Window" and "The Lighthouse" are nevertheless not without their own experiments with the spacetime continuum. Mr. Ramsey's unceasing recitation of Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" hauntingly prefigures the events of WWI and its effects on the Ramsey's family. Cam & James's final journey to the lighthouse and Lily's artwork can only be understood and filtered through their and the reader's memories of the past.