To the Lighthouse Chapters
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Artists: Lily Briscoe, Mrs. Ramsay (in bringing people together and creating a warm home
environment), Rose
Finding oneself is not about grand revelations but about experiencing the small, seemingly
trivial moments in one’s life.
An epiphany is a sudden, spiritual revelation occasioned by some seemingly trivial event.
Part 1
Andrew, Prue, Rose, Jasper, James, Cam, Nancy, Roger
Ch. 1 (Mrs. Ramsay’s perspective)
Mrs. Ramsay, James, and Mr. Ramsay are introduced.
Their contrasting temperaments are noted (Mr. Ramsay, a realist, often takes the shine off of
his children’s ideas & schemes.)
Mr. Tansley & the Ramsays’ 8 children are introduced.
Mrs. Ramsay’s own aspirations – journalism, social activism p. 39
p. 42 – Mrs. Ramsay’s favorite sea view is described.
p. 43 – “With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets —what
nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had eight children. Stepping through
fields of flowers and taking to her breast buds that had broken and limbs that had fallen; with
the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair—He took her bag.” --Mrs. Ramsay through
Charles Tansley’s eyes.
Ch. 2 – Mr. Ramsay declares that there will be no going to the lighthouse
Ch. 3 Mrs. Ramsay tries to keep James occupied by cutting pictures out of a catalogue
p. 44 – end of ch. 3—Mrs. Ramsay’s death is foreshadowed
ch.4
Begins with Lily’s perspective, then shifts to William Bankes’ perspective.
Hears Mr. Ramsay’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” which he had been reciting at the end of
ch. 3
p. 46 Lily is very concerned with getting her painting right, saying, “This is what I see; this is
what I see.”
p. 47 Lily is unable to express her feelings to Mrs. Ramsay
p. 51 Mr. Ramsay is described (by Lily) as “petty, selfish, vain, egotistical; he is spoilt; he is a
tyrant; he wears Mrs. Ramsay to death; but he has what you . . . have not; a fiery
unworldliness; he knows nothing about trifles; he loves dogs and his children. He has eight.”
Ch. 5
Mrs. Ramsay frets over the house p. 52-53 (She looked up . . .”)
p. 56 “They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one
wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a
sponge sopped full of human emotions.”
Mr. Ramsay is pleased that he has “reached q.” Now he frets that he will “never reach r.” p.
57-58
Ch. 7 – James’ perspective
Father and son are each jealous of Mrs. Ramsay’s attention to the other.
p. 61 – “So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of
herself left for her to know herself by.”
p. 62 – dishonesty causes slight marital discord (metaphor)
ch. 8 Of Mr. Ramsay – “why he needed always praise; why so brave a man in thought should be
so timid in life; how strangely he was venerable and laughable at one and the same time” (p.
66).
Ch. 9 Lily’s perspective
“ . . . how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one,
became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it,
there, with a dash on the beach” (67).
Lily is very insecure about her painting. “It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad!” (68).
p. 70 “Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one?”
p. 73 Lily working out her painting in her mind
ch. 10 Minta (tomboy) is visiting; Mrs. Ramsay is trying to make a match between her and Paul
Rayley
ch. 11 “She could be herself, by herself” (79).
p. 80 – at first Mrs. Ramsay says “we are in the hands of the lord,” but then “she was annoyed
with herself for saying that.”
Ch. 12 – Mr. Ramsay “born blind, deaf, and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to the
extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle’s” (85).
Ch. 13 Lily’s perspective. Lily has an epiphany. “So this is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a
woman looking at a girl throwing a ball” (86).
Ch. 14 Minta loses her brooch.
Ch. 15 Mildred is the cook.
Ch. 16 - the choosing of jewels – p. 94
Juxtaposed with the beginning of ch. 17., “But what have I done with my life” (94).
p. 101 “She had done the usual trick—been nice. She would never know him. He would never
know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought, and the worst . . . were between me
n and women” (101).
p. 103 - Mr. Carmichael asks for another plate of soup
p. 104 – the centerpiece
p. 106 - Mrs. Ramsay like a goddess “she wore her golden haze.”
Ch. 18
p. 117 “The would, she thought, going on again, however long they lived, come back to this
night; this moon; this wind; this house: and to her too. It flattered her, where she was most
susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in their hearts, however long they lived she
would be woven; and this, and this, and this, she thought, going upstairs, laughing, but
affectionately, at the sofa on the landing (her mother’s) and the rocking -chair (her father’s); at
the map of the Hebrides” (117).
p. 118-119 Mrs. Ramsay covers up the boar’s skull (as she softens the influence of Mr. Ramsay
in the home)
Mrs. Ramsay in the moonlight (goddess figure). “[She] noticed that she could now see the
moon itself through the staircase window—the yellow harvest moon—and turned, and they
saw her, standing above them on the stairs. ‘That’s my mother,’ thought Prue . . .” (119).
“He wanted something—wanted the thing she always found it so difficult to give him; wanted
her to tell him that she loved him. And that, no, she could not do” (124).
Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay have an understanding. “Then, knowing that he was watching her,
instead of saying anything she turned, holding her stocking, and looked at him. And as she
looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not said a word, he knew, of course he
knew, that she loved him. He could not deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and
said (thinking to herself, Nothing on earth can equal this happiness)— (125)
********************Part II Time Passes***********************
Chapter 1
“The airs” p. 129 (like spirits of the house)
p. 130 - “The airs” have power to ravage life
p. 131 Brackets indicate the death of Mrs. Ramsay
p. 131 ch. 4
The airs (which may represent time’s inexorable onslaught) take over the house.
Mrs. McNab (the housekeeper) comes to air out the house
Ch. 5
p. 133
Prue gets married, mentioned in another bracketed aside
p. 134 Prue dies from a complication of childbirth, mentioned in another bracketed aside
p. 135 Andrew dies in WW1 in France of of trench mortar fire, mentioned in another
bracketed aside
p. 137 Mrs. McNab remembers Mrs. Ramsay
ch. 9
ch. 1
The life of the house (perspective of the house)
Note the repetition and juxtaposition on p. 138. What is the effect?
p. 139 Mrs. McNab and Mrs. Bast “creaked.” (what are they compared to?)
ch. 10 – end of WW1
p. 142 Lily Briscoe has a premonition of death.
Part 3 “The Lighthouse”
Lily’s perspective – she has not been to the house in 10 years
Ch. 2
The boot conversation between Lily and Mr. Ramsay (151).
CH. 3
THEME
“What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on
one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did
come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in
the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking
wave; Mrs. Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs. Ramsay saying “Life stands still here”; Mrs.
Ramsay making of the moment something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to
make of the moment something permanent)—this was of the nature of a revelation” (157).
CH.4
Cam, James, and Mr. Ramsay are traveling to the lighthouse
Ch. 5
Focuses on Mr. Carmichael
Ch. 6
Dead fish (what is the effect of placing it in brackets the same way Andrew’s death and Prue’s
death and Mrs. Ramsay’s death were placed in brackets?
ch. 7
Lily’s painting intensifies p. 171
Ch. 8 Cam’s perspective and James’ perspective
Ch. 9 –
Ch. 11
“Love had a thousand shapes. There might be lovers whose gift it was to choose out the
elements of things and place them together and so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life,
make of some scene, or meeting of people (all now gone and separate), one of those globed
compacted things over which thought lingers, and love plays” (180) -----WHOM DOES THIS
QUOTE DESCRIBE???
p. 186 – Lily’s vision of the death of Mrs. Ramsay
ch. 12
Mr. Ramsay “has reached it,” or reached himself.
Ch. 13 Lily finishes her painting, saying, “I have had my vision.”