The purpose of this research is to examine To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. The plan of the research will be to set forth the outlines of action, character, and theme in the novel, and then to discuss ways in which character is related to the narrative structure, or pattern of ideas emerging in the work and means by which these ideas emerge. What this reading of the novel will suggest is that in To the Lighthouse, as indeed in much of Woolf's work, lasting emotional impact is derived from a bleak simplicity of narrative design, often in the form of fleeting impressions experienced by the characters. Such narrative devices are used to convey the intensity (or lack of intensity, as an attribute of character) of expression.
The action of To the Lighthouse cannot be discussed apart from its environment, and both action and environment are decisive elements of structure. In part, this confluence of elements is located in the atmosphere of bleakness that overlays character, emotion, and activity (such as there is) in To the Lighthouse. In a spare narrative framework, more suggested than explicated, Woolf finds precision and insight by way of her characters.
The novel as a design of action invites the reader to observe internal emotional content of the Ramsays' family life, even as it "frames" the completion of Lily's painting of the externals of the Ramsay environment. The unsettled nature of vulgar reality is juxtaposed against the ordered nature of art, which has been selected and crafted carefully and well. The nexus of the bleak emotional environment of the Ramsay household (and novel as a whole) becomes increasingly apparent as the reader becomes increasingly acquainted with character. Mrs. Ramsay, for example, avoids expressing her feelings, in part because Mr. Ramsay has sabotaged both her emotions and his own, and blamed her for it all. Emotional reality intrudes upon Mr. Ramsay, particularly in the person of Mr...