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Analysis Of Virginia Woolf's The Lighthouse

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As Kumar indicates, the arbitrary segments of time once more seem to merge into each other to form durée réelle when, the party lands on the lighthouse and Lily Briscoe simultaneously realizes her vision (pg.79). Woolf struggled with this last section, feeling that the material in the boat was not so rich “as it is with Lily on the lawn” (pg.106). Wanting to convey the impression of simultaneity, she wondered: „Could I do it in a parenthesis? so that one had the sense of reading the two things at the same time?” (pg.106 of “To the Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf, 1969).

In addition, the emphasis of “The Lighthouse” is curiously divided between experience and achievement. At first sight, it is the journey that seems important to the characters as Lily recognizes that her painting is not physically important – its presence and its merit as art are merely ephemeral. Yet it is only when finishing the painting that she attains her vision; that she can see her creation as wholly new, as if for the first time. The journey to the lighthouse (in its physical and spiritual meaning), likewise, permits growth and ‘vision’ for James, Cam and Mr Ramsay, as the distancing experience of the journey brings freedom from the thing in the distance, i.e. the past. Nevertheless, it is only when they arrive that a complete break with the past can be made and the present can be enjoyed. As Hermione Lee remarks, “[t]he ending of the novel is poised between arriving and returning, getting somewhere

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