symbolism in to the light house

Presented by: Ranjan P. VelariPaper No.: 9 (The Modern Literature)Class: M.A. Sem-3Batch Year: 2014-16Enrolment No.: 14101032Email Id: ranjanvelari@gmail.comSubmitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English M.K. Bhavnagar University

Introduction of Virginia Woolf:

Adeline Virginia Woolf

• Born on 25th January,1882 • Died on 28th March,1941

• She was an English writer and one of the foremost modernist of the twentieth century

Important Works of Woolf:

• Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

• To the Lighthouse(1927)

• Orlando (1928)

• A Room of One's Own (1929) the book-length with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

What is the meaning of Symbolism?

• It is the figure of speech

• Representation of something

• It’s create certain mood or emotion in literature

• Artistic and poetic movement

• It originated in late 19th century in France and Belgium

Various symbols used in this novel:

• Lighthouse: Titular Significance

• Lily’s Painting

• Ramsay’s Summer House • The Sea, the Storms, the rock, reefs and shallow water • The Boar’s Skull

• Rose’s arrangement of the grapes and pears • Refrigerator in the Catalogue

• Fisherman & his Wife

•It symbolizes light and darkness

• Spiritual hermit for traveler of the sea

• Mrs.Ramsay spiritual bridge between other humans

•Symbol of spiritual strength and emotional guidance

• Woman’s struggle in patriarchal society

• “ Woman can’t paint or write”, this sentence is against gender convention

• Lily expresses the desire of Mrs. Ramsay through her painting

• Painting: Vision of Lily Briscoe

•It symbolizes collective consciousness of the characters

• House: Physical condition•Characters: Psychological condition

•Mrs. Ramsay’s dinner party presents her own inner notions of untidiness and inability to preserve beauty.

• “Time Passes” section presents war and destruction and time reflected in the condition of the house rather than the emotional development.

Storm Wind Water

Mind Emotions Metaphorical meaning of storm

Inner Demons

Mind or Subconscious

The Rocks, Reef and Shallow Water

•Dangers and Miseries

• Hopelessness or the end of an emotional turmoil

• Reminder that death is always at hand

•Symbolizes transient nature of art and life.

• Mrs. Ramsay’s covering it with her shawl represents her desire to preserve life.

• Mrs. Ramsay’s understanding nature and enduring power to suffer for others –as she wraps it with her shawl

• Rose arranges fruit basket for her mother’s dinner party, it symbolically presents guests’ private suffering and unite them.

• Basket symbolizes frozen quality of beauty that Lily describes and it is seductive and soothingly quality.

Refrigerator:• It is tool for conserving food and symbol of preservation, change, and instrument of science

In the context of the novel-•Mrs. Ramsay’s role as a preserver and shaper of culture•She imposed idea on children’s mind.

Catalogue:• Army & Navy stores• It does not have a date or name• war and consumption• consumerism

• The wife keeps asking her husband to return to the sea and request more and more from the flounder

• Mr. Ramsay’s rejecting the possibility of a sea excursion, Mrs. Ramsay repeatedly and unreasonably insists on the possibility of fair weather.

•She is subverting the misogyny of the fairytale.

•Myth about the dangers of unopposed female will and desire.

•The fairytale is subverted and instead of the dangers of female willfulness and desire we are faced with the dangers and horrors of male willfulness and desire.