Discussion Topic
Time in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse
Summary:
In Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, time is portrayed as an unstoppable and indifferent force, emphasizing the transient nature of human life and achievements. The "Time Passes" section highlights this by depicting the decay of the Ramsay house over a decade, symbolizing the relentless passage of time and its impact. Woolf contrasts objective time with subjective experiences, where significant events are remembered vividly while long periods may seem to pass swiftly. This exploration challenges rationalist views and underscores the fleeting essence of life.
What is the concept of time in Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse?
I'd like to expand upon the other answer to this question by looking at time's power to outlast human life in the famous "Time Passes" section. Here, Woolf focuses on how the passage of time affects the Ramsay summer home when its primary inhabitants are gone. Lasting a period of roughly a decade (or, at the very least, a number of years which include the outbreak of the First World War and the subsequent armistice four years later), "Time Passes" witnesses the gradual decay of the Ramsay house.
Abandoned by the Ramsay family, the house is slowly reclaimed by nature, with birds and toads nesting in the woodwork and weeds and wild grasses taking over first the garden, then the interior. During this time, Woolf seems to more or less forget about her main characters, relegating their activities to condensed bracketed paragraphs, despite the fact that these activities would normally...
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take up a large portion of any conventional narrative—Andrew and Mrs. Ramsay, for instance, die all of a sudden, despite the fact that they were major characters in the first section of the book.
In "Time Passes," therefore, it's useful to think of time as a main character in and of itself, a force of nature that takes center stage and reduces the human characters of the novel to footnotes. From the perspective of time, human activities occur in the mere blink of an eye and are barely worth registering, while the fruits of their labor (i.e., the Ramsay summer home and the coherent community it represents) can be destroyed without any special effort. Thus, in To the Lighthouse time becomes a force that is terrifying, not because it has any animosity toward humans, but rather because human beings are entirely inconsequential and meaningless in comparison to the inevitable progression of days and months and years. It's a haunting idea, one that Lily Briscoe will grapple with at length in the novel's third and final section.
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The predominant message about time in this novel is rather a sobering one. Again and again the text points to the inevitability of the passing of time, and how experiences, no matter how vivid and real they are, will undoubtedly pass and fade as the brief and mortal span of humanity draws itself to a close. This view of time is captured through the symbol of the sea, that broadly can be said to represent the relentless passing of time and the ceaseless forward motion that embodies time as characters move on and die. In the face of time, the skills, qualities, emotions and talents of characters are shown to be supremely transient. Note how the following quote captures the way in which time is presented as a somewhat oppressive force in this novel:
They both smiled, standing there. They both felt a common hilarity, excited by the moving waves; and then by the swift cutting race of a sailing boat, which, having sliced a curve in the bay, stopped; shivered; let its sails drop down; and then, with a natural instinct to complete the picture, after this swift movement, both of them looked at the dunes far away, and instead of merriment felt come over them some sadness—because the thing was completed partly, and partly because distant views seem to outlast by a million years (Lily thought) the gazer and to be communing already with a sky which beholds an earth entirely at rest.
Events, no matter how full of joy they are and no matter how happy, will eventually pass, and what oppresses Lily and Mr. Bankes in this quote is the "distant views" that "outlast by a million years... the gazer" and that are already speaking to a sky that is indifferent to the humans dwelling upon the earth. Scene in such a massive, cosmic scale, time is something that cuts humanity down to size, and it is this meaning inherent in time that various characters struggle with and against.
What is the purpose of the "Time Passes" section in To the Lighthouse and how does it relate to the other parts?
"Time Passes" is the shortest section of the novel and functions as a lynch
pin connecting the first section, "The Window," and the third section, "The
Lighthouse."
"Time Passes" is important because it establishes that Mrs. Ramsay has died.
Woolf deliberately had this event occur off stage as she did not want to
introduce a sentimental Victorian-style death scene to her work. Further, this
section makes clear that the house has been closed for most of the time since
Mrs. Ramsay's death. The section to follow, "The Lighthouse," takes places ten
years later, after World War I.
This central section is also very important because it reflects Woolf's interest in how we experience time. She knew, as we all do, that objectively speaking, time is divided into exactly even units: every minute consists of sixty equal seconds and every hour of sixty minutes, and they all pass at an equal rate of speed. However, Woolf also understood that how we experience time—our subjective notion of time—is far different. In what she called 'moments of being,' time seems to slow down, and we remember every minute of what happened in clear detail. The single day in "The Window" that comprises most of the novel is an example of a moment of being. As we also know, however, we often have large periods of time in which we remember almost nothing: this is the kind of time reflected in the section "Time Passes." It is short because to the characters in the novel, these ten years have passed so very quickly.
How do Woolf's characters approach time's passage in To The Lighthouse?
Time is approached subjectively by both Woolf and her characters in To the Lighthouse.
Western, rationalist thought has divided time neatly into tiny packets that are theoretically and even measurably the same: every minute is comprised of the same sixty seconds, and every hour of the same sixty minutes. However, the characters in the novel experience time very differently. Woolf, in the novel, is trying to explode the rationalist notion of time and say that, in reality, we don't experience our lives in such a way that every "packet" of time is the equivalent of another. Instead, as she writes in other places, we have "moments of being." Much of what of what we experience passes over us without being remembered: for example, in other writing, she uses her own childhood, where the monotony of being taken to the park for a walk every afternoon meant that her memory of those walks is utterly indistinct—most of that time is forgotten. However, in contrast, in moments of being, time seems to stand still and stretch out, and the memories of these times become etched on us in great detail.
The first and longest part of the book, which comprises only a day is told often, though not entirely, through the consciousness of Mrs. Ramsey, is meant as a moment of being. Details are etched on us, and time is elongated. We learn much of what Mrs. Ramsey is thinking as she carries out a dinner party that is a success—though not without threats of disaster—from the conversation to the arrangement of the fruit at the center of the table. Time is elongated through the repetition of the poetry that floats through her mind: for example, “And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.” This quote itself challenges rationalist notions of time.
The day at the Ramsey summer house on the Isle of Skye may seem trivial, but it is of such events that lives—especially women's lives—are made, Woolf is saying. Such is the texture of life. Let us hang onto it.
Later, time collapses, and ten years—including the all important event on the world stage, World War I—pass in just a few pages, showing how vast swathes of time can seem to go by rapidly, just as a day can seem to last eons. In the third section of the book, where the children and their father finally travel to the lighthouse, we are back to a slowed and elongated passage of time.
The novel attempts to show how time is experienced by people in lived, subjective reality rather than what science tells us time is.
What is the purpose of the "Time Passes" chapter in Woolf's To the Lighthouse, especially considering her critique of Mr. Ramsay's philosophy and view on life?
"Time Passes" is the middle section of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and it is meant to show how no one can stop the relentless passing of time. Change happens. Life goes on. Then it ends. There is no stopping any of it. Let's look at this in more detail to help you construct your answer to this question.
The section is quite brief, only about twenty pages in many editions, but it covers nearly a decade in time. This in itself says something about how fast time moves. In fact, it waits for no one nor for any philosophy. Along with nature, it ravages everything.
By the end of the section, Mrs. Ramsay is dead. Prue and Andrew are dead. The house is falling into disrepair as nature batters it. Everything is subject to time, and that includes humans and the things they create. This is the whole point of the section. In only a few short pages and a few short years, the entire landscape of the novel changes. Its characters are different. Its setting is different. Nothing stays the same.
Yet there are hints of humans doing their best to arrest the change. Mrs. McNab does her best to try to rescue the house and keep it in good order. Then Lily and Carmichael return. Carmichael even says that things are much the same as ten years before, but they are not, and herein lies the irony.