Study Questions
1. What is Lily’s thought as the boat recedes in the distance?

2. How does Lily feel about routine? Social convention?

3. What does Lily want to capture in her painting?

4. What is Lily’s intuition about Mr. Carmichael’s poetry?

5. Why might people have disliked Mrs. Ramsay?

6. What positive memory does Lily have of Charles Tansley?

7. Was the Ramsay marriage blissful, according to Lily?

8. What is the conversation between Macalister and Mr. Ramsay?

9. What does Cam mean when she thinks, “There! You’ve got it at last?”

10. Why is Lily exhausted?

Answers
1. Lily thinks that so much depends upon distance.

2. Lily feels that when routine is broken, one can see life more clearly.

3. Lily wants to capture “the jar on the nerves” of human experience, not a description of it.

4. Lily thinks that his poetry must be impersonal.

5. Some people may have been intimidated by her beauty or her interventions.

6. Lily remembers a day at the beach when somehow Mrs. Ramsay’s presence allowed Tansley to lighten up and be playful.

7. The Ramsays’ marriage was not a “monotony of bliss” according to Lily. She remembers certain scenes, slammed doors, plates thrown out of windows, and rigid silences.

8. Macalister tells Ramsay about a shipwreck which happened the preceding winter. Three men had drowned.

9. Cam thinks that James has finally gotten his father’s approval when his father says, “Well done!” commenting on James’ sailing.

10. Lily is exhausted with the effort of following the Ramsays’ boat and worrying about their journey. Her effort to complete her picture is tied in her mind to the Ramsays’ reaching the Lighthouse.