A few weeks ago I picked up the unabridged audiobook of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and I finished listening to it this week. I know a lot of people consider audiobooks cheating, and maybe they are but sometimes they are the only way I can get to a book. Anyway that's really neither here nor there the point is I finished.
Overall I was much more impressed by To the Lighthouse than by Dubliners. For one thing it had a unifying story where Dubliners was merely a set of short stories set in the same place. I also found the writing to be more descriptive especially the dinner scene at the house. I have to admit though that I was a little distracted at times by that. I kept thinking of the one Bergman film I have seen where everything appears washed out and flat. That was the way I was picturing the dining room with some guttering candles and deep shadows thrown in.
The major theme of the book seems to be the transience of life (as is noted in the Wikipedia article I linked) and I don't disagree with that, but I noted a couple subthemes also.
One is the centrality of the wife / mother figure in a family. Mrs. Ramsey is really the glue that holds although the characters together as a cohesive whole. It is her will that is imposed on the family whether they realize it or not and her approval they seek. At the end of the book when the majority of the surviving characters return to the Hebrides they are really doing so to mourn her.
The second ... honestly I had something really profound to say here but as I was typing I completely forgot what it was. Something about the perception of gender roles I think.
I also picked up a little bit of lesbian subtext in the first section of the book where Lily is thinking about sitting at Mrs. Ramsey's feet with her head in her lap thinking how beautiful Mrs. Ramsey was and wondering why she wanted Lily to get married and subjugate herself to a man.
There is also the traditional nod to death with the Boar's skull and the sea etc.
This isn't a book I would read again (at least not for pleasure) but at the same time I don't want to find Woolf's grave and spit on it like I did Joyce's.
Books, Woolf, Classics, To the Lighthouse
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