Virginia-Woolf-Mythical-Patterns-To-The-Lighthouse

To The Lighthouse: Mythical Patterns

To the Lighthouse-Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf had tried to apply threefold primordial Goddess; Zeus: mother(Rhea), wife(Demeter) and daughter(Persephone) in this respective novel. Where we will see how 'Mrs. Ramsay' like character is constituting this trilogy of myth characteristics, if she has any influence from other writers or not, is there Christian influence or not and what are those influences under which her mind is working.

For which Joseph L. Burton has given two assertions;  "Virginia Woolf used myths as basis for her creation"  or "Unaware of It, It welled up out of her subconscious layers of her psyche, which resided as a forgotten material as an archetypal pattern or fragment of the collective or unconscious racial". According to him the latter one seems to be unsound, while the former one leads to dilemma and it can be utilized for fruitful criticism or sound scholarship.

If we see this myth in context of Virginia Woolf's: To The Lighthouse novel, then we're suppose to see MRS. RAMSAY as representing three personalities altogether; Persephone(radiant maiden of the spring and the summertime), Demeter(goddess of the harvest wealth) and Rhea. Mrs. Ramsay is being crystallized as a concept of ideal woman. Who is fruitful like Demeter, for her as well as becoming Halloween for the field of grain. As Demeter symbolizes fruitfulness, so Mrs. Ramsay symbols of fruitfulness cluster around Mrs. Ramsay. She plants flower and seeds that they are tended(In this respective novel, Mrs. Ramsay is known for shaping her daughters mind, to get marry, become an ideal couple and always one must believe in window like life{Here window suggests sexual perversion kind of life}). 

Throughout the novel we see green shawl covering her shoulders(green colour symbolises abundance and affluent). While on the contrary she is becoming obsessive, concerning repairment of her green house, which is intended specifically for preservation. From the same novel, we may have example of the refrigerator in the catalogue, named "army and navy". Which also symbolises the same things in alike manner.

"As we see here 'the very idea of preservation' seems to be old. As when generally something is preserved, it is becoming another day stale, and usually we don't like something, when it is stale. For food also, we always prefer to have fresh food. If anything preserved for more than one day, then it is getting decomposed, sticking, arduous and lastly turning into remnants."

She is Rhea(oldest of the Gods, the child of Gauea mother Earth and Oaranous, father heaven)who is the mother of Zeus(James in To The Lighthouse). Who knows that as James's father have denied James not to go to the lighthouse, it will inflict a negative impression on James's mind and he will become certain about they're not going lighthouse tomorrow" and requests Mr. Ramsay to modify his pronouncement and talk with him in digestive language, which a child can understand. But she is disappointed.

"Which in the visionary aspect, becomes contradictory. James wish of going to the lighthouse is fulfilled, all grudges from his father's side are rendered and given acceleration of a new beginning".

As everyone's life is indefinite, noone knows, what is going to happen next but in hope one lives, and when mistakenly what is mistook once is getting clear, the life is becoming easy to live.

Persephone(considered as radical maiden of spring and the summertime). But Persephone knew how beauty is brief; leaves, flowers, fruits, all the fair growth of the earth, must end with the coming of the cold and pass like herself into the power of the death.

"It directly symbolizes that life is full of struggles, beauty retains only for while, who knows what seems to be green, affluent and blooming, would turn into deadened black, scarcity, dryness and barrenness and life aptly goes with struggles. If one think that one is going to have the flowery bed, one will have but the nature of the struggle may differ and it is constant strivance to maintain oneself in quality life and so persephone has also connection with sorrow(as it depicts the very reality of life, rather than illusion)".

In mentioned article it is said that though it is presenting primordial images, which we can only assume by her diary that she knows Greek and had she not read Jung, Freud and Frazer before 1927, she would have been knowing from the members of the bloomsbury group as we see in this novel. An another assumption also can be made that it is coming from subconscious of her psyche and as she said: what interests me at the last stage, was the freedom and boldness, with which my imagination picked up, used and tossed all images aside, which I had prepared. Though these images are in part and in fragment, but their symbolic representation is something which is conveying the meaning in whole and explicitly, considering both; symbol and its referent.

"For Example: The Character of Mrs. Ramsay, which is condensed to goodness, where we see the goodness as whole and all the sub characteristics, constitutes it and gives it meaning and makes it whole".

Besides these we also see the influence of Christianity, but it is said that by believing in agnosticism, Mrs. Ramsay rejects the very concept of Christianity.

Therefore Mrs. Ramsay is connected with Rhea, Demeter as well as Persephone in subsequent manner.

Works Cited

Blotner, Joseph, L., "To the Lighthouse: Mythical Patterns", published by MLA, Vol.74, No.4, Sep., 1956.