Summer '07 Reading: 'To The Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf

[Scheherazade]

This will be the first book that I am participating in reading through this site. Could someone explain (or point me the appropriate thread) how this works. Will there be some kind of reading schedule and/or topics to discuss, or, is it just a free-for-all?

Glad you will be joining us, Scharphedin.

There is no set schedule; we discuss the issues/questions that we encounter as we read along so feel free to jump in anytime you feel like

Ok, actually Charles Baudelaire told it, not me. He's probly one of top 3 French poets of all time.

The fact that Baudelaire said it does not make it any less misogynistic and unfair.

W. Woolf is already looking like a man more than a woman, at least more manly than D.H Lawrence. Oooh those English are weirdos their men are more feminine than their women, and their women are more masculine than their men!

Judging authors based on their gender and their looks? That speaks for the reader's intellectual and maturity level rather than author's, I believe. If you can pass the fact Virginia Woolf does not look like Jodie Foster or Portia de Rossi , please feel free to join us as well, Turk.

[Turk]

Portia de Rossi

WOW! She could write good book. Though i didn't understand anything from Jodie Foster. It says "document not found".

[Scharphedin2]

Thanks for the clarification of how this works, Scheherazade. I look forward to re-reading To the Lighthouse and hopefully contributing to the discussion.

It has been almost ten years, but I did at one point read a number of Woolf's books, as well as a couple of biographical books. As such things go, I have forgotten many of the details of both the books and Woolf's personal life. However, during the weeks, when I was reading Woolf, I became very taken with her -- her writing was often very beautiful, and I found most of her books fascinating. More than that, her credo, when it came to reading and recording personal experience (journal writing) made a deep impression on me. Woolf studied the literature of the ages, and thought about her readings in her journals -- some of this work later became A Common Reader, which I remember as a particularly exciting book (as I was undertaking similar personal reading projects at the time). With respect to personal experience, Woolf apparently held that a day is not lived, until you have recorded it in writing. As someone who has never been able to maintain a journal, this insistence on thinking in written words, deeply impressed me, and impresses me still. Again, most of the details of what I read I no longer retain, but the portrait that I maintain of Woolf above and beyond anything else is of a lady, who had an immense passion for the limitless possibilities and phenomena of the world, and that of literature in particular.

I thought she came across as very sweet and beautiful, and, a woman with a gigantic imagination and mental presence. I liked to look at the photographs in the biographies, and to imagine from the words on the pages of the books, what a day in the country (Woolf loved to walk) with Virginia would have been like, and what kind of conversation I would have carried with her. I tried to penetrate the customs of dress and social mores of her time, and to meet her as someone in her day. I am sure I would have found her very attractive... in every way.











I do not think it makes all that much sense to talk about and look at Virginia, or any other individual of the past for that matter, in the context of the present fashions, when it comes to physical appearance. As another note on the photos of Woolf, I think many of the later ones are of a woman along in years (and, remember, people aged sooner in Woolf's day), who, for most of her life suffered extreme bouts of mental depression, so severe in fact that they affected her physically.

[Pensive]

Ok, actually Charles Baudelaire told it, not me. He's probly one of top 3 French poets of all time. Anyway. I don't mind reading book, W. Woolf is already looking like a man more than a woman, at least more manly than D.H Lawrence. Oooh those English are weirdos their men are more feminine than their women, and their women are more masculine than their men!

You aren't English, are you?

[Janine]

Hi Scharphedin2, I very much enjoyed your post and your enthusiasm. I loved the photos you posted and have never seen the first one before - it is marvelous. I read "To the Lighthouse" and "Mrs. Dalloway" a few years back and liked them. I found the style very different from what I am used to reading. I thought some passages were extraodinarily sensitive and beautiful. The way she strings words together is pure genius.
I had heard or read that "To the Lighthouse" is basically autobiographical about her family's yearly outing to a seaside house they owned. I thought this of particular interest. Do you know anything about this; if so could you you expand on the idea?

[Scharphedin2]

Hi Janine. I really look forward to re-reading To the Lighthouse, and will have to, in order to contribute meaningfully to any conversation on Woolf or this particular novel. I think the biographical elements in To the Lighthouse are generally recognised; I also think that most of Woolf's other fiction substantially draws on her personal life, and the personal life she did not have, but imagined that she would have liked to have had (if that makes sense). What I do remember is that the Stephens family did own a property in the Hebrides where To the Lighthouse takes place, and the makeup of the Stephens family did correspond relatively closely to that of the novel.

Basically my acquaintance with Woolf is based on 2-3 weeks of vigourous reading, and I admit that to me at this point Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves bleed together in memory -- if what memory I still have of these books serve me right, they are also quite similar in style, whereas the others I read -- Orlando, The Common Reader, A Room of One's Own and Between the Acts did not quite employ the same fragmented style (stream-of-consciousness) - Common Reader and Room of One's Own not being fiction at all, in fact. The biographies I read (concurrently with these books) were Quentin Bell's Virginia Woolf: A Biography and Lyndall Gordon' Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life. Both were good, although I remember being most taken with the former, as it was written by her nephew and (not surprisingly) had a more personal feel without sacrificing good scholarship.

As you remark, Woolf's ability with language is singularly beautiful -- it will sound clichéed, but certain passages almost read like prose-poetry. The hard part for many readers, I imagine -- and, especially if reading these books for school -- are the analyses of these long passages, where thoughts, and emotions, and events from the lives of several characters and different times flow together. Personally, I am not really good at this kind of analysis (or, all that interested), chosing instead to surrender to intuition at some point along the way, and letting the work and the words of the author carry me, not necessarily needing to intellectually comprehend every paragraph. The insight into the author's life on the other hand interests me, and maybe that takes the place of hard academic analysis for me. In any event, it will be fun to read along with the forum in this manner, and hopefully I will be able to contribute more along the way.

In closing, I return the compliment, Janine. I have read parts of the Women In Love thread, and I am impressed with the level of insight you, and several other forum members, have into the novel, and Lawrence's body of work and life in general.

[Pensive]

Hey, thanks for the photos, Scharphedin2!

I do not think it makes all that much sense to talk about and look at Virginia, or any other individual of the past for that matter, in the context of the present fashions, when it comes to physical appearance. As another note on the photos of Woolf, I think many of the later ones are of a woman along in years (and, remember, people aged sooner in Woolf's day), who, for most of her life suffered extreme bouts of mental depression, so severe in fact that they affected her physically.

Reading about her life made me a kind of sad. It's a pity conditions got so bad, the mental depression and all that she had to commit suicide...

[Turk]

You aren't English, are you?

Didn't you see my picture? I have hair on my face.

[Pensive]

Didn't you see my picture? I have hair on my face.

No, I didn't. And you know there are plenty of fake beards available out in the market!

Anyway, back on the topic: I think I have read it that Virginia Woolfe uses 'stream of consciousness'. Can anyone explain to me what exactly does 'stream of consciousness' mean? I have tried to look up its definition on wikipedia but it doesn't make any sense.

Thanks.

[Virgil]

Basically my acquaintance with Woolf is based on 2-3 weeks of vigourous reading, and I admit that to me at this point Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves bleed together in memory -- if what memory I still have of these books serve me right, they are also quite similar in style, whereas the others I read -- Orlando, The Common Reader, A Room of One's Own and Between the Acts did not quite employ the same fragmented style (stream-of-consciousness) - Common Reader and Room of One's Own not being fiction at all, in fact. The biographies I read (concurrently with these books) were Quentin Bell's Virginia Woolf: A Biography and Lyndall Gordon' Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life. Both were good, although I remember being most taken with the former, as it was written by her nephew and (not surprisingly) had a more personal feel without sacrificing good scholarship.

As you remark, Woolf's ability with language is singularly beautiful -- it will sound clichéed, but certain passages almost read like prose-poetry. The hard part for many readers, I imagine -- and, especially if reading these books for school -- are the analyses of these long passages, where thoughts, and emotions, and events from the lives of several characters and different times flow together. Personally, I am not really good at this kind of analysis (or, all that interested), chosing instead to surrender to intuition at some point along the way, and letting the work and the words of the author carry me, not necessarily needing to intellectually comprehend every paragraph. The insight into the author's life on the other hand interests me, and maybe that takes the place of hard academic analysis for me. In any event, it will be fun to read along with the forum in this manner, and hopefully I will be able to contribute more along the way.

Wow, you read all that in 2-3 weeks. I am looking forward to discussing To The Lighthouse with you and all the others. It is beautifully written, but I'm not sure I would call the style fragmented. It seems to flow like water from here to there rather than breaking into pieces. But those are just descriptive metaphors we each give her style. I think we are referring to the same thing. But more on that when we start. I won't be starting for a bit. Still need to finish Women In Love and I need to start Don Quixote too. But we do have all summer. This should be a great discussion.

[Turk]

No, I didn't. And you know there are plenty of fake beards available out in the market!

Anyway, back on the topic: I think I have read it that Virginia Woolfe uses 'stream of consciousness'. Can anyone explain to me what exactly does 'stream of consciousness' mean? I have tried to look up its definition on wikipedia but it doesn't make any sense.

Thanks.

Basically think it to write someone's mind. Like you are in someone's mind and watching his thoughts.

[Scharphedin2]

Wow, you read all that in 2-3 weeks. I am looking forward to discussing To The Lighthouse with you and all the others. It is beautifully written, but I'm not sure I would call the style fragmented. It seems to flow like water from here to there rather than breaking into pieces. But those are just descriptive metaphors we each give her style. I think we are referring to the same thing. But more on that when we start. I won't be starting for a bit. Still need to finish Women In Love and I need to start Don Quixote too. But we do have all summer. This should be a great discussion.

Actually, I am a very slow reader, but I basically had the leisure to do nothing else at the time than to read (summer break from school), and so I did. At this point in time, the same undertaking would probably take me several months. What a sad state of affairs.

You are right, "fragmented" is not the best description, hence the "(stream-of-consciousness)."

Don Quixote was a summer reading project of mine a couple of years ago, and I was intimidated by the length of the book (summer vacations having shrunk from the several months of the past to a meagre two weeks), but I managed, because the book is simply about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. Seriously! I could not put it down, and it literally had me crying with laughter at times. Enjoy!


EDIT: Pensive, I do not know the exact definition of "stream-of-consciousness," but the term fits. Woolf's prose is exactly that. One thought or event on the page will lead to a memory of another time and place or event, and without any real transition, the book will move on to that other time and place. "Think" about the process of thoought: You are at a flowershop, you are looking at the flowers, wondering which ones to take home -- your eyes fall upon a bouquet of red roses, and your mind wanders to someone's funeral, where someone placed roses on the grave, and you think about what the mourners were saying at the funeral. In your memory, someone is describing an afternoon of the past, where the deceased was singing at a garden party, and you think back to that party on that afternoon, and you are recalling the final examns that were occupying your mind at the time, as the now deceased family member was singing. It goes something like that, but not quite as schematic. Woolf will sometimes write this way, allowing the thoughts and actions of several characters to interweave. It can be quite a euphoric experience to read.

[Pensive]

Thanks! This seems interesting, ain't sure if I like that though - character's mind wandering here and there, but this surely seems real. I think I have not read many books consisting of this before.

[Scharphedin2]

...ain't sure if I like that though - character's mind wandering here and there...

You are funny... Trust me, my example above is a very poor man's attempt at describing what Woolf does.

[Scheherazade]

WOW! She could write good book. Though i didn't understand anything from Jodie Foster. It says "document not found".

Fixed the Jodie link... Glad you liked the pictures as both those actresses are gay.

I had head/read that "To the Lighthouse" is basically autobiographical about her family's yearly outing to a seaside house they owned.

I think the biographical elements in To the Lighthouse are generally recognised; I also think that most of Woolf's other fiction substantially draws on her personal life, and the personal life she did not have, but imagined that she would have liked to have had (if that makes sense).

Yes, most of Woolf's work was based on her personal experiences and this is one of the reasons why I don't like reading her books. I feel as if I am privy to something private or an inside joke which I do not get.

I am aware that there are many writers who make use of their personal experiences while telling stories but Woolf is the only one (I think?) who makes me feel this way. Maybe it is the combination of personal experiences with stream of consciousness that creates that 'privy' effect on me?

Scharphedin2>Thank you very much for your informative posts. I really enjoyed reading them and they almost made me consider giving Woolf another chance...almost!