Time and the Subjective Nature of Reality Demonstrated into the Lighthouse - Essay Example

Time and the ive Nature of Reality Demonstrated in To the Lighthouse The concept of time is a fundamental concern for writers such as Virginia Woolf as she explored the ideas of reality, chronology and the subjectivity of the world. “Her feminine intuition was strangely modulated by an obsession with time, and struck its profoundest resonances from the sounding board of death” (Daiches, 1942). There are numerous examples of the subjectivity of time as shown through daily living situations, such as when one stands at the top of a tall building and looks down upon people on the street who are now the size of ants moving slowly around the block. In reality, these people have not changed size and are moving at variable rates of speed. Time means something different to those people on the street as they go about their business, some feeling stress in trying to get to their destination quickly, others feeling time abounds as they make their leisurely way through their favorite stores while the observer on the building understands that they are all existing in the same time regardless of their perceptions. This homogeneity (in which all individuals are the same) and heterogeneity (in which each individual is understood to be different) conception of time as discussed by Bergson is difficult to convey even in the most basic terms. Bergson “suggests that our static conception of time is a defense against the heterogeneity of the real … it presents an immobile world for us to master, projecting our thought through a grid of space, thrown out, Bergson says, like a net to collect and organize the heterogeneous and dynamic real, so that we can better act upon it and take control of it” (Guerlac, 2006: 2). To make matters worse, attempting to put the concept of time into words transforms it, forcing it to create space rather than remaining within the continuous progression of which it is a part. Virginia Woolf attempts to illustrate these concepts of time in her novel To the Lighthouse by incorporating details such as Lily’s progressive artwork as well as the various understandings and temporary nature of Rose’s artistic fruit centerpiece. Perhaps Woolf’s greatest illustration of Bergsonian time can be found in the elements of Lily’s painting. Introduced within the first 30 pages of the novel, the painting is seen to be constantly in a process of evolution as the story progresses. This progression demonstrates Lily’s changing perceptions of the Ramsey family and the various tensions that play themselves out as the individual members struggle against the effects of time. Woolf symbolizes the new thoughts and ideas through Lily’s decision to use bold colors and sharp lines in her painting rather than capitulating to the “pale, elegant, semi-transparent” (32) images that were expected in the contemporary art world at the time. The artist Paunceforte is used to demonstrate the popular opinion that time can be captured in these paler images that, because of their semi-transparency, are somehow able to convey the element of times past. Instead, Lily finds it necessary to remain true to her own conceptions: “She would not have considered it honest to tamper with the bright violet and the staring white since she saw them like that” (31-32). Only by painting the colors she perceives in full vivid hues, in the truthful hardness of it, could she manage to capture the ideas she had of the softness of the shape. “Then beneath the colour there was the shape” (32). Within the figures of the painting, Lily doesn’t conform to the popularly accepted views of form or time, choosing to depict her characters in the form they take within her mind’s eye, understanding their outer form is subject to the vagaries of time itself. Mrs. Ramsey, for instance, is not given the soft curves or visual detail that might have been expected, but is instead represented by a vividly purple triangle. In reflecting upon her critics’ responses to her work, Lily “knew his objection – that no one could tell it for a human shape. But she had made no attempt at likeness” (81) because it was truth she was after instead. She was informed by Charles Tansley before the novel even opens that women can’t paint and is nervous about allowing men to see the painting for these reasons. In the end, however, it doesn’t make any difference whether her painting is good or not, the ‘reality’ is that Lily was able, through her art, to capture the essence of the family as she perceives it simply by being engaged in the creation process, thus exposing, in relation to the other characters of the novel, the subjective nature of reality while transcending the ideals of time by avoiding those images that were likely to change with the years. The concepts within Lily’s artwork demonstrate the truth that is portrayed throughout the novel regarding the oppositional relationships between color and beauty and the bare underlying form as it is shaped by time. Rather than focusing on ideals of beauty that will change with time, both as a conception shaped by changing social ideals and as a form that will be changed with the passing of the years, Lily envisions Mrs. Ramsey as a purple pyramid for the family dynamic. She is quiet and dignified, regal in her nature, yet it is she who continuously spreads light and love and color throughout the household and among her guests keeping everyone in balance. It is her shade, in both tone and hue, which sets the mood of the home and it is she who brings balance and harmony to all, thus showing her to be essentially important to the entire composition. No one is quite the same when they come within range of Mrs. Ramsey’s light, again indicating the progression of time. Yet the color that is Mrs. Ramsey “burns on a framework of steel” (75) as the wife becomes shaped by the man she is connected to throughout her life and the man that she helps to color. Mr. Ramsey is the hard line and the crisp angle regardless of what time has done to his frame or his form. Like Mrs. Ramsey’s pyramid, Mr. Ramsey’s shape brings a certain type of balance as well, contributing to the overall structure of Mrs. Ramsey just as much as Mrs. Ramsey herself establishes her own colors, yet still managing to transcend the forms affected by time. These concepts of the subjectivity and transcendence of time and its spatial forms are carried throughout the book as Mr. Ramsey is continually shown to be dependent upon Mrs. Ramsey for comfort, love and a brightening color and Mrs. Ramsey depends upon her husband and sons for a structural framework. While he believes she depends on him and she believes he depends on her, Lily’s painting represents yet a third view of reality in that they each complete and depend upon each other through the placement of shapes on her canvas and the rhythms and movements that the painting undergoes as the story is told. From this canvas, and its development throughout the story, Woolf provides a symbol of the passing time element and the changes it brings about. “In To the Lighthouse … the rhythms of time and death and change suffuse and subtilize a half-mystic seascape, a long-delayed excursion, an equally delayed resolving of family discord” (Daiches, 1942). Although everything stays the same – Lily’s painting continues to represent the family as Lily sees it – everything also changes with the passing of time as things are either resolved or not resolved until the family finally understands itself. Another illustrative piece of artwork contained in the novel that reveals the subjective concept of time is the fruit centerpiece created by Rose for her mother’s dinner party. Woolf again employs the vivid purples and yellow discussed in Lily’s painting as reminders of the family dynamics. The artistry of the piece is brought forward by the thoughts of Mrs. Ramsey. “What had she done with it, Mrs. Ramsey wondered, for Rose’s arrangement of the grapes and pears, of the horny pink-lined shell, of the bananas, made her think of a trophy fetched from the bottom of the sea, of Neptune’s banquet, of the bunch that hangs with vine leaves over the shoulder of Bacchus” (146). In this fruit arrangement, Mrs. Ramsey sees entire worlds of fantasy coming to light before her eyes, not only of mythical scenes of bliss and joy, but of peaceful vistas through which one might explore for hours. Through the artistry of the piece, Mrs. Ramsey is able to transcend the static time of the moment, the ordered spatial presence of it, and enter into worlds of myth and fantasy, times that may or may not have ever existed and times that existed for others centuries earlier as well as the time that she herself inhabits as she sits at the dinner table admiring this fantastic centerpiece. Despite this capacity for the art to help the mind escape the harsh definitions of time and space that are commonly accepted, Mr. Augustus Carmichael’s view of the artwork illustrates that this element of time is subjective to a person’s sensitivity to it. Carmichael’s response to the centerpiece is presented through hard, short lines that focus primarily upon masculine action contained within a sharp definition of practicality and the present moment rather than through the guise of soft poetry. Woolf writes, “his eyes focused on the same plate of fruit, plunged in, broke off a bloom there, a tassel here, and returned, after feasting, to his hive” (146). Rather than being transported through centuries of time to the type of profound experience discovered by Mrs. Ramsey, Mr. Carmichael is only capable of living in the moment, devouring time as he devours the fruit, in the here and now, taking care of his desires of the moment. Thus, it is revealed that Mr. Carmichael sees the fruit platter, realistically, as delicious food that he wishes to eat while Mrs. Ramsey sees it, also realistically, as a piece of art. Through this symbolic element in the story, Woolf again attempts to illustrate the concepts brought forward by Bergson regarding the subjectivity of time in the only way in which it seems possible to convey these ideas – through the use of analogy and imagery. While Virginia Woolf’s demonstration of the subjective nature of art is used to illustrate the concepts of time as they were held by the common population as opposed to those of the philosophical set, there are numerous other interpretations as well. For example, these impressions are often seen as divided through traditional gender definitions. This was an approach that was well understood within her community and thus easily accepted by the readers. However, the way that Woolf approached the topic made it clear that she felt neither division was greater than or lesser than the other, merely complementary. It is telling that in both cases, the women were capable of discovering the transcendent element of time as something other than a solid, compartmentalized concept while the men are only capable of grasping the ordered progression without realizing how this affected their perceptions. While the perception of a bowl of fruit as a piece of art and the perception of the same bowl of fruit as a simple offering of food are simultaneously and equally valid, only one perception allows for the abstract understanding of time as it is described by Bergson. Similarly, the vivid colors and abstract presentations of Lily are as much about the people she paints as she learns more about them and as they change through time as they are about presenting archetypal building blocks of society capable of transcending the mundane elements of time. Her view of reality presents everything as a blending of elements, a color that is the essence of Mrs. Ramsey blending with a shape that is the essence of Mr. Ramsey curled up in the corner quiet and deep with a child in her lap. Lines and colors merging and blending with the activity and life of the moment blurred and distorted by the passage of time demonstrate the divergence of realities that at a moment, this was true while a moment later, that was true, yet each were true in the painting’s context. In the end, Lily separates from her painting with a vertical line down the center as a means of emphasizing that Lily has “had my vision” (310). The painting was not made for anyone else, just as the fruit platter wasn’t made to exist forever in its artistic form. They were creations of the moment, expressions of an idea of reality as it existed for that person at that time and its value was not in the finished product, but in the fact that it was a unique view of reality that had been recognized and experienced. References Daiches, David. (August 17, 1942). “Notes on Virginia Woolf.” Time U.S. Guerlac, Suzanne. (2006). Thinking in Time: An Introduction to Henri Bergson. Cornell University Press. Woolf, Virginia. (1955). To the Lighthouse. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company. Read More