Analysis of the extract taken from V. Woolf's “To the lighthouse”.

The extract is taken from V. Woolf's “To the lighthouse”. it speaks about Mrs. Ramsay and her husband dialogue. It is consists on more shifts of the point of view.

At the beginning the narrator presents Mrs Ramsay. She is characterized as a strong, fertile, positive and pragmatic person (text references: “rain of energy”; “a column of spray”; “burning and illuminating”; “this delicious fecundity”; “this fountain and spray of life”; “confident upright”; “her competence assured him”; “she did not like to feel finer than her husband”; “not being able to tell him the truth”).

In opposition to her there is Mr Ramsay. The narrator describes him too. It compares Mrs. Ramsay's vitality to Mr Ramsay's passivity.

He is different from his wife, because he is insecure and a failure (text references: “he wanted sympathy”; “he was a failure, he said”; “to be assured of hi genius…warmed and soothed…his barrennes made fertile”; “he must be assured that he too lived in the heart of life”).

In a second part of the extract Mrs and Mr Ramsay are presented by James: their little son. He understands his parents relation ship, therefore everybody can understand that if a baby can do it.

He is sat on his mother knees, but he is only nine months. He thinks that his mother is strong , because she knows the way to face life.

After that there the narrator describes Mrs Ramsay. The narrator speaks about “her laugh”, “her pose” and “her competence”. She is serene, well-balanced and a sign of life.

Instead Mr Ramsay is weak, insecure and sterile (text references: “The arid scimitar of the male…demanding sympathy and not for a second should he find himself without her”).

Besides Virginia Woolf makes a reference to T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, because there is a opposition between fertility and sterility which Mrs and Mr Ramsey are symbols.

Mrs Ramsay security and Mr Ramsay insecurity represent the opposition between light and darkness which are aspects of life.

Mrs Ramsay is also described by the narrator as a spring (text references: “tree; rosy-flowered”; “blowing”). It means that she is considered as life. While Mr Ramsay is “plunged”. Instead it means that he is as a pain.

In the third part of the extract there is Mr Ramsay’s point of view.

After the speech with his wife Mr Ramsay feels happiness and security (text references: “filled with her words”; “satisfied”; “humble”; “restored”; “renewed”). He also feels himself submit and depending by her wife (“humble”) and also he can begin another live (“renewed”).

In the last part there is Mrs. Ramsay's the point of view.

After the speech with her husband she feels herself sad and exhaustion, because she knows her husband has some problem and she leads him (text references: “Mrs Ramsay seemed to fold herself together”; “fell in exhaustion upon itself”; “the rapture of successful creation”). Besides she is tired by heir relation ship, because he takes her all the energy (text references: “so that she had only strength enough to move her finger”; “in exquisite abandonment to exhaustion”; “while there throbbed through her, like the pulse in a spring”).

Subsequently she has anxiety (text references: “to give to each that solace which two different notes, one high, one low, struck together”; “Mrs Ramsay felt and only exhausted in body”). Mrs Ramsay is anxious because she is more intelligent, she has more control and she knows more than her husband. But she does not want to feel him inferior than her (text references: “to feel finer than her husband”; “could not bear not being entirely sure, when she spoke to him, of the truth of what she said”). She is worried about people could say about it too (text references: “for then people said he depended on her”).

Besides she is afraid to say the truth: Mrs Ramsay has written a book and people could not read it, therefore he is insecure and she is not happy and the relation ship is ruined (text references: “not being able to tell him the truth being afraid for instance”; “all this diminished the entire joy”).

Finally Mrs Ramsey represents positive aspects of life and the point of reference of the fiction. So she represents the symbol of the lighthouse. Besides Mr Ramsey wants to be the best, but he can have Mrs Ramsey’s fecundity and energy, therefore he stresses her wife and absorbs her energies.