A Wedge-Shaped Core

"Let it come, she thought, if it will come. For there are moments
when one can neither think nor feel" (193).

Points for Reflection

"The Searchlight" (c.1930-41; 1944), pp. 269-72

1. What do you make of this enigmatic short story?  What possible meaning can you wrest from Mrs. Ivimey’s mysterious narrative about her great-grandfather’s past?
2. Mrs. Ivimey notes that her great-grandfather was “queer,” “That was only natural – seeing how they lived” (269).  Are we to understand that her great-grandfather did not defy social norms in the same way that the “old man” (his father?) had?
3. Can we answer the question posed by Mrs. Ivimey’s acquaintances about what happened to the “other man” seen through the telescope, the one who came round the corner and kissed the woman who would become the wife of Mrs. Ivimey’s great grandfather?
4. In the prose poem “St. Sebastian” (1927), surrealist painter and writer Salvador Dalí tries to adopt an analytical, scientific detachment as he stares into the night sky, noting as he considers the mind-boggling expanse of stars that “[o]nly with such a mode of objectivity is it possible to go on observing with calm a stellar system.”  Do our characters experience calm, unease, or something else as they stare into the night sky?
5. Why might Mrs. Ivimey describe the telescope’s movement in such halting terms, indicated by plentiful ellipses?

"The Lighthouse"

1. Is Mr. Ramsay truly a tyrant?
2. In what way does Lily’s memory of Mrs. Ramsay function as a piece of art (160-61)?
3. Why does Lily move from her easel to the edge of the lawn where she can watch Mr. Ramsay’s boat departing (161-62)?
4. Does Mr. Ramsay’s desire to make Cam smile signal his tyranny, or his kindness (167)?
5. Is the division of feeling experienced by Cam (169) gendered female by Woolf?
6. Exactly what does Lily believe she has escaped “by the skin of her teeth” (176)?
7. How much of what Lily imagines about Paul and Minta Rayley is imaginative conjecture, and how much is grounded in things she knows to be true (172-74)?
8. Why did Lily and William Bankes never marry?
9. What drawback does female beauty carry with it, according to Lily?
10. Is James correct in his recollection that his mother "alone spoke the truth" (187)? What does he mean by this claim?
11. What qualities of her father does Cam appreciate, and does her own point of view concerning her father differ from those of Lily and Mrs. Ramsay?
12. Lily considers a number of reasons why Mr. Carmichael, the poet, might never have liked Mrs. Ramsay (195, 196). Which of her conjectures seems most valid?
13. Does "The Lighthouse" provide an explanation for why Mrs. Ramsay died?
14. What does Lily begin to realize about her old antipathy towards Charles Tansley (197)?
15. What image does James attempt to create “to cool and detach and round off his feeling in a concrete shape” (185)?
16. Which of Mr. Ramsay’s philosophical ideas have been internalized by Cam?  By James?
17. What does the lighthouse now represent for James (203), and has its value changed since James's youth?
18. Generate a cogent explanation of Lily's artistic theory and practice which incorporates her reflections on interpersonal connection and communication.
19. Is the Cam of "The Lighthouse" the same character we saw in "The Window”?
20. Is Lily’s memory complete and impervious to the ravages of time?
21. Do Lily’s memory and imagination construct a solid bridge to the past and to the dead? Do these facilities aid or destabilize her connection to the deceased Mrs. Ramsay? To others?
22. Does Lily's ability to hold opposing features of a person in tension without categorizing that person set her apart from the other characters (24-25)? Is her mode distinctly artistic--do the other artistic characters share a similar perspective? Or, is her mode distinctly that of a female artist?
23. What are the central crises Lily faces at the opening of "The Lighthouse" (145, 146) and throughout this section of the book? Are they ultimately resolved?
24. What generates Lily's feeling of sympathy for Mr. Ramsay, and why does she not express it to him before he leaves for the lighthouse?  What does her ultimate, absent-present expression of sympathy allow her to accomplish?
25. Earlier, Mrs. Ramsay thought of herself (or the narrator did) as a "wedge-shaped core of darkness (62). Is this how Lily ultimately chooses to represent Mrs. Ramsay in her painting?
26. Does Lily capture what William Bankes’ considers the “something incongruous,” the “quivering thing, the living thing” (29) in her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay?
27. Recall Woolf's call in A Room of One’s Own for the impersonal, "incandescent" mind that avoids betraying the author's own "grudges and spites and antipathies" (56). Is the mind behind To the Lighthouse more incandescent than the mind behind Mrs. Dalloway?

Longships Lighthouse, Lands End" 1834-35)
J. M. W. Turner

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu