Lily Briscoe in ‘To the Lighthouse’

‘To the lighthouse’ is an excursion that reconnoitered the human consciousness. Written by Virginia Wolf in 1927 revolves around childhood emotions and muddled adult relationships. There are innumerable ways to embark on Woolf’s autobiographical fictional work but the cynosure of this blog is the subdued tone of feminism that permeates gradually through the story.

In a novel that exudes observations rather than action, Lily Briscoe is an ardent artist and idealized feminist. To protect her sense of individuality, she secedes from the male supremacy that has dominated the conventional stereotypes. Her rejection of the bourgeois femininity is contrary to the beliefs of Mrs. Ramasay, who confounds Lily with the prospects of marriage and family. 

In To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Lily’s predilection of artistic achievement makes it difficult for her to keep up with the bounded and confined expectations of society. Yet she is not confident to showcase her paintings to the censorious public. Her lack of confidence can also be linked with stereotypes and impediments that says women can neither paint nor write. Considering that she is adamant to break all stereotypes, she experiences a pervasive sense of guilt while painting Mrs. Ramasay’s portrait as if she is perpetrating an atrocious crime.

“And that was what now she often felt the need of to think; well not even to think, to be silent, and to be alone. All the being and doing , expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself a wedge shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.”

Lily has a fear that her art work will be ‘hung in attics or tossed absentmindedly under a couch’ and with these self-doubts, she starts her painting in the beginning of the novel. The portrayal of Mrs Ramasay on the canvas in To the Lighthouse by Virgina Wolf, somehow represents the enigma of Lily’s life. From a woman who cannot make sense of the shapes and colors to an artist who achieves her vision and more importantly, overcomes the anxieties that have kept her away from it, the novel projects her transformation beautifully.

Entangled between aberrant and peculiar mindset of the male domineering society, Lily is bivouacked with consequences of her decision to be an artist. At a moment when Lily fears she is ruined by the abiding laws of a society unwilling to accept her unconventional lifestyle, she finds solace in art. 

‘She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she says it clear for a second, she drew a line over there, in the center. It was done, it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision’

Her finished painting, at the end of the novel To the Lighthouse by Virginia Wolf establishes her role as an ideal protagonist, who breaks the conventional norms and stereotypes which is portrayed when she experiences the ‘vision’ after completing her painting of Mrs. Ramasay.