Woolf Seminar:
To the Lighthouse tips
All references are to the Harcourt Brace Harvest Books edition
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The Charge of the Light Brigade |
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To the Lighthouse was first published in 1927.
The Fisherman and His WifeMrs. Ramsay reads this fairy tale (Grimm) to her son James. You can read an illustrated online adaptation of this fairy tale by Patrick Misterovich at http://www.ipl.org/youth/StoryHour/Fisherman/fishstory/fish1.html
You may wish to consider parallels between this story and the novel. Who in the book reminds you of the fisherman's wife? Of the fisherman? In what ways?
Mr and Mrs Ramsay
their eight children: Andrew, Nancy, Prue, Cam, Jasper, James, Roger, Rose
Mr. Charles Tansley
Lily Briscoe
William Bankes
Miss Minta Doyle
Mr. Paul Rayley
Mr. Augustus Carmichael
Links to Quotes and Study Questions, Other Websites
Be sure to visit Prof. Rose Norman's website to see some quotes and study questions:
http://www.uah.edu/woolf/lighthousequotes.htmlDr. Kenneth Tighe on "Art and Atheism in To the Lighthouse"
Brian Milch's website on To the Lighthouse (built from materials he created at Stanford)
Cathy Decker's list of characters and study questions
Alfred, Lord Tennyson ("The Charge of the Light Brigade")
Balzac
Thomas Carlyle (see Jacob's Room tips also)
George Eliot
Sir Walter Scott
Voltaire
Madame de Stael
Napoleon
Lord Rosebery
Creevey
Jane Austen
Tolstoy
time art, aesthetics, representation childhood egoism marriage sexual difference romanticism death
the private and the public domestic labor and intellectual labor homoerotic desire narrative point of view
The Charge of the Light Brigade
This is the poem Mr Ramsay is quoting ("Someone had blundered") and muttering about in "The Window" section. The poem refers to a deadly charge during the Crimean War (1854) wherein all of the men (600) were essentially sacrificed due to poor military planning and miscommunication. Read the poem at http://dept.english.upenn.edu/~dwadswor/sci_charge.html
Tennyson writes that we must honor these "noble" men who did not question the orders that sent them to their deaths.Do you think that in reading the novel we tend to agree with this sentiment?
If you think back through Mrs Dalloway and Jacob's Room and Woolf's various references to the Great War thus far, do your reactions to this poem take on more clarity?
What do you think about Mr Ramsay's preoccupation with the "blunder" someone made that led to the deaths of 600 young men? Do you find connections or contradictions between this preoccupation of his and his preoccupation with other things in the novel? How does his fascination with the poem give us any insights into his character? How does the Crimean War reference suggest implications about British patriotism, empire and imperialism, or make you think of Peter Walsh in Mrs Dalloway?
