The View from the Window

Virginia Woolf's To the Light House

 

Anyone reading Virginia Woolf for a story will find themselves sorely confused. Virginia Woolf does not write stories. She writes about people. She spills life in lines, spurring characters into action and musings, supplementing them with acute details, letting them exist with a stubbornness that only real things possess. While her character's outer shapes are cast like silhouettes into memory, their thoughts and musings flow from the page into one's mind so smoothly and so easily, it is as if they were one's own.

No one fits life, with all its richness and wondrous ordinariness, into books like Virginia Woolf.

In To the Lighthouse, Woolf fits a handful of lives, not just into a book, but into a day. We meet the cast of the novel on a summer's day on the Isle of Skye where we spend half the novel with them, observing their thoughts, watching the children play, listening in at dinner. We get to know them only to have them disappear. 

 

 

 

The books first section, titled "The Window" provides a window-view, allowing us a glimpse into the character's lives. Woolf knew how to write thoughts, but she also knew how to write time, and here she draws it out like a beam, gloriously, wondrously. That single day feels like the type of day one longs for as soon as it is over. It is full of good company, walks along the beach and other simple time-passes, and, importantly, revelations realized from the wondrously ordinary. It is indeed not a story, for there is little permanence in it and little happens that we have not experienced ourselves, in one way or another. 

From the beginning, one quickly loses the illusion that this is a story, in which one event follows another. Rather, the book feels from the outset like a memory, and if it is a memory, it is a fond one. 

 

Like most fond memories, this one takes place away from home and the everyday-ness of life, during the summer, surrounded by good company.

 

Throughout, it is as if the people inside the story know they are characters inside a book, for every moment of their literary lives is heightened, full of deep discovery. Through the text-lined window from which we see them, the characters exist at the pinnacle of their being, and every moment, once ended, is immediately stowed into the space in which one keeps their fondest memories. Every moment within the first half of To the Lighthouse reminds one of the good old days, which ever those may be; and though they are not ours, we remember our own golden days; days in which, looking back, we feel we were our best selves, were with our favorite people; the days in which we so gloriously happy that we realize too late that we forgot to revel in it. 

 

 

 

  

Throughout the book, it feels as if the characters are aware that they will never exist outside the limit of these 200 pages. Thus, the moments they do have contain all the life inside of them, reminding one of the days in which they felt most alive. Every thought within reads like a sigh, as if the characters whose minds we momentarily share are taking pleasure in this simple instance of their existence. 

This gives them both a permanence and a vulnerability because I, the reader, know that they will be here again. In their time-span this will be the last trip to the Isle of Skye as a completed family. In my life though, I know they will be here again, for if in a few years I reread Woolf's To the Light House I will find them there still, feeling a bit like a memory or a dream. I will find them going for walks, painting on the shore, reading to their children, alive and returned to those sweet days which they long for in the latter half of the book. 

While at times that single day seems to last forever, one still gets a sense that it is slipping through one's fingers. Moments heightened by thought last a while only to drift away in an instant. So, dinner ends and Mrs. Ramsay knows that it is already a memory. Sometimes it is not clear whether something has already happened. Is Mrs. Ramsay thinking about something that happened this morning? Or is it something that has been done so many times that it is a part of the very fabric of her life? Still, this single day wanders back and forth like the tide, and mundane tasks are thought about as if they are already memories.

Indeed, I had not yet ended that near perfect day for the first time when I wrote in the margins of the book that the characters only existed here, in this stretch of a day across half a novel. There is no day that comes after this one, for when it is over ten years pass in an instant, as with a breath extinguishing a candle. I knew before I'd even watched time unleash itself in the "Time Passes" section that if the family did not decide today to go to the lighthouse tomorrow, they would not go at all. If the missing brooch was not found on the beach that evening, it probably never would be. If Mrs. Ramsay did not finishing knitting her son's stocking by the time the day was through, she never would. 

All one ever has is a day before time unfolds like pages full of unwritten story, and a perfect summers day becomes the good old days of a lost past.

 

To the Light House is itself a window, like a house one often passes late in the evening, the people inside are always there, in the soft light behind the glass, inviting the illusion that they never change. I know I will pass this house with its glowing window again, and I know that even as I circle the garden, time will pass above me like a lapse replayed. 

Still, when the longing for the good days nestles inside me like an ache, I will read about the Isle of Skye and the family that used to come there every summer, knowing full well that even books are limited in their capacity to hold things, and so, I will not get to go to the lighthouse, no matter how many times I try. I only get to look upon Mr. Ramsay and his children come upon it from a distance.  

 

Looking for the Manx Cat

A Chase After a Symbolic Cat Which Appeared Briefly in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own

Anyone that’s ever tried to catch a cat knows that they can be tricky creatures. Cats are beings of mischief. They are quick, and they are sly. They disappear into shadows and crannies like into fantastical rabbit holes. Furthermore, anyone who has ever spent an extended amount of time observing a cat might have noticed that they always give one the impression that they know something which no one else does. Perhaps it is the way that they blink at you, slow and steady like, completely self-satisfied in keeping their secrets to themselves. But, whatever may be said about the trickiness of realities cats, the cats which one meets in books are far trickier.

Anyone who’s ever encountered a fictional cat knows that, whatever it is that the cats of this world aren’t telling us, the fictional cat certainly won’t tell us either. Do not get me wrong, many fictional cats will swindle and tease you with their riddles, and I wouldn’t say that the fictional cat is a liar, but I don’t know if I’ve ever met a fictional cat that spoke a bland truth. In fact, I’m quite sure there wasn’t a single one of them that was not a riddler.

You’ve probably met the Cheshire Cat, and if you haven’t, I’m quite sure you’ve heard of him. But, if his reputation has somehow evaded you, I should explain that he is a most remarkable trickster. He knows more than he says, and yet never says what he knows. I could not name another who is quite so remarkable, though that has little to do with me not knowing of any others whose tricks and riddles exceed his and more to do with the fact that most other cats, at least the ones which I have encountered, do not have names.
The cat who appeared in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline certainly comes to mind, for he is the one that first remarked that cats do not need names simply because they have no use for them. He told me that “people have names… because you don’t know who you are. We know who we are, so we don’t need names”. And I must say, I quite agree with him.
The nameless cat in Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn is another trickster whose sole purpose is to confuse you. He, like the trickster from Gaiman’s Coraline, also fashionably neglected to introduce himself to me, saying only “I am what I am”, and “I would tell you what you want to know if I could… But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer”. 

It wasn’t until recently though that I encountered a more peculiar creature still; a creature that one might say is a riddle all on its own. Yes, fictional cats may be tricky, that much I know, but the symbolic cat might just be the trickiest trickster of them all.

The symbolic cat is in itself a peculiar creature, it is, as Virginia Woolf says, “quaint rather than beautiful” (A Room of One’s Own, 17). But what makes the symbolic cat so unusual is that we expect symbols to mean something. Yet I do not expect that I will decipher any meaning in our search for the Manx Cat. As I’ve already said, chasing a cat is tricky business. But chasing a symbolic cat may prove near impossible, for cats in books disappear between pages like cats in the real world disappear into shadows, and the Manx Cat has already managed to swindle us, for though he appeared briefly in the title of this essay, I have quite lost track of him since in my excursion after these other fictional tricksters, so let me get back to the point.

We are going to chase the Manx Cat. I first spotted him on page 15 of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and so, if we are to find him, that is where we should begin. 

If I recall correctly, Virginia Woolf had just set the scene by remarking that “it is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said,” (A Room of One’s Own, 13), which I find rather unusual, because the most curious event of this particular luncheon party was the arrival of the cat, (who did in fact not come to the luncheon party but stayed humbly outside on the lawn), and he didn’t say anything at all.
Woolf then goes on to mention all the things which novelists neglect to mention about the on-goings of luncheon parties, such as the soup and salmon that was eaten and the cigars that were smoked, as if this was of “no importance whatsoever” (A Room, 13). Indeed, the writers who failed to mention these details might not even have mentioned the uninvited guest who showed up outside the window.
Woolf had just remarked, most earnestly I’m sure, that all the members of the present luncheon party were going to heaven and exclaimed how right the world is with all its sweet rewards and trivial grudges and grievances and how admirable the friendship is between society and all of their kind (A Room, 14), when the uninvited guest makes his timely arrival.

Of course, the completely unimportant and previously unmentioned ashtray comes into play here, but had it not been there, had things, as Woolf says, “been a little different” she would never have spotted the tailless cat outside (A Room, 15)

He looks just as he did the last time I saw him here. Like before, he does not seem to notice his not having a tail, neither does he notice us watching him, though he is certainly aware of his having made his way once again into an essay, for there is an air of importance about him as he flicks his non-existent tail. Woolf watches him, and she cannot help but notice, as she did the last time, that “something seemed lacking, something seemed different” (A Room, 15).

In an effort to search for this missing thing, Woolf thinks “herself out of the room” (A Room, 15).  We follow her as she meanders through her thoughts into the past to another luncheon party which happened not so long ago. Though she remarks that at first glance everything about this luncheon party is different, everything is also very much the same (A Room, 15). The talk is the same, the room is the same. I imagine the attendees are eating soup and salmon and that the same ashtray sits idly on the coffee table waiting to be dumped.

Unfortunately, though, no one goes to dump the ash out of the window, and so, no matter how much we strain our necks, we will not be able to glance outside. We will never know whether or not there was a tailless cat outside the window. Though somehow, I have an inkling that the Manx Cat had little business there, for what could a tailless cat possibly want at a luncheon party that is so rich and nostalgic; a luncheon party in which nothing is lacking and men and woman hum love poems to each other. I think, if there was a cat outside this window, it probably had a tail.

I have not been to many luncheon parties and so I cannot be sure just how inappropriate Woolf’s random outburst of laughter was. But I cannot imagine that the other attendees understood the joke when Woolf, in an effort to explain her laughter, points at the Manx Cat outside. I must admit, I am not entirely sure I understand the joke myself.

The Manx Cat leaves soon after, for the luncheon party ends, and as it slips away, without so much as an exit, the only thing which we have left to ponder is how strange it is “what a difference a tail makes” (A Room, 17). Though it is rather puzzling that it should show up here, for Woolf does mention that the tailless cat is “rarer than one thinks” (A Room, 17), and so the odds of us sighting it again are rather low. 

The Manx Cat disappears for a long time after that. He might have appeared briefly on page 56 if only to look disapprovingly at the notion that anyone could lock a cat out of anywhere, even heaven.

I followed Virginia on her wanderings the last time I was here, and as I followed her, I kept my eyes open, watching ever for the Manx Cat. And, as I searched for the Manx Cat, Virginia searched high and low for her missing thing. She went searching in gardens and libraries and museums; she searched through the centuries of time, through natural histories and whimsical ones; she searched through the scope of a looking glass and at the point of her pencil; she peered into secluded rooms and wandered empty streets and graveyards, all in search of a flicker of a shadow; a shadow that looks somehow very much like the queer form of a cat.

Eventually, she does what any intelligent person would do when looking for a lost symbolic thing, like a missing cat that never was and may never be again; she goes to the library and, picking up books that aren’t there, she looks for things that are missing. Leafing through these imaginary books, she turns “page after page…feeling that a crisis was approaching” (A Room, 118).

The crisis comes in the form of two people on a beach, a man and a woman who walk towards each other under the sun. In the fanciful world they may have been named Phoebe and Alan. In a more nostalgic world they may have been two poets named Alfred Lord Tennyson and Christina Rossetti. Whatever their names were, we will never know for certain because neither of them bothers to introduce themselves; in fact, neither of them says a word. But the Manx Cat greets you with the nod of his head, for he too sits there on the beach, and he turns to you grinning, very much the image of the Cheshire Cat. And although he does not speak, there is something in his grin that suggests a remark, a sly whisper perhaps –something like “Hello, I am the Manx Cat.”

But, on second thought, I cannot be too sure that that is what the Manx Cat would have said. For as the two people part ways without so much as a goodbye, and their obstructive shadows form into blockades, the Manx Cat blinks its cunning eye, and I could have sworn I might have heard him whisper something like… “Hello reader, I am something missing. I am something wrong.”

But then again, I cannot be sure, for the waves were crashing and the gulls were calling, and the pages flipped, and then the cat was gone.

As I walked along the beach nearing the end of the essay and heard the traffic roar, as Mary Beton ceased to speak, and the sun on the beach peered into the common sitting room, all I was left with was the shadow of a notion that, if I were to write an essay about women and fiction, I would go to another luncheon party. I would look out of the window, and I would not see so much as the solitary shadow of a cat. But there, out on the lawn where the ashes have blown, a cat’s tail hangs from a tree or a hedge, ragged and battered by the wind. But where the cat went, I wouldn’t know.