To The Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf

things to himself, and waiting impatiently for a breeze. And they

  hoped it would be calm. They hoped he would be thwarted. They hoped

  the whole expedition would fail, and they would have to put back, with

  their parcels, to the beach.

  But now, when Macalister's boy had rowed a little way out, the sails

  slowly swung round, the boat quickened itself, flattened itself, and

  shot off. Instantly, as if some great strain had been relieved, Mr

  Ramsay uncurled his legs, took out his tobacco pouch, handed it with a

  little grunt to Macalister, and felt, they knew, for all they suffered,

  perfectly content. Now they would sail on for hours like this, and Mr

  Ramsay would ask old Macalister a question--about the great storm

  last winter probably--and old Macalister would answer it, and they

  would puff their pipes together, and Macalister would take a tarry rope

  in his fingers, tying or untying some knot, and the boy would fish, and

  never say a word to any one. James would be forced to keep his eye all

  the time on the sail. For if he forgot, then the sail puckered and

  shivered, and the boat slackened, and Mr Ramsay would say sharply,

  "Look out! Look out!" and old Macalister would turn slowly on his

  seat. So they heard Mr Ramsay asking some question about the great

  storm at Christmas. "She comes driving round the point," old

  Macalister said, describing the great storm last Christmas, when ten

  ships had been driven into the bay for shelter, and he had seen "one

  there, one there, one there" (he pointed slowly round the bay. Mr

  Ramsay followed him, turning his head). He had seen four men clinging

  to the mast. Then she was gone. "And at last we shoved her off," he

  went on (but in their anger and their silence they only caught a word

  here and there, compact to fight tyranny to the death). At last they

  had shoved her off, they had launched the lifeboat, and they had got

  her out past the point--Macalister told the story; and though they only

  caught a word here and there, they were conscious all the time of their

  father--how he leant forward, how he brought his voice into tune with

  Macalister's voice; how, puffing at his pipe, and looking there and

  there where Macalister pointed, he relished the thought of the storm

  and the dark night and the fishermen striving there. He liked that men

  should labour and sweat on the windy beach at night; pitting muscle and

  brain against the waves and the wind; he liked men to work like that,

  and women to keep house, and sit beside sleeping children indoors,

  while men were drowned, out there in a storm. So James could tell, so

  Cam could tell (they looked at him, they looked at each other), from

  his toss and his vigilance and the ring in his voice, and the little

  tinge of Scottish accent which came into his voice, making him seem

  like a peasant himself, as he questioned Macalister about the eleven

  ships that had been driven into the bay in a storm. Three had sunk.

  He looked proudly where Macalister pointed; and Cam thought, feeling

  proud of him without knowing quite why, had he been there he would have

  launched the lifeboat, he would have reached the wreck, Cam thought.

  He was so brave, he was so adventurous, Cam thought. But she

  remembered. There was the conpact; to resist tyranny to the death.

  Their grievance weighed them down. They had been forced; they had been

  bidden. He had borne them down once more with his gloom and his

  authority, making them do his bidding, on this fine morning, come,

  because he wished it, carrying these parcels, to the Lighthouse; take

  part in these rites he went through for his own pleasure in memory of

  after him, all the pleasure of the day was spoilt.

  Yes, the breeze was freshening. The boat was leaning, the water was

  sliced sharply and fell away in green cascades, in bubbles, in

  cataracts. Cam looked down into the foam, into the sea with all its

  treasure in it, and its speed hypnotised her, and the tie between her

  and James sagged a little. It slackened a little. She began to think,

  How fast it goes. Where are we going? and the movement hypnotised her,

  while James, with his eye fixed on the sail and on the horizon, steered

  grimly. But he began to think as he steered that he might escape; he

  might be quit of it all. They might land somewhere; and be free then.

  Both of them, looking at each other for a moment, had a sense of escape

  and exaltation, what with the speed and the change. But the breeze

  bred in Mr Ramsay too the same excitement, and, as old Macalister

  turned to fling his line overboard, he cried out aloud,

  "We perished," and then again, "each alone." And then with his usual

  spasm of repentance or shyness, pulled himself up, and waved his hand

  towards the shore.

  "See the little house," he said pointing, wishing Cam to look. She

  raised herself reluctantly and looked. But which was it? She could no

  longer make out, there on the hillside, which was their house. All

  looked distant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far

  away, unreal. Already the little distance they had sailed had put them

  far from it and given it the changed look, the composed look, of

  something receding in which one has no longer any part. Which was

  their house? She could not see it.

  "But I beneath a rougher sea," Mr Ramsay murmured. He had found the

  house and so seeing it, he had also seen himself there; he had seen

  himself walking on the terrace, alone. He was walking up and down

  between the urns; and he seemed to himself very old and bowed. Sitting

  in the boat, he bowed, he crouched himself, acting instantly his part--

  the part of a desolate man, widowed, bereft; and so called up before

  him in hosts people sympathising with him; staged for himself as he sat

  in the boat, a little drama; which required of him decrepitude and

  exhaustion and sorrow (he raised his hands and looked at the thinness

  of them, to confirm his dream) and then there was given him in

  abundance women's sympathy, and he imagined how they would soothe him

  and sympathise with him, and so getting in his dream some reflection of

  the exquisite pleasure women's sympathy was to him, he sighed and said

  gently and mournfully,

  But I beneath a rougher sea

  Was whelmed in deeper gulfs than he,

  so that the mournful words were heard quite clearly by them all. Cam

  half started on her seat. It shocked her--it outraged her. The

  movement roused her father; and he shuddered, and broke off,

  exclaiming: "Look! Look!" so urgently that James also turned his head

  to look over his shoulder at the island. They all looked. They looked

  at the island.

  But Cam could see nothing. She was thinking how all those paths and

  the lawn, thick and knotted with the lives they had lived there, were

  gone: were rubbed out; were past; were unreal, and now this was real;

  the boat and the sail with its patch; Macalister with his earrings; the

  noise of the waves--all this was real. Thinking this, she was

  murmuring to herself, "We perished, each alone," for her father's words

  broke and broke again in her m
ind, when her father, seeing her gazing

  so vaguely, began to tease her. Didn't she know the points of the

  compass? he asked. Didn't she know the North from the South? Did she

  really think they lived right out there? And he pointed again, and

  showed her where their house was, there, by those trees. He wished she

  would try to be more accurate, he said: "Tell me--which is East, which

  is West?" he said, half laughing at her, half scolding her, for he

  could not understand the state of mind of any one, not absolutely

  imbecile, who did not know the points of the compass. Yet she did not

  know. And seeing her gazing, with her vague, now rather frightened,

  eyes fixed where no house was Mr Ramsay forgot his dream; how he walked

  up and down between the urns on the terrace; how the arms were

  stretched out to him. He thought, women are always like that; the

  vagueness of their minds is hopeless; it was a thing he had never been

  able to understand; but so it was. It had been so with her--his wife.

  They could not keep anything clearly fixed in their minds. But he had

  been wrong to be angry with her; moreover, did he not rather like this

  vagueness in women? It was part of their extraordinary charm. I will

  make her smile at me, he thought. She looks frightened. She was so

  silent. He clutched his fingers, and determined that his voice and his

  face and all the quick expressive gestures which had been at his

  command making people pity him and praise him all these years should

  subdue themselves. He would make her smile at him. He would find some

  simple easy thing to say to her. But what? For, wrapped up in his

  work as he was, he forgot the sort of thing one said. There was a

  puppy. They had a puppy. Who was looking after the puppy today? he

  asked. Yes, thought James pitilessly, seeing his sister's head against

  the sail, now she will give way. I shall be left to fight the tyrant

  alone. The compact would be left to him to carry out. Cam would never

  resist tyranny to the death, he thought grimly, watching her face, sad,

  sulky, yielding. And as sometimes happens when a cloud falls on a

  green hillside and hills is gloom and sorrow, and it seems as if the

  hills themselves must ponder the fate of the clouded, the darkened,

  either in pity, or maliciously rejoicing in her dismay: so Cam now felt

  herself overcast, as she sat there among calm, resolute people and

  wondered how to answer her father about the puppy; how to resist his

  entreaty--forgive me, care for me; while James the lawgiver, with the

  tablets of eternal wisdom laid open on his knee (his hand on the tiller

  had become symbolical to her), said, Resist him. Fight him. He said

  so rightly; justly. For they must fight tyranny to the death, she

  thought. Of all human qualities she reverenced justice most. Her

  brother was most god-like, her father most suppliant. And to which did

  she yield, she thought, sitting between them, gazing at the shore whose

  points were all unknown to her, and thinking how the lawn and the

  terrace and the house were smoothed away now and peace dwelt there.

  "Jasper," she said sullenly. He'd look after the puppy.

  And what was she going to call him? her father persisted. He had had

  a dog when he was a little boy, called Frisk. She'll give way, James

  thought, as he watched a look come upon her face, a look he remembered.

  They look down he thought, at their knitting or something. Then

  suddenly they look up. There was a flash of blue, he remembered, and

  then somebody sitting with him laughed, surrendered, and he was very

  angry. It must have been his mother, he thought, sitting on a low

  chair, with his father standing over her. He began to search among the

  infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon

  leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents,

  sounds; voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms

  tapping; and the wash and hush of the sea, how a man had marched up and

  down and stopped dead, upright, over them. Meanwhile, he noticed, Cam

  dabbled her fingers in the water, and stared at the shore and said

  nothing. No, she won't give way, he thought; she's different, he

  thought. Well, if Cam would not answer him, he would not bother her Mr

  Ramsay decided, feeling in his pocket for a book. But she would answer

  him; she wished, passionately, to move some obstacle that lay upon her

  tongue and to say, Oh, yes, Frisk. I'll call him Frisk. She wanted

  even to say, Was that the dog that found its way over the moor alone?

  But try as she might, she could think of nothing to say like that,

  fierce and loyal to the compact, yet passing on to her father,

  unsuspected by James, a private token of the love she felt for him.

  For she thought, dabbling her hand (and now Macalister's boy had caught

  a mackerel, and it lay kicking on the floor, with blood on its gills)

  for she thought, looking at James who kept his eyes dispassionately on

  the sail, or glanced now and then for a second at the horizon, you're

  not exposed to it, to this pressure and division of feeling, this

  extraordinary temptation. Her father was feeling in his pockets; in

  another second, he would have found his book. For no one attracted her

  more; his hands were beautiful, and his feet, and his voice, and his

  words, and his haste, and his temper, and his oddity, and his passion,

  and his saying straight out before every one, we perish, each alone,

  and his remoteness. (He had opened his book.) But what remained

  intolerable, she thought, sitting upright, and watching Macalister's

  boy tug the hook out of the gills of another fish, was that crass

  blindness and tyranny of his which had poisoned her childhood and

  raised bitter storms, so that even now she woke in the night trembling

  with rage and remembered some command of his; some insolence: "Do

  this," "Do that," his dominance: his "Submit to me."

  So she said nothing, but looked doggedly and sadly at the shore,

  wrapped in its mantle of peace; as if the people there had fallen

  asleep, she thought; were free like smoke, were free to come and go

  like ghosts. They have no suffering there, she thought.

  5

  Yes, that is their boat, Lily Briscoe decided, standing on the edge of

  the lawn. It was the boat with greyish-brown sails, which she saw now

  flatten itself upon the water and shoot off across the bay. There he

  sits, she thought, and the children are quite silent still. And she

  could not reach him either. The sympathy she had not given him weighed

  her down. It made it difficult for her to paint.

  She had always found him difficult. She never had been able to praise

  him to his face, she remembered. And that reduced their relationship to

  something neutral, without that element of sex in it which made his

  manner to Minta so gallant, almost gay. He would pick a flower for

  her, lend her his books. But could he believe that Minta read them?

  She dragged them about the garden, sticking in leaves to mark the

  place.

  "D'you remember, Mr Carmichael?" she was inclined to ask, looking at

  the old man. But h
e had pulled his hat half over his forehead; he was

  asleep, or he was dreaming, or he was lying there catching words, she

  supposed.

  "D'you remember?" she felt inclined to ask him as she passed him,

  thinking again of Mrs Ramsay on the beach; the cask bobbing up and

  down; and the pages flying. Why, after all these years had that

  survived, ringed round, lit up, visible to the last detail, with all

  before it blank and all after it blank, for miles and miles?

  "Is it a boat? Is it a cork?" she would say, Lily repeated, turning

  back, reluctantly again, to her canvas. Heaven be praised for it, the

  problem of space remained, she thought, taking up her brush again. It

  glared at her. The whole mass of the picture was poised upon that

  weight. Beautiful and bright it should be on the surface, feathery and

  evanescent, one colour melting into another like the colours on a

  butterfly's wing; but beneath the fabric must be clamped together with

  bolts of iron. It was to be a thing you could ruffle with your breath;

  and a thing you could not dislodge with a team of horses. And she began

  to lay on a red, a grey, and she began to model her way into the hollow

  there. At the same time, she seemed to be sitting beside Mrs Ramsay on

  the beach.

  "Is it a boat? Is it a cask?" Mrs Ramsay said. And she began hunting

  round for her spectacles. And she sat, having found them, silent,

  looking out to sea. And Lily, painting steadily, felt as if a door had

  opened, and one went in and stood gazing silently about in a high

  cathedral-like place, very dark, very solemn. Shouts came from a world

  far away. Steamers vanished in stalks of smoke on the horizon.

  Charles threw stones and sent them skipping.

  Mrs Ramsay sat silent. She was glad, Lily thought, to rest in silence,

  uncommunicative; to rest in the extreme obscurity of human

  relationships. Who knows what we are, what we feel? Who knows even at

  the moment of intimacy, This is knowledge? Aren't things spoilt then,

  Mrs Ramsay may have asked (it seemed to have happened so often, this

  silence by her side) by saying them? Aren't we more expressive thus?

  The moment at least seemed extraordinarily fertile. She rammed a

  little hole in the sand and covered it up, by way of burying in it the

  perfection of the moment. It was like a drop of silver in which one

  dipped and illumined the darkness of the past.

  Lily stepped back to get her canvas--so--into perspective. It was an

  odd road to be walking, this further, until at last one seemed to be on

  a narrow plank, perfectly alone, over the sea. And as she dipped into

  the blue paint, she dipped too into the past there. Now Mrs Ramsay got

  up, she remembered. It was time to go back to the house--time for

  luncheon. And they all walked up from the beach together, she walking

  behind with William Bankes, and there was Minta in front of them with a

  hole in her stocking. How that little round hole of pink heel seemed

  to flaunt itself before them! How William Bankes deplored it, without,

  so far as she could remember, saying anything about it! It meant to

  him the annihilation of womanhood, and dirt and disorder, and servants

  leaving and beds not made at mid-day--all the things he most abhorred.

  He had a way of shuddering and spreading his fingers out as if to cover

  an unsightly object which he did now--holding his hand in front of

  him. And Minta walked on ahead, and presumably Paul met her and she

  went off with Paul in the garden.

  The Rayleys, thought Lily Briscoe, squeezing her tube of green paint.

  She collected her impressions of the Rayleys. Their lives appeared to

  her in a series of scenes; one, on the staircase at dawn. Paul had

  come in and gone to bed early; Minta was late. There was Minta,

  wreathed, tinted, garish on the stairs about three o'clock in the

  morning. Paul came out in his pyjamas carrying a poker in case of

  burglars. Minta was eating a sandwich, standing half-way up by a