ENG328Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Elizabeth Bennet, To The Lighthouse, Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder
To The Lighthouse
This is the proper stuff of fiction according to Woolf
Hinges on a series of opposition
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Masculine and feminine
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Mr. Ramsay believes in fact, philosophy, etc.
Way of logic, truth, courage, reason, order, justice
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Images associated with him are of phallic frigidity
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Always associated with the structure of the lighthouse
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Romantic side to him as well
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Powerful rhetoric, but entirely dependent on external validation
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Mrs. Ramsay representative of sympathy, empathy, "suffering, death and the
poor"
Images associated with her are those of softness and light
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Autonomous though she never values it
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Doesn’t see herself as self-sufficient
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Sponge sopped through with the emotions of other people
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Enigmatic sadness that lingers around her
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Section 2
End up getting into the thoughts of Mr. Banks
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We hear what people think about things
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Authorial voice is speculator
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What is reported has a doubtful ring about them
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Focus on time passing
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Discourse time overwhelms story time
Weird authorial voice
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Doesn’t seem to have any authority with the characters of which it
speaks
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Solipsistic view of the characters
Defined simply by their consciousness'
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Author seems to be someone who hesitates
As if the characters are people she does not know
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We're not just given the consciousness of one person, but of many
Our approach to reality comes from various impressions of various
people
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Lots of focalisers
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Exterior time vs. interior time
Objective time - linear following of one thing after another
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Real/felt narration is the intensity of an experience and consciousness
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Multi-representational consciousness
Shifting of narrative viewpoint
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Time is stratified
Intensive manifold rather than extensive manifold
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Disintegration of the continuity of events•
Novel of resolution vs. novel of revelation
Resolution = e.g. pride and prejudice - matters who Elizabeth Bennet
marries
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Revelation = plot doesn’t matter at all
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9-10 hours occupy 90% of the book and 10 years take 10% of the book
The events in the start are a lot more significant
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Deaths are poignant because they are not dramatized•
Mrs. Ramsay pays the price for being the dynamo that holds the family
together
total lack of sensitivity, but she never interrogates the idea of the
patriarchy at all
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Mr. Ramsay is not a complicated character
No open lines of communication between Mr. & Mrs. Ramsay
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Have established a balance that makes it work
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But she is always called upon to provide the energy
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Lily is not as analytical•
Lecture 24
Monday, January 9, 2017
2:11 PM
