DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISHM.K.B.U.

Name: Dave NimeshM.A.

Sem:3Year 2015-16

Paper: 9- The Modernist LiteratureTopic:- Fluidity Versus Muscularity

and Lily's dilemma in To The Lighthouse

• Muscular• Having strong• Strong, robust• well developed

MuscularityFluidity

• Fluid:-• Any substance which can

flow with ease• To assume the shape of its

container• in a state of flux• subject to change• moving smoothly

Mrs.Ramsay's daughters are presented asInfidel & Manliness in girlish hearts"There is tension is signaled in girls- pressure to

conform to Mother

Nancy & Rose - non existent in novelPrue-dies from complete obedience to mother's

wishes

To The Lighthouse

Lily's Dilemma

• No biological link with family• Lily - Orphan• Functions as an adopted but marginalised daughter• in part 1, when Lily was painting, Mrs. Ramsay

thinks that "one could not take her painting seriously"

Woolf's biography

• Similarly Julia & Leslie Stephan thought about Virginia.

• She said to be incalculable & eccentric• Fight against patriarchy• Angel in the house

Gender oriented criticism by Melaine Klein & Julia Kristeva

• Lily has long been regarded as secondary character

• Lily statastically more present than Mrs.Ramsay

• 37% Lily • 21% Mrs.Ramsay calculated by Mitchell

Leaska

Lily's triumph & modest Hubris• Confident about her own ability.• Telling Mrs.Ramsay that marriage had not been a

success. the wages of obedience is death, and the daughters that reproduces to mothering to perfection, including child bearing, already on her cheek the pallor of death.And even beauty is not everything.

Lily's Dilemma

• "Mrs.Ramsay! Mrs.Ramsay! She cried, feeling the old horror come back- to want and want and not to have.

• Inspite of Lily's progress on her way to liberation, the negative mother image is making a forceful return.

Deification of Mrs.Ramsay

Mrs.Ramsay as "an august shape", "The shape of dome"

Metaphor of beehive- suggest the image of archaic great mother- a figure which has often worshipped in mountain shrines or represented as a queen bee.

But the archaic great mother, presiding over life and death, was always characterized by her double nature.

Bee is symbol of the feminine potency of nature.

Woolf's Biograpgy

Radical ambivalence, echoing that of the primordial feminine figure is found in Woolf about her mother.

In 1934 diary she described her mother as "hard....a very selfish woman-(who) hated motherless girls."

Dinner Party

Mrs. Ramsay betrays similar ambivalence at dinner party.

male characters in the novel enjoy their food in an unproblematic, pleasurable way

female characters share Lily’s lack of enthusiasm for food.

the daughters are shown looking up from their plates

the most important thing being the severity of the mother.

• Mrs. Ramsay keeps watch on fruit dish & refuses peer. Lily is glimpsed at looking at her empty cup- the urgency is to evade the pressure of Mr.Ramsay.

• Cam can't finish her sandwich.• even milk drinking carries negative connotation

in book.

Criticism

• Luce Iragaray, attacks mother for being however unwillingly, in the patriarchal system of oppression.

• Margaret Whitford says " The food and protection which mother offers bring not the longed for nurturance, but a poisoned and imprisoning embrace.

Last scene of completing painting

• At last, the empty space on the canvas has been filled by a figure which no longer generates anxiety, but appears full of "goodness".

• Lily views this as a 'miracle'-an ecstacy, now instead of the burst of triumph that marred the previous experiences

• she can feel what Klein calls " gratitude".

conclusion

• To achieve equilibrium between fluid and the muscular is the solution.