Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe

Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe’s relationship is first introduced artistically. Lily has been working on painting a picture of Mrs. Ramsay, who is a hard subject to paint considering how much she is always distracted by her role as mother. The painting always slips Mrs. Ramsay’s mind as being unimportant:

Only Lily Briscoe, she was glad to fin; and that did not matter. But the sight of the girl standing on the edge of the lawn painting reminded her; she was supposed to be keeping her head as much in the same position as possible for Lily’s picture. Lily’s picture! Mrs. Ramsay smiled. With her little Chinese eyes and her puckered-up face, she would never marry; once could not take her painting seriously; she was an independent little creature, and Mrs. Ramsay liked her for it; so, remembering her promise, she bent her head. (21)

Mrs. Ramsay’s descriptive language about Lily is very derogatory, despite the fact that she supposedly likes Lily. Lily is “othered” by the descriptions of he facial features; men will not want to marry someone that looks Chinese. She is described as a “creature,” almost like a pet, a person that Mrs. Ramsay is supposed to humor but not take seriously. Why does Mrs. Ramsay present the reader with such scorn and ambivalence towards a woman she likes? Mrs. Ramsay does, indeed, like Lily and is, more than likely, jealous of her friend’s freedom. Lily does not need to play roles; she is one of the truest characters in this novel. Men do not rely on her for anything, at least not while Mrs. Ramsay is alive, and she is thus afforded the time to paint her silly pictures that no one takes seriously. Mrs. Ramsay secretly yearns for the freedom that Lily has, but refuses to recognize this desire. She would rather make Lily appear less important and frivolous, thus making herself appear better.

Alex Zwerdling claims that Lily is the only woman in the novel who tries to reconcile the domestic world with the public, or career world. At times, she wants to bend to Mrs. Ramsay’s will, but eventually chooses to “work over domesticity in a moment of vocational commitment associated with the solution to the design of the painting she is working on” (191-92). The difficulty of her choice is highlighted by her relationship with Mrs. Ramsay.

Lily Briscoe is a confusing character in and of herself because she has an ambiguous relationship with the family. She struggles with her thoughts, whether she loves Mrs. Ramsay or the children or both: “—but what could one say to her? ‘I’m in love with you?’ No, that was not true. ‘I’m in love with this all,’ waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children” (TtL 23). Lily is alone in the world and it appears that she longs for conventions of life, a home of her own, a family. However, long after Mrs. Ramsay has died, Lily is still haunted by the ghost from her past. She seems to rebel against Mrs. Ramsay’s adherence to marriage:

Mrs. Ramsay has faded and gone, she thought. We can over-ride her wishes, improve away her limited old-fashioned ideas. She recedes further and further from us. Mockingly she seemed to see her there at the end of the corridor of years saying, of all incongruous things, “Marry, marry!” (178)

Ironically, Lily knows that Mrs. Ramsay has not gone nor has she faded. She is the ghost lingering behind while the others finally make their trip to the lighthouse. She is the one who watches as Lily completes her painting. At times the ghost is silent, other times memories float freely through Lily’s mind as she tries to remember the specific shape of images in her painting. Despite Lily’s need to “stand up to Mrs. Ramsay—a tribute to the astonishing power that Mrs. Ramsay had over one,” she recognizes the little miracles of life that Mrs. Ramsay gave to her family.

One of the main questions addressed in Mrs. Dalloway is reiterated in this novel: “What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come” (164). Despite Lily being disappointed that there was no great revelation, she highlights some of the important things Mrs. Ramsay brought to the family:

Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave; Mrs. Ramsay brining them together; Mrs. Ramsay saying, “Life stand still here”; Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent…this was of the nature of a revelation. In the midst of chaos there was shape; this eternal passing and flowing…Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said. “Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!” she repeated. She owed it all to her. (165)

Lily owes Mrs. Ramsay credit for helping her reach this revelation about life. Lily and Mrs. Ramsay seemed to share a love/hate relationship. They didn’t hate each other in the traditional sense of the word. Mrs. Ramsay disliked how Lily was too free-thinking and revolutionary in her ideas. Lily disliked how Mrs. Ramsay constantly conformed to society’s expectations of her. In the end, the two women created a type of balance, a harmony in which they were able to see the significant high points of life through the other’s eyes. Their colorful points of view made life meaningful. They found the beauty, through each other, that other people in their life constantly seek.

By the end of the novel, Lily finally realizes how much Mrs. Ramsay meant to her as she begins to cry. She doesn’t even understand why she is crying: “Was she crying then for Mrs. Ramsay, without being aware of any unhappiness?” (183). Lily cannot have her final vision of life, her final epiphany, without Mrs. Ramsay. No matter how much she cries, she will not bring Mrs. Ramsay back to life:

For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would form into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs. Ramsay would return. “Mrs. Ramsay!” she said aloud, “Mrs. Ramsay!” The tears ran down her face. (183)

Lily can bring Mrs. Ramsay to life, but only if she finishes her painting. Lisa Ruddick explains that Lily’s painting, and her trouble with reconciling Mrs. Ramsay’s death, becomes the final climax of the novel: “She must bring Mrs. Ramsay back to the realm of the living, draw the distant, visionary picture she has of her into the near world of fact” (49). In fact, Thomas A. Vogler, in the introduction of Twentieth Century Interpretations of To the Lighthouse, explains how Lily’s “painting echoes Mrs. Ramsay’s sense of ‘being oneself’…the goal is to achieve a sense of felt form in which the means—the particular formal elements—are arbitrary because the inner essence captured by the form is invisible” (31). Though Mrs. Ramsay’s person will never grace Lily’s presence again, her spirit, her ghost, will continue to haunt Lily for the rest of her waking days, both through memories and through the new life Lily gave her within the canvas of her painting.

Works Cited

Ruddick, Lisa. The Seen and the Unseen: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1977.

Vogler, Thomas A. Twentieth Century Interpretations of To the Lighthouse. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Orlando: Harcourt, 2005.

Zwerdling, Alex. Virginia Woolf and the Real World. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1986.