India in Virginia Woolf's Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf’s

‘To the Lighthouse’

Reference to Shakespeare-

 [Is he to be blamed then if he is not that one? provided he has toiled honestly, given to the best of his power, and till he has no more left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr Ramsay ironically staring at the hedge). What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare. His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still. (He looked into the hedge, into the intricacy of the twigs.) Who then could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after all has climbed high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing of the stars, if before death stiffens his limbs beyond the power of movement he does a little consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his shoulders, so that when the search party comes they will find him dead at his post, the fine figure of a soldier?] (page - 34)

These lines reflect Mr Ramsey's lamentations. He wished to achieve immortality through his philosophical work. It conveys about glory achieved after death. if the great master was unable to achieve the permanent glory, then how can he who faced failure even think of achieving the permanent value or a big name in philosophy. The stones represent the permanence and the lines with the help of the metaphor questions the glory of Shakespeare. The glory of Shakespeare doesn't have much lasting power than mere stone. 

[Mrs Ramsay could have wished that her husband had not chosen that moment to stop. Why had he not gone as he said to watch the children playing cricket? But he did not speak; he looked; he nodded; he approved; he went on. He slipped, seeing before him that hedge which had over and over again rounded some pause, signified some conclusion, seeing his wife and child, seeing again the urns with the trailing of red geraniums which had so often decorated processes of thought, and bore, written up among their leaves, as if they were scraps of paper on which one scribbles notes in the rush of reading— he slipped, seeing all this, smoothly into speculation suggested by an article in THE TIMES about the number of Americans who visit Shakespeare's house every year. If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now than in the time of the Pharaohs? Is the lot of the average human being, however, he asked himself, the criterion by which we judge the measure of civilization? Possibly not. Possibly the greatest good requires the existence of a slave class. The liftman in the Tube is an eternal necessity. The thought was distasteful to him. He tossed his head. To avoid it, he would find some way of snubbing the predominance of the arts. He would argue that the world exists for the average human being; that the arts are merely a decoration imposed on the top of human life; they do not express it. Nor is Shakespeare necessary to it. Not knowing precisely why it was that he wanted to disparage Shakespeare and come to the rescue of the man who stands eternally in the door of the lift, he picked a leaf sharply from the hedge. All this would have to be dished up for the young men at Cardiff next month, he thought; here, on his terrace, he was merely foraging and picnicking (he threw away the leaf that he had picked so peevishly) like a man who reaches from his horse to pick a bunch of roses, or stuffs his pockets with nuts as he ambles at his ease through the lanes and fields of a country known to him from boyhood.] (page - 42)

This paragraph to some extent reverses the cultural legacy. The most prominent or dramatist wouldn't have existed then would the world have changed a lot then it is today? Is the civilization depending on great men only or is it in a continuous process? Mr Ramsay is very much conscious about his art and does want anything to fade away. 

["Let us enjoy what we do enjoy," he said. His integrity seemed to Mrs Ramsay quite admirable. He never seemed for a moment to think, But how does this affect me? But then if you had the other temperament, which must have praise, which must have encouragement, naturally you began (and she knew that Mr Ramsay was beginning) to be uneasy; to want somebody to say, Oh, but your work will last, Mr Ramsay, or something like that. He showed his uneasiness quite clearly now by saying, with some irritation, that, anyhow, Scott (or was it Shakespeare ?) would last him his lifetime. He said it irritably. Everybody, she thought, felt a little uncomfortable, without knowing why. Then Minta Doyle, whose instinct was fine, said bluffly, absurdly, that she did not believe that any one really enjoyed reading Shakespeare. Mr Ramsay said grimly (but his mind was turned away again) that very few people liked it as much as they said they did.] (page 101)

 This passage seems to reflect Mr.Ramsay's need for someone to appreciate his work of art. His is craving to hear his own appreciation from others about his philosophical work for his own satisfaction or motivation. The reference of Shakespeare suggests literary legacy which people now don't like to refer. 

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Reference to India-

                                Virginia Woolf has in her novel ‘To the Lighthouse’ many times given a reference of India- perhaps during her era, people in England might have explored the country and may have been attracted by the varied beauty of India, here are some of the references which Virginia Woolf demonstrates in her novel. These passages are taken from the original novel and the reader may interpret the lines as her attraction for India because it was assumed that India is philosophically and spiritually rich and prosperously affluent at the same time India was rather an unsophisticated place with regressive aspects. 

 

[Apart from the habit of exaggeration which they had from her, and from the implication (which was true) that she asked too many people to stay, and had to lodge some in the town, she could not bear incivility to her guests, to young men in particular, who were poor as churchmice, "exceptionally able," her husband said, his great admirers, and come there for a holiday. Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude towards herself which no woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential; which an old woman could take from a young man without loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl—pray Heaven it was none of her daughters!—who did not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones!] (page 6)

This is the reference of India as perceived by Mrs. Ramsay. The narrator observes that India was ruled by men-folk.

 

[They must find a way out of it all. There might be some simpler way, some less laborious way, she sighed. When she looked in the glass and saw her hair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought, possibly she might have managed things better— her husband; money; his books. But for her own part she would never for a single second regret her decision, evade difficulties, or slur over duties. She was now formidable to behold, and it was only in silence, looking up from their plates, after she had spoken so severely about Charles Tansley, that her daughters, Prue, Nancy, Rose—could sport with infidel ideas which they had brewed for themselves of a life different from hers; in Paris, perhaps; a wilder life; not always taking care of some man or other; for there was in all their minds a mute questioning of deference and chivalry, of the Bank of England and the Indian Empire, of ringed fingers and lace, though to them all there was something in this of the essence of beauty, which called out the manliness in their girlish hearts, and made them, as they sat at table beneath their mother's eyes, honour her strange severity, her extreme courtesy, like a queen's raising from the mud to wash a beggar's dirty foot, when she admonished them so very severely about that wretched atheist who had chased them—or, speaking accurately, been invited to stay with them—in the Isle of Skye.] (Page- 7)

As Andrew Marvell's 'To his Coy Mistress', 'To the Lighthouse' also brings to light the exoticness of India, a land of adventure and happiness. 

[He should have been a great philosopher, said Mrs Ramsay, as they went down the road to the fishing village, but he had made an unfortunate marriage. Holding her black parasol very erect, and moving with an indescribable air of expectation, as if she were going to meet some one round the corner, she told the story; an affair at Oxford with some girl; an early marriage; poverty; going to India; translating a little poetry "very beautifully, I believe," being willing to teach the boys Persian or Hindustanee, but what really was the use of that?—and then lying, as they saw him, on the lawn.] (page - 10)

This passage describes Augustus Carmichael's visit to India, perhaps during those days, the aristocratic used to take a tour to India to enjoy the beauty, the comfort and this passage celebrate Augustus Carmichael's visit as an achievement. 

[When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another, she, Lily, Augustus Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions,the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were all the places she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no one saw it. They could not stop it, she thought, exulting. There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability.] (page 60)

People of England were fascinated by India, perhaps everyone might have wished to visit India. This passage emphasizes a certain kind of desire. 

[Joseph and Mary were fighting. Anyhow they all went up again, and the air was shoved aside by their black wings and cut into exquisite scimitar shapes. The movements of the wings beating out, out, out—she could never describe it accurately enough to please herself—was one of the loveliest of all to her. Look at that, she said to Rose, hoping that Rose would see it more clearly than she could. For one's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards. But which was it to be? They had all the trays of her jewelcase open. The gold necklace, which was Italian, or the opal necklace, which Uncle James had brought her from India; or should she wear her amethysts?] (page- 78)

As mentioned above India was very prosperous in terms of jewellery and stones, the opal necklace is referred to as an ornament to be taken pride of because it was from India. 

[But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen; they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore.] (Page - 120)

Generally, people are more attracted to the 'far far away things'. they always try to reach there, to be there which according works according to the perceptions. India can be read here as 'the grass is greener on the other side'. 

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Reference to Philosophy-

Virginia Woolf formulates a very interesting way of displaying a woman's insights on philosophy and she displays this through Mr Ramsay's debate on philosophy or philosophical thinkers. Mr Ramsay uses the alphabetical figure to describe two classes of thinkers. 

Mr Ramsay refers to A C Bradley's Metaphysics with reference to the work 'Appearance and Reality' that the object which we witness or perceive is true and also the objects which we cannot encounter or witness or experience may also have some kind of existence. What appears differs from what is witnessed and the perceptions regarding that also differ. But all the things which are beyond physical existence is metaphysics. 

[It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of difficulty in running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q. 

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 But after Q? What comes next? After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R it would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at Q. Q he was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q—R—. Here he knocked his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the handle of the urn, and proceeded. "Then R… " He braced himself. He clenched himself.] (page 32, 33) 

 All P are Q. R is P. Therefore R is Q. 

[his being so irritable with his wife and so touchy and minding when they passed his books over as if they didn't exist at all. But now, he felt, it didn't matter a damn who reached Z (if thought ran like an alphabet from A to Z).] (Page 112)

Mr Ramsay describes that as now he has reached to the high philosophical heights, he is perhaps trying to provide himself with some confidence that -though his work is neglected by major critics it should not matter to him because he has achieved his level of philosophy. 

References- 

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. New York, Columbia University Press, 1998.

India in Virginia Woolf's Lighthouse