Worksheet
Colin Gregg’s ‘To the Lighthouse’
Based on
Virginia
Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’
Worksheet
Colin Gregg’s ‘To the Lighthouse’
Based on
Virginia
Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’
Welcome Readers,
Englishness in character but stays mentally outside of
English culture, born in the Victorian environment but has a modernist dilemma-
Virginia Woolf- associated with the Bloomsbury group of modern literature has
authored 'To the Lighthouse' one of the finest work of modernist literature in
the stream of consciousness technique.
This kind of narrative technique takes time
and a lot of effort in reading but when one gets absorbed in this kind of
reading then to detach becomes very much difficult.
Now that various researches are done in the areas related
to Literature on screen, the process of adaptations of literary work as well
the imagination of the director plays a very vital role in providing a novel and
contemporary perspective to the art. The poetic imagination, as well as
artistic freedom which the filmmakers enjoy providing novelty, can enhance the
imaginative capability of the readers. Along with the translation as an
adaption from book to the cinema, the narrative design plays a very vital role
in conveying the plot artistically to the audience. The improvisation of the
novel in adaptation becomes an important part to be observed.
Deborah Cartmell introduces the hybrid subject of adaptation-
“Literature on screen was too literary for film studies
and too film-based for Literary Studies, and has tended to occupy an uneasy
place between the two, perhaps tending towards departments of literature in the
main. but until the last decade there have been few attempts to evaluate the
process of adaptation itself and even then, only some of these investigations
attempt to theorize the textual transactions that occur in the process –
whether in the mind of the adaptor, the critic, or the reader/viewer”. (Cartmell
and Whelehan)
Linda Hutcheon defines adaption as -
“an extended, deliberate, announced revisitation of a
particular work of art”
(Hutcheon and O’Flynn)
Modernist novelists like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf can be assumed to have absorbed some of the narrative practices of film, in their writing career, in relation to depicting shifts in time and place.
Virginia Woolf's
prominent novel 'To the Lighthouse' published in 1926 contains a striking
quality which engages with the intricacies of ‘‘life’’ in very cinematic
ways. The film adaptation of the novel seems to catch the daily perplexities
and different perspectives as well as the main aspect - the stream of
consciousness narrative artfully. Additionally, the director's imagination to
add subtle and correlated esteems along with colliding thoughts of
characters.
This blog post reflects the frame reading of Colin
Gregg’s ‘To the Lighthouse' 1983 based on Virginia Woolf’s novel ‘To the
Lighthouse’ published in 1927. Click here to watch
the film directed by Colin Gregg.
While reading the novel 'To the
Lighthouse' one can feel that the narrative moves faster than the
characters.
The film's cast is mentioned below-
As a perfect adaptation, the film 'To the Lighthouse' does not completely follow the proper narrative structure as described in the novel but it, to some extent, but the director maintains some part as it is with artistic freedom.
The Window
"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll
have to be up with the lark," she added.
(Woolf)
“All she could do now was to admire the refrigerator, and turn the pages of the Stores list in the hope that she might come upon something like a rake, or a mowing-machine, which, with its prongs and its handles, would need the greatest skill and care in cutting out”
(Woolf)
Then comes the dinner table scene, an important aspect in the film, the novel has only one dinner planned by Mrs Ramsay for her guests but her party.
Part 1 'The Window' the longest part of the novel and is captured with some
modifications in the film. The expedition to the lighthouse moves the plot.
This frame reveals the oedipal nature of the relation between a mother and
her son, later in this blog, some scenes will be interpreted considering this
nature. James attachment towards his mother and his frustration, hatred and
grudges towards his father is reflected in the film.
"Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it."
(Woolf)
"...because distant views seem to outlast by a million years (Lily thought) the gazer and to be communing already with a sky which beholds an earth entirely at rest."
(Woolf)
"Such a harsh judge on your own talents"
Time Passes
- Summer House
- Mrs. Ramsay passes away
- Marriage
- War
- Death of Prue due to childbirth
To the Lighthouse
“There it was--her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.”
- Cartmell, Deborah and Imelda Whelehan. The Cambridge companion to Literature on Screen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Document. 11 October 2020.
- Hutcheon, Linda and Siobhan O’Flynn. A Theory of Adaptation. Oxon: Routledge, 2013. Document. 11 October 2020.
- Limanta, Liem Satya. The Presentation of Gender roles in and outside the fiction. Surabaya, 2005. Document. 11 October 2020.
- To the Lighthouse. By Hugh Stoddart. Dir. Colin Gregg. Perf. Rosemary Harris, et al. Prod. Alan Shallcross. 1983. CD. 11 October 2020.
- Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. New York, Columbia University Press, 1998. Pdf. 11 October 2020.
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