Mythical Status In To The Lighthouse
Submitted by verra11 on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: Biographies
- Words: 490
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Mythical Status In To The Lighthouse
In the novel To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, the main character, Mrs. Ramsay, is suggested to be a goddess. This suggestion by Woolf is done in different ways. Woolf implies this Goddess-like status with Mrs. Ramsay's attitude toward herself and other characters, the manner in which the other characters treat her, and how Mrs. Ramsay lives in her children's world.
The most noticeable suggestion is how Mrs. Ramsay treats her guests and also how she views herself. When her children ask her a question about herself she replies, "Not for the Queen of England." This statement shows how Mrs. Ramsay places herself above the rest of the characters and how she views herself as royalty. This is shown again as she descends the stairs to greet her guests. She bows her head to them, as if accepting their tribute. She acts as if she is their queen, smiling and bowing to her subjects. The way Mrs. Ramsay sees herself implies that she thinks of herself as a queen or a goddess.
Virginia Woolf shows Mrs. Ramsay's god-like status by showing how her guests act towards her. This is shown clearly when Mr. Carmichael bows to her at her dinner party. This is because Mr. Carmichael wasn't fond of Mrs. Ramsay at the start of the party. Mrs. Ramsay uses her "magic" by making a wonderful dinner and by the end of the party Mr. Carmichael grows fond of her. When Mrs. Ramsay stands up so does Mr. Carmichael and he bows to her. This is a suggestion of a "lower class" character paying tribute to her. The napkin he holds is symbolic of a long white robe. This makes Mr. Carmichael seem like a priest paying tribute to his goddess.
Another way Woolf hints at Mrs. Ramsay's status as a goddess is how she can live in the imaginative world of her children. One example of this is when Mrs. Ramsay comforts her daughter after the dinner party. Mrs. Ramsay covers the boar's head that was frightening her daughter with her shawl and tells her daughter how fairies would love it...
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