Communication in To the Lighthouse

In Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, something that strikes me is the lack of real communication between characters. The narrative style brings us into the thoughts of various characters with noticeably different opinions and understandings. Often, these thoughts are at odds with one other. Yet, these conflicts are rarely communicated with other characters. There is a complete lack of transparency and a major focus on interiority. The way that the perspective shifts between characters can be jarring, since the reader has to keep up with whose thoughts we are entering at a particular moment. These choices also lend themselves to comparing the idea of a "collective unconscious" to individual experience. Clearly, Woolf places emphasis on subjective experience and the difficulty in communicating thoughts of a deeply personal nature. Reading the novel with WWI in mind lends to it a compelling dimension, suggesting the disjointed relationships resulting from WWI. Like so many other works we have read this semester, including poetry, this novel invokes an inability to explain trauma during the war.

Comments

Destiny Hrncr's picture

I really like this suggestion, Wendy.  I felt, of course, the feeling of fragmentation lent by the distances existing between all of the characters, but I think my previous experience with Woolf (brief as it has been) caused me to chalk this up to narrative's switching from perspective to perspective, and thus viewed this structure as just part of "her style." I appreciate your suggestion that, in this instance at least (and probably in Mrs. Dalloway as well?) the distance is intentionally meant to represent the inability of the characters to come to terms with, or even coherently convey, the traumatic nature of their experiences.  I wonder if all narratives written during, or directly following, similar terrible events must inherently convey this difficulty, either intentionally or no?

- Destiny H.