What does the sea tell us about the living Ramsays?, By Duong Trinh

In Chapter IV of To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf is highly clever in using the imagery of a mackerel being caught to expose Cam’s complicated mental world. Seeing the fish lay kicking on the floor, Cam realizes that she is caught up in “this pressure and division of feeling, this extraordinary temptation.” Even though she is aware of how attractive and safety-assuring her father is, as indicated by him calmly opening his book in the middle of the hunting background, she still feels endangered by him. Watching Macalister’s boy tug the hook out of the gills of another fish, Cam remembers her father’s tyranny that “had poisoned her childhood and raised bitter storms.” She completely forgets her father’s beauty. Only her suffering remains.


In other words, Cam’s chain of thoughts moves according to the consecutive scenes on the sea. It is passive, follows the mackerel, a part of the sea, and manifests her internal fear. Associating herself with the bleeding fish, Cam deems that she is the prey being oppressed and hurt by Mr. Ramsay, her father. He, in her eyes, acts like Macalister’s boy who submerges her in extreme pains as the mackerel. However, Chapter VI seems to give her a different answer.

“Macalister’s boy took one of the fish and cut a square out of his side to bait his hook with. The mutilated body (it was alive still) was thrown back into the sea.”


No one should jump to the conclusion that the young Macalister intends in the first place to catch and hurt the mackerel while he eventually throws it back into the sea. Similarly, one ought not to think that Mr. Ramsay harms his children by forcing them to go to the Lighthouse. Throughout the trip, besides sharing tobacco with Macalister, leaning forward, and asking him about the great storm with tremendous care, he merely continues reading with his legs curled under him, despite the heated resistance to him in James and Cam’s heads. Mr. Ramsay looks clean and innocent. He seems to be fulfilling his dead wife’s unfinished desire for unity and “knitting” human relationships. When the ship gradually goes far away from the island, he looks back at their house and mournfully shows his gratitude for women’s sympathy.


There is no mention that he forces them to go with him except “his” coercion justified by Lily, Cam, and James, who all hold grudges against him. Nevertheless, the sea conveys that the kids’ grudges would fade away since the waves hypnotize Cam and slacken the tie between her and James. Fatherly hatred ties them together, which, being slackened, if put in a war scenario, would lead to disunity between companions and an essential loss to their mutual enemy. Yes, in Chapter XII, James and Cam let their father escape, although “they vowed that they would fight tyranny to death.” 


Sitting in the boat which “slapped and dawdled in the hot sun,” James comes to feel “a waste of snow and rock very lonely and austere.”The slapping boat urges him to stay flexible and to challenge his mindset while slowing time in the hot sun so that James would feel very clearly his father’s warmth. Mr. Ramsay is no longer attached to coldness, despotism, and tyranny. He instead interacts friendly with others and leaves James a symbol of intimacy, as shown by James’ attention to two pairs of footprints only, his own and his father. 


Therefore, despite being entitled To the Lighthouse, Part Three centers its spotlight on resolving family war among the living Ramsays. Seawater renders everything frail. Waves cover rocks. The trip brings them too far away from their house of memories, both good and bad. “As those paths and terraces and bedroom were fading and disappearing,” I believe that everyone in the boat will be aware that they and their memories are frail. Water without difficulty swallow them if they want to stay still. The mackerel could symbolize freedom if one reader of Chapter VI leaves behind its pain caused by nobody’s fault. In like manner, provided that one doesn’t assume Mr. Ramsay’s coercion, it makes sense that bringing Cam and James with him, he teaches them to grow up. He stops Cam from throwing her disliked sandwich into the sea by observing the fishermen and how they live while praising James when he successfully keeps the sail out of independence and responsibility until they land. 


Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshMarch 27, 2021 at 12:00 PM

    An observant account. So in this third part, the sea becomes another character, or the character that holds everyone inside itself and absorbs and dissolves them -- like time, like the world itself? It also has no pity and pays no attention to the human dramas, thus isolating the characters even more. How about the quality of light in this part? -- bright, harsh, pitiless?

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