Virginia Woolf: ‘To the Lighthouse’s Classical Overture

In my experience, I had to become a certain age before I could begin to appreciate Virginia Woolf. I first read Mrs Dalloway years ago – and whilst the more direct narrative points left a clear impression on my mind (Septimus Smith forming the deepest mind, to the surprise I’m sure of nobody) I did not fully grasp the broader, complex picture of what the author was trying to achieve with her pioneering authorial voice.

Fast-forward to last week, and the rather nice copy of ‘To the Lighthouse’ that I acquired was sitting on my bookshelf, waiting patiently. Perhaps the planets aligned, but where my hand had passed over it countless times before, on this occasion it plucked the novel free (out from between the similarly-neglected ‘Victory’ by Conrad and a much-perused collection of poems by Byron, Shelley and Keats).

I’m very glad I did so. Naturally, I’ve heard much adoration for Woolf as a primary modernist figure, and for her ‘stream of consciousness’ style that has gone on to be such an influence in contemporary writing (for better, or for worse, is something for others to debate). But as I have already explained, her penmanship had so far left my mind cold. So, guided more by curiosity than anything else, I dove into ‘To the Lighthouse’; subsequently finding myself baffled, intrigued, amused, shocked, moved, and ultimately won over by Mrs Woolf.

As in Mrs Dalloway, what I found most striking about Woolf’s 1928 work (aside from the capricious enormity of her sentences, snowballing from one idea to the next) is her flagrant disregard for standard chronology. ‘To the Lighthouse’ is divided into three parts, the first being the longest – and yet it concerns only the latter half of a single day, dictating with great care the mind of a single character, sometimes for a page, sometimes longer, then doubling back on itself to pursue the actions of another individual, then leaping forward again to catch up with another.

This bizarrely intoxicating swell of forwards and backwards motion swings the reader about like some erratic fairground-ride until they understand in precise and intimate detail what everybody in the cast was up to at any moment in time.

Simultaneously, I found it quite incredible the way that Woolf was able to leave loose ends hanging abandoned in the midst of the ornate tapestry she weaved, only to return to them at random and pick up their patterns as if there was no break at all. Somehow, they feel both meticulously planned, and yet breezily filled in on the fly. This does not happen often, but ‘To the Lighthouse’ really is one of those novels which I have no idea how you’d go about writing.

Mrs Ramsey would be reading a book to her son James on the terrace of her coastal garden, and Mr Ramsey would noisily stride past reciting Tennyson; she would notice Lily Briscoe painting the tranquil scene on canvas, and we’d fluidly switch to her perspective as she gazed, both captivated and intimidated, at Mrs Ramsey in turn, confounded by the indecision of the dissatisfied artist; back to Mrs Ramsey as our attention is seized by her son moving suddenly in her lap, maybe asking once more if they can go to the lighthouse out on the bay.

The matriarch then begins to wonder where Nancy, Minta and Andrew have gotten on their walk; the three of which we then follow, though they are shocked out of their skin by the spontaneous yell of a Tennyson line from the other side of the hedge, with which we are dragged back to the violent and vocal stridings of Mr Tennyson around the garden. And all of those different actions, it transpires, all occurred within a few seconds of one another ‘in-universe’.

Such seamless, endless prose made it very easy for me to coast through ‘To the Lighthouse’, and I finished it in the space of a few days. I subsequently began to try and figure out how best to characterise Woolf’s prose style, so incongruous with the century prior (and yet, I seem to detect a Jamesian whiff within her words). And when I was listening to one of my Spotify playlists, it hit me; Woolf’s writing style is composed like classical music.

I am by no means a music scholar. This site is not entitled ‘The Listening Musician’ for nothing. But when I think of classical arrangements, I hear many different instruments, all on individual paths, that sometimes diverge, sometimes compliment, and contribute to a ‘narrative’ that is not quite uniform, often circular, and yet still feels like a progression has been made. Often, when a symphony ends, one feels that they’ve ended up in a similar place to where they began, but with a new, far richer appreciation of that position.

This also gives a timeless, intangible quality to excellent pieces of music; they can be listened to time and again, and each cycle can reveal a previously-unnoticed progression that revitalises the experience a fresh, recontextualised emotion. (It goes without saying that this is not unique to classical music, either – though I find it particularly exemplary of this quality.)

From this description, I feel we can acknowledge a certain similarity between classical music and Woolf’s work straight away. I tend to resist reading novels (unless for this site) and yet I went back through ‘Mrs Dalloway’ for a second time, and am tempted to do the same with ‘To the Lighthouse’ as well. Woolf’s sentences are so densely layered that it is nigh impossible to ingest all of the details upon first reading. Such small, insignificant details as scenic ornamentation or offhand phrases resurface later with much greater significance, whether appearing from behind a topiary or floating in on the water.

I have no doubt that many subtle threads evaded my attention the first time through. By sacrificing the focused spotlight of a clear narrative, Woolf has achieved the diffused spectacle of a prism.

As for the way that each character’s perspective intertwines with the next, moving off far afield and then drawing near into a coherent melody; what is a progression of discordant collaboration, if not akin to the individual sections of an orchestra? Mrs Ramsey, beautiful and aloof, is like the unwavering thrum of strings; the flighty, fanciful Lily is the sprightly and surprising piccolo dancing atop it; Mr Ramsey, of course, is the thumping, blundering bass drum that threatens to tear the whole arrangement down. Each individual adds another layer of colour to the canvas, at once interrupting and also intermingling with the shades around them.

And lastly, that which most evokes the compositions of the great composers are the fleeting, self-contained miniature progressions that repeat within the wider movement. Each doubling back to the viewpoint of one character is like the iteration of a musical motif; even the manner in which Woolf repeats certain phrases, each one gaining greater significance the more it appears, is like the reinforcement of an ostinato. Ideas that feel abandoned in Part One are lifted once more into our consciousness in Part Three, resulting in a catharsis of revelation and completeness similar to the triumphant re-emergence of the choral refrain in Beethoven’s Ninth.

Concepts are constantly in motion, and Woolf’s genius is that she keeps a firm hand on even those that the reader is not aware of. She traces each individual strand of composition, watches them weave in and out, and just at the moment of greatest impact, she lights the flame with the kindling she scattered right under our oblivious noses.

In conclusion, there is a music to Woolf’s writing not only in its vocabulary or rhythm – something common to great writers – but in its very structure. Such avoidance of the careful contours of chronology lends the work a transcendental feel, that it tests the boundaries of what words can achieve. Or rather, that it utilises language to access a deeper part of our brains, not centred around communicative consciousness, but receptive to more atavistic, emotional stimuli.

Otherwise, it is only excellent music that can tap into this long suppressed yet oh-so-pivotal part of our psychological makeup; it is here that I posit a similarity to Woolf’s own compositions.

Thank you for reading,