51 pages • 1 hour read
Virginia WoolfTo the Lighthouse
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1927A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 1-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Time Passes”
Part 2, Chapters 1-10 Summary
At an unspecified time in the future, Bankes, Andrew, Prue, and Lily turn out all the lights in the Ramsay house except one. Silence and darkness descend upon the rooms of the house, and when Mr. Carmichael blows out his candle, it is past midnight. Mrs. Ramsay died unexpectedly the night before in London.
Now that the house is empty of guests, Mrs. McNab, who is nearly 70 years old, washes and cleans, singing as she moves through the rooms.
Spring approaches, and in May, Prue marries. The warmth of the months bring an optimistic feeling that does not last, as one summer, Prue dies “in some illness connected with childbirth” (180). In summer, insects move into the house, and at night, the light of the lighthouse mixes with moonlight.
In France during World War I, Andrew dies instantly when a shell explodes. The war that kills Andrew revives the public’s appetite for poetry, and Mr. Carmichael’s book of poems is published in the spring to great success.
Throughout the seasons of the year, the house and the garden remain empty, and the flowers “[behold] nothing, eyeless, and thus terrible” (183). Mrs. McNab picks a bouquet from the garden, believing that the house will soon be sold. Mrs. McNab remembers Mrs. Ramsay, whose moth-ridden clothes are still in the cupboard of her bedroom, pitying her death years earlier. No one has traveled to the house in years, due to the war and transportation difficulties.
As Mrs. McNab tidies the nursery, the sight of the boar’s skull irritates Mrs. McNab. At dusk, Mrs. McNab leaves the house and locks the door, feeling that the house is “too much for one woman, too much, too much” (186).
The house becomes a part of the natural world as it sits empty, going “to rack and ruin” (188). An unexpected letter to Mrs. McNab requests that she see to preparing the house for visitors. Mrs. Bast and her son George help Mrs. McNab, and they call for builders to do repairs. They take breaks in between bursts of activity, drinking tea, surveying the furniture and the books, and reminiscing about the dead. Mildred arrives as Mrs. Bast wonders about the origins of the boar’s skull. After days of work, the job is done. Lily and Mr. Carmichael arrive by train in late September; they are accompanied by Mrs. Beckwith, and the house feels full. Lily goes to bed, exhausted from her travels, and wakes up while dreaming of someone falling off the cliff. She sits upright in bed, realizing where she is.
Part 2, Chapters 1-10 Analysis
The individual paragraphs at the start of Part 2 of To the Lighthouse do not follow a coherent order. This sense of disorganization is explained a few paragraphs after the start of Part 2 when it is revealed that Mrs. Ramsay has died. Without Mrs. Ramsay, everyone appears unmoored, and the image of Mr. Ramsay with outstretched arms is filled with pathos, his inexplicable need for sympathy finally genuine and ever more pronounced.
As Part 2 continues, the novel takes on the tone of an elegy, which is a lamentation for the dead or a reflection on death. The use of personification to describe the state of the empty house suggests that the loss of Mrs. Ramsay is so great that even an inanimate object mourns her absence. The themes of the subjectivity of experience and the impermanence and unreliability of life applies in Part 2 even to the house on the Isle of Skye.
More autobiographical elements appear in Part 2: Woolf’s mother died when Woolf was 13, and Stella Duckworth, Woolf’s stepsister, died in the same manner as Prue, shortly after giving birth of postpartum complications. Woolf’s brother Thoby caught typhoid while in Greece and died, much like Andrew is killed in France due to an exploding shell.
The upheaval in the personal lives of the surviving members of the Ramsay family parallels the upheavals in the world at the time in history the novel takes place. Woolf wrote the novel in the 1920s, shortly after World War I, when everyone in England and abroad were mourning the many lives lost to a senseless war. In this way, Part 2 indicates a loss of vitality, both literal and figurative, and the tone of this section resembles a dirge.
The deaths of Mrs. Ramsay, Prue, and Andrew are tragic, leaving the surviving members of the family to suffer once their loved ones have vanished. At the same time, however, death is also acknowledged in Part 2 as one of life’s natural processes. Although some nature imagery in Part 2 suggests the renewal, regrowth, and hope associated with springtime, death must follow. The success of Mr. Carmichael’s poetry and Lily’s presence at the house at the end of Part 2 indicate that art, one way of achieving immortality, is a part of the Ramsay world. Like Mr. Carmichael’s poetry, Lily’s painting, and Mr. Ramsay’s books of philosophy, To the Lighthouse lives on to mark the lives of the dead.
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