[W]ho will blame him if he does homage
to the beauty of the world?
See Important Quotations Explained
Summary: Chapter V
At the house, Mrs. Ramsay inspects the stocking she has
been knitting for the lighthouse keeper’s son, just in case the
weather allows them to go to the lighthouse the next day. Mrs. Ramsay
thinks about her children and her tasks as a mother. She also recollects
her father’s death. Mr. Bankes reflects upon Mrs. Ramsay’s beauty, which
he cannot completely understand. She is, he thinks, much like the
walls of the unfinished hotel he watches being built in back of
his home. Mr. Bankes sees more than aesthetic beauty in her, “the
quivering thing, the living thing.” Mrs. Ramsay goes on knitting
the stocking for the little boy, and lovingly urges James to cut
another picture from the Army and Navy Stores catalogue.
Summary: Chapter VI
Mr. Ramsay approaches his wife. He is petulant and needs
reassurance after his embarrassment in front of Lily and Bankes.
When Mrs. Ramsay tells him that she is preparing a stocking for
the lighthouse keeper’s boy, Mr. Ramsay becomes infuriated by what
he sees as her extraordinary irrationality. His sense of safety
restored, Mr. Ramsay resumes his strolling on the lawn, giving himself
over to the “energies of his splendid mind.” He thinks to himself
that the progress of human thought is analogous to the alphabet—each
successive concept represents a letter, and every individual struggles
in his life to make it through as many letters as he can. Mr. Ramsay thinks
that he has plodded from A to Q with
great effort but feels that R now eludes
him. He reflects that not many men can reach even Q,
and that only one man in the course of a generation can reach Z.
There are two types of great thinkers, he notes: those who work
their way from A to Z diligently,
and those few geniuses who simply arrive at Z in
a single instant. Mr. Ramsay knows he does not belong to the latter
type, and resolves (or hopes) to fight his way to Z.
Still, he fears that his reputation will fade after his death. He reminds
himself that all fame is fleeting and that a single stone will outlast
Shakespeare. But he hates to think that he has made little real,
lasting difference in the world.
Summary: Chapter VII
James, reading with his mother, senses his father’s presence
and hates him. Discerning his father’s need for sympathy, he wishes
his father would leave him alone with his mother. Mr. Ramsay declares himself
a failure, and Mrs. Ramsay, recognizing his need to be assured of
his genius, tells him that Tansley considers him the greatest living
philosopher. Eventually, she restores his confidence, and he goes
off to watch the children play cricket. Mrs. Ramsay returns to the
story that she is reading to James. Inwardly, she reflects anxiously
that people observing her interactions with Mr. Ramsay might infer
that her husband depends on her excessively and think mistakenly
that her contributions to the world surpass his. -Augustus Carmichael
shuffles past.
Summary: Chapter VIII
Carmichael, an opium addict, ignores Mrs. Ramsay, hurting
her feelings and her pride. She realizes, however, that her kindness
is petty because she expects to receive gratitude and admiration
from those she treats with sympathy and generosity. Still troubled,
Mr. Ramsay wanders across the lawn, mulling over the progress and
fate of civilization and great men, wondering if the world would
be different if Shakespeare had never existed. He believes that
a “slave class” of unadorned, unacknowledged workers must exist
for the good of society. The thought displeases him, and he resolves
to argue that the world exists for such human beings, for the men
who operate the London subway rather than for immortal writers.
He reaches the edge of the lawn and looks out at the bay.
As the waves wash against the shore, Mr. Ramsay finds the encroaching waters
to be an apt metaphor for human ignorance, which always seems to
eat away what little is known with certainty. He turns from this
depressing thought to stare at the image of his wife and child, which
makes him realize that he is primarily happy, even though “he had
not done that thing he might have done.”
Analysis—The Window: Chapters V–VIII
The line of poetry that Mr. Ramsay recites as he blusters
across the lawn is taken from Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade.”
The poem, which tells of 600 soldiers marching
bravely to their death, ends with the lines
