Journey to the lighthouse

THE JOURNEYS TO THE LIGHTHOUSE 1

= different metaphors for different modes in the journey of human life which varies according to changing subjective positions.

The Lighthouse ? A different object for different desires, at different times in the journey.
For Mrs R : the Thing itself whose strokes and silver fingers at night bring in-human ecstasy (71-73, end of 11, I)
For James, a « silvery, misty-looking tower », reminiscent of Mrs R at night (201, end of 8, III) and « hoary, distant, austere in the mist », reminiscent of Mr R in daylight (18, end of 1, I).

A journey ? a displacement, a dislocation whose energy is fuelled by lack, by the fact that « this is not what we want ».
Lack opens space and distance : « so much depends… upon distance, » 206. The little boat travels away from the island.
Distance itself provides relief : comfort and geographical differences : far/close, high/low (195, beg. of 7, III, end of 8, 202)
Relief motivates metonymic displacement even though the real object of our motions lies in the dark of the Other’s desire : « Did they want to go ?… He had a particular reason to go… His wife used to send the men things. » (159-60)
The journey = an obscure necessity even though the children do not really know why they should go : « What’s the use of going now ?… What does one send ? What does one do ? » (quote: 159-160)


I. THOSE UNABLE TO MAKE THE JOURNEY :
= those who stay in London, and have no desire to return to the Isle of Skye because they are too occupied/blinded by their stop-gap objects : they don’t want anything.

1. THE SCIENTIFIC MINDS: William Bankes and Charles Tansley :
Bankes = the one who stays on the banks of life, who never commits himself, never lets himself “into a groove” (96) = not equipped for adult sexuality.
- In his young days, had been very much attached to Mr R : « after which Mr R had married, and their paths lying different ways, there had been, certainly and for no one’s fault, some tendency, when they had met, to repeat » (27-28) ;
their lost friendship, metaphorized by a young body in the peat.
His interest goes for little girls, not women, like Charles
Dodgson the mathematician for a little girl called Alice : 61, 97, 191.
He will be too « occupied » by his research to ask questions, and
will spend his life in laboratories : « a man who spent so much time in laboratories that the world when he came out seemed to dazzle him. » (191)
Likewise for Charles Tansley who avoids intercourse with women’s « fault » (94-95) and fills the void of his life with politics (212).
To Mrs R who prefers boobies, those clever young men are « dried up » (108), « rigid and barren » (97) and they will remain so.

THE RAYLEYS :
Paul : marrying Minta means fullness which the text associates with foolishness :

… the lights after the darkness made his eyes full, 86
I must not make a fool of myself, 188

Minta : there is a hole in her stocking (186), then in the carpet of her home (187) = a tear in the socially symbolic fabric which exposes her flesh : « how that little round hole of pink heel seemed to flaunt itself before them ! » (186)
Since their relation cannot give them the unity they want and since they believe it is the fault of sex, she takes lovers, and he takes up with another woman : 188.


II. THE FATHER’S JOURNEY :
A rite of passage from childish fixations, to the acceptance of old age.
1. THE TYRANNICAL FATHER : an imaginary figure, prominent in « The Window », associated with Victorian patriarchy and conventional gender positions.
* The Master-philosopher who believes in civilisation and progress :
- His mind is fully occupied with historical figures of heroes and great men, 44. Figures himself as the lonely leader at the outpost of progress, paving the way for the civilised world, standing as « a stake… marking the channel out there in the floods alone. », 51.
- Believes in relations based on force and hierarchy, therefore in the necessity of a slave-class/labour-class, 43.
- Privileges the signified, semantic relations : desire to make sense of the world, 12.
* A domestic tyrant, enraged by the folly of women’s minds (38, 163) but who uses their labour force and who wants a full house. Yet, he is also a little child who wants consolation and sympathy from his wife, and then from Lily :

Universities and people wanting him, lectures and books and their being of the hightest importance — all that she did not doubt for a moment ; but it was their relation… that discomposed her, 42.

For Lily, what he asks remains beyond request, « There was no helping Mr R on the journey he was going » 167.

2. THE SYMBOLIC FATHER = THE DEAD FATHER :
* A flawed figure : after Mrs R’s death he looks like a king in
exile (162), exposed to everything (218) : no longer the epic leader, but simply at the head of a little company bound by family ties, passing together along the edge (169).

* Has given up looking for the sense of life :
- Death : no longer part of the imaginary/literary reference, but the passing and the passage of generations,

They would soon be out of it, Mr R was saying to old Macalister ; but their children would see some strange things, 220

The story of the men drowned in the storm at sea arouses no poetic outburst in him, but simply,

‘Ah !’ as if he thought to himself, but why make a fuss about that, 221.

3. Accepting the enigma of the Other, without asking anyone to
solve it for him, but he did not ask them anything, 223.
= a human subject, divided by lack/loss/life after Mrs R = his lighthouse has vanished in the mist.

III. THE CHILDREN’S JOURNEY :
A passage from attachment to the mother, to the father as unconscious reference : from compact against the tyrant, to passing together along the edge :

… united by their compact to resist tyranny to the death, 178

… they both rose to follow him as he sprang, lightly like a young man, holding his parcel, on to the rock, 223

The significance of the journey will vary according to gender positions, symbolized by the respective seats occupied by the children in the boat : they will look toward different objects of desire.
Nb : gender ≠ sex ≠ one’s unconscious sexual position.

1. CAM : From mother to father, to become a mother.
- A journey on the waters of separation, feeling the cutting edge of the Real : « the water was sliced, sharply » (179) ; « her hand cut a trail in the sea » (187). She first sits with her back to the lighthouse, looking at the island but she won’t see it, 181.
She looks down into the sea in revolt against her father’s will, and reluctant to enter the compass with James :

… her father’s anger about the points of the compass, James’s obstinacy about the compact, 203

There is another journey for her, beyond these causes.
- Identification to Mrs R’s signifiers :

From her hand, ice cold, held deep in the sea, there spurted up a fountain of joy at the change […] Greece, Rome, Constantinople, 204

The island then makes sense, she recognizes it, she re-members
the past with all the things in it,

It was like that, then, the island, with a dent in the middle and two sharp crags, 203
… all those paths, those terraces, those bedrooms — all those innumerable things, 219.

- Accepting/adopting the female gender position, which means that she will leave the charge of the compass to her father, « Where are we going ? », 181 ; then only can she allow herself to wander dreamily in the underworld of the sea (197), or back in the suspended gardens of Babylon (219-220) ; and then can she enjoy adventure stories about escaping a sinking ship, 203.

- The father ? a point of reference, a landmark, 220 :

Now I can go on thinking whatever I like, for there he is, keeping his eye on me.

Her father becomes an old gentleman in the study, associated with knowledge (205), preparing the way for the Spanish gentleman to whom she feels attracted and who becomes the focus of the young girl’s desire (221).

2. JAMES : from mother to father, to become a father.
a) The journey in space/time : relief comes, the rope knotted in the garden years before becomes loose,

… a rope seemed to bind him there, and his father had knotted it and he could only escape by plugging it [the knife]… [as the boat moves] the relief was extraordinary. 202

James takes a distance from the garden of the past, still the mother remains the center of unconscious attraction, the one truth,
She alone spoke the truth… That was the source of her everlasting attraction for him. 202


b) Symbolic ordering :
- The knife/scimitar used to be a metonym for the father’s tyrannical, arbitrary power,
[he] had brought his blade down among them on the terrace, and she had gone stiff all over… and left him there, impotent, ridiculous. 201

It has gradually become a symbol, and the father only a figure/symbol of life, the antagonistic power that falls on you and cuts through your flesh/hopes,

He had always kept this old symbol of taking his knife and striking his father to the heart — now, as he grew older, it was not him, that old man reading, whom he wanted to kill, but it was the thing that descended on him, … that fierce sudden black-winged harpy … that struck and struck at you. 198

- A symbolic distance has been achieved and James now looks for patterns of understanding, for symbolic forms, rather than acting out the desire to kill his father,
… an image to cool and detach and round off his feeling in a concrete shape, 199.

= not unlike the sublimation process, a change in substance/quality also inherent in the artistic process.

c) Moving toward secondary identifications :
Ideal ego : potency in the mother’s lap.
Ego ideal : from injustice in the garden of childhood, to dealing justice in this world :

But whose foot was he thinking of, and in what garden did all this happen ? […] It was in this world that the wheel went over the person’s foot. 200
… he would track down and stamp out tyranny, 199

= he will become James the judge, the lawgiver who deals justice (182) both according to the mother’s desire and in the father’s footprints,
… watching him guide his scissors neatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and ermine on the Bench and directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of public affairs, 9
… two pairs of footprints only ; his own and his father’s ; they alone knew each other. 199

- Identifcation to the ideal of the guide/leader, in shared
knowledge :
They shared that knowledge. ’We are driving before a gale. We must sink,’ he began saying to himself, hald aloud exactly as his father said it. 219, 221, 222

- The lighthouse ? never one thing, never the thing itself which is
inaccessible but which has remote features both of the father and the mother,
So it was like that … a stark tower on a rock … it confirmed some obscure feeling abut his own character. 218

the tower of strength/mother ; the stark/hoary appearance of the father.