Life of a Women in Virgina Woolfs The Light House

Pages:335-337
Ritu Saharan (Department of English, Sai Nath University, Ranchi, Jharkhand)

Woolf viewed the writing of To the Lighthouse as grief work which freed her from obsession. Her assessment corresponds to Freud’s idea of grief work as freeing the libido from the lost love object. The novel itself, however, describes varieties of grief work which establish some distance between the dead and the living without completely severing the connections. Woolf, like the nerve specialists and psychoanalysts, borrows from traditional mourning ritual for her model of grief practices. The setting of the vacation house offers a retreat from public life and a venue for the visits of family and friends. The community offers each other sympathy and support, though the expression is often tacit due to Woolf’s rejection of the conventions of Victorian mourning ritual. She also deviates from tradition by not designating women chief mourners and by not feminizing male mourners. Mr. Ramsay tries to impose the traditional burden of comforter on Lily Briscoe, but she refuses it. Nor is grief pathological in the novel. Cam and James object to their father’s selfish grief, but it is clear that this is a generational difference rather than one of mental health. No doctors or therapists need be called in.