Chapter 10
Part 10 of Contemporary Reviews of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Unsigned Review from The English Review, 1927. In observation and mastery of prose, Mrs. Woolf ranks very high. She could be among our foremost novelists, but she prefers to exploit a theory of writing which leaves her story nowhere, important incidents being summarized in brackets, as
if they were a tedious necessity. The lighthouse which provides the title is the aim of a trip by sea which attracts the Ramsey family. It is proposed, put off, and not achieved till the end of the book when Mrs. Ramsey is dead.
Her character is a fine achievement. With hollow cheeks and white hair, she is still beautiful, still strangely attractive, and round her revolve various persons, including her husband, a mooning professor blind to ordinary things, and, in spite of his egoism, inspiring pity and gratitude in his wife. She looks after the shabby seaside house and their host of children.
The important moments of the book come in obscure broken hints, attempts to recapture the meaning which, for no reason at all, as perhaps they are stepping out of the tube or ringing a doorbell, descends on people, making them symbolical, making them representative. This transcendence of symbols is pictured in a deliberately interrupted style, meant somehow to reproduce it.
End of part 10
