“He could almost pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of these days by the gunpowder that was in him.” - That’s me. They’re all me, imagining that I know what everyone else is thinking and my true mind is the only one that’s not exposed and impossible to express.
This also hits that note: “For it was extraordinary to think that they had been capable of going on living all these years when she had not thought of them more than once all that time.”
What a group! As Mona said, “Everyone feels awkward, unappreciated and miserable.”
Do they do this every night? Is there anyone who wants to be at this table? Mr. Ramsay, “sitting down, all in a heap, frowning“, and later “screwing his face up… scowling, and frowning, and flushing with anger“. William Blake (“it is a terrible waste of time… How trifling it all is, how boring it all is“) and Charles Tansley (“what damn rot they talk“), both of whom preferred to dine alone. Lily Briscoe, trying to “not lose her temper, and not argue“, above all else, was fixated on moving the tree in her painting further towards the middle. Mrs. Ramsay, feeling the need to get everyone together, but wondering “what have I done with my life?“, looks over at her husband, and “could not understand how she has ever felt any emotion or affection for him“. What an emotionally wrought scene! Bon appétit! (At least Augustus was happy.)
"Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her. Again she felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility of men, or if she did not do it nobody would do it" Damn, Virginia. That description of emotional labor. This chapter! Already my copy is stuffed with book darts. Each person's flowing, contradictory thoughts and feelings, merging like a river.
And that line, "he would have whirled round and round and found rest at the bottom of the sea." Sarah Manguso has a sentence that says something like (and I know I'm getting it wrong) suicides are always easy to foretell in retrospect.
Mrs. R takes no pleasure in her work (moving people) while Lily B. Enthusiastically plans hers (moving trees) (this being my twitter worthy comment for day 7). Happy Sunday all.
I think Mrs R does take pleasure in her work, even as I feel she acts in its thrall, like the tide of the ocean, but it is also exhausting and it evaporates - leaving her nothing concrete to put on a wall or a shelf.
Woolf is, of course, wonderful on all the big stuff: what it means to be a self; how art is a form of "tribute"; etc. But she's also so good on the small comedies of social life.
For example, Mrs. Ramsay thinks of how noble her husband is, caring as he does for "fishermen and their wages." Woolf then writes, "Then, realising that it was because she admired him so much that she was waiting for him to speak, she felt as if somebody had been praising her husband to her and their marriage, and she glowed all over without realising that it was she herself who had praised him." Mrs. Ramsay feeling pleased that Mr. Ramsay is being praised, that her marriage is being praised, forgetting that she is herself the source of this praise: I laugh at this every time.
“But what have I done with my life?”, Mrs. R asks. Again questions here about work vs. domestic life, gender roles. The men think/talk about work and politics. Mrs. R has a rich family life. But she waits for her husband to comment on politics. Lily must conform to expectations and be nice.
I love this observation, Mona: "The party continues on miserably. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay—at opposite ends of the long table—have a silent, kabuki fight.” There are so many “rules” and obligations and ritual to the art these people at the dinner party are enduring.
As I read Mrs. Ramsey’s painful lines opening Ch. 17-""But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs. Ramsay, taking her place at the head of the table...” I wondered if this was also a reflection of the "scrubbed kitchen table" that represents Mr. Ramsey's work. And in today's same paragraph—she, [had] only this—an infinitely long table and plates and knives. At the far end, was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap, frowning."
The gender tensions (awful Tansley) lie thick in today's reading. “The sterility of men” who depend on women to help their conversation at the table reminded me of the earlier phrase I underlined a few chapters back: “the arid scimitar of the male, which smote mercilessly, again and again, demanding sympathy.” So stifling for all; so awful for the women.
And there is so much foreshadowing, an actual ghost story: Mrs Ramsey " now she went among them like a ghost; and it fascinated her, as if, while she had changed, that particular day, now become very still and beautiful, had remained there, all these years."
If Mrs. Ramsey is the lighthouse, Lily Briscoe seems in a way to be Virginia Woolf, trying to figure out who these people/characters are as well the artistic choices for her work, and constantly hearing voices such as “women can’t write, women can’t paint.” So many undercurrents and images in this narrative stream-of-consciousness, I’m constantly struck by the way Woolf conveys how the boundaries between the perceptions people have of each other keep bumping into the reality of each other as they sit at this dinner table.
Wonderful note about the Woolf conveying "how the boundaries between the perceptions people have of each other keep bumping into the reality of each other as they sit at this dinner table." This might make a great writing prompt.
"But what have I done with my life?" I'll admit that i ask myself this same question nearly every day of my life, and then I must run through the litany of all the things I have done (accomplished) so as to feel better about myself. This chapter, to me, is life-saving. To go into the minds of others and see the way they torture themselves with their thoughts. Mrs. Ramsey--hating her husband one moment, adoring him the next. Lily Briscoe, at the table, but her head inside her painting. The egos flailing and looking for balance. Everybody a hot mess inside while sitting and struggling to say something, anything. I'll confess I finished the chapter already--who could put that one down???
It's a kind of Buddhist observation of the mind in a way: the way thoughts arise and then pass away in rapid succession, sometimes in opposition to each other.
Point of view shifts within a single sentence! But of course the masters break the elementary POV rule all the time (In AK Tolstoy does something similar on a duck hunt among several nobles, even spending time in a dog's mind.):
"What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying down his spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had swept clean, as if, Lily thought (he sat opposite to her with his back to the window precisely in the middle of view), he were determined to make sure of his meals."
Pretty much sums up the chapter's dozen or so divergent viewpoints and all the mendacity.
Again, we see women catering to the vanity of men ... Lily Briscoe enlisted by Mrs. Ramsay to assist with Tansley. It reminds me of the exchange at the beginning of VII, when Mr. Ramsay demands sympathy, and Mrs. Ramsay responds.
Always fascinated by the presence (or the lack thereof) of the servants at the dinner party. Wouldn't happen without them, and yet they're mostly invisible. Mrs. R "helped the soup" and "ladled the soup" without a mention of who placed the tureen in front of her. Perhaps it is Ellen, who later is asked for the second bowl of soup.
Also—such attention to the soup throughout this section, but it seems notable that the type of soup is never identified, especially given the attention that will be paid to the main course. Does anyone besides Augustus enjoy it? The unhappiness ("awkward, unappreciated, and miserable," thanks, Mona!) of everyone in the first part of this chapter seems somehow connected to the soup.
to dislike any one if one looked at them.” This seems to encapsulate Woolf’s message. Lily chides Tansley, perhaps deservedly, for his tiresome, quarrelsome condescension. Then his internal monologue defends him: he strives and sacrifices to avoid burdening his family, he’s embarrassed by his incivility before Mrs. Ramsey, he recognizes that his natural place is his room with his books, where the only pants he can afford will bring no disgrace. Wolf’s shifting point of view seems to emphasize that universal sympathy is the moral of her tale.
I agree. There is a sense that Woolf is fascinated by the complexity and even vulnerability of all of her characters, even those who come off as jerks.
Oh sh**, I'm so sorry! I am an idiot. Did not see the cut -off! Actually relieved because .. yeah I thought I was missing something ... the thing I missed was the actual instructions .. sorry!
Wow my fellow travelers today are wise and now foreboding is in the air. This dinner party shows the veneer starting to come off. There is more tension more hostility more class and age separations, male female views, domesticity vs independent for both men and women and then the dinner party almost ruined by participants forgetting “their manners” - showing up after soup, arguing politics at the table- and then the humor of Augustus Carmichael asking for another bowl of soup. Yikes. Mrs Ramsey turned to speaking French and bashing English cooking. As others have said, at the table where manners are necessary everyone seems to have gone haywire, saying out loud what until now they have kept to themselves.
There is a rough wave coming.
One final observation Paul is the contrast to Mr. Ramsey and Minta is the contrast to Mrs Ramsey but both the Ramsey seem to be satisfied with their choice of marriage partner.
Finally although I finished the chapter because I didn’t see the break Woolf eases the tension once dinner is a memory in the past. A romanized version now, order is restored and the rough wave has gone out to sea.
“Poor old Augustus—he’s a true poet,” Contemplative, truth seeking, troubled--is this opium smoking Carmichael some version of Thomas De Quincey? Or Coleridge? Likely some original mix of many VW read and wrote about. Just wondering if others know.....
Oh, this is amazing! Thank you! We’re traveling, but I still might try to do this!
Thank you for posting this. I am going to try it!
Basmati rice? Seems like that might have been hard to come by on that island.
You read to the end of the section!
Lily Briscoe is one of my favorite characters in literature.
I love her too!
“He could almost pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of these days by the gunpowder that was in him.” - That’s me. They’re all me, imagining that I know what everyone else is thinking and my true mind is the only one that’s not exposed and impossible to express.
This also hits that note: “For it was extraordinary to think that they had been capable of going on living all these years when she had not thought of them more than once all that time.”
What a group! As Mona said, “Everyone feels awkward, unappreciated and miserable.”
Do they do this every night? Is there anyone who wants to be at this table? Mr. Ramsay, “sitting down, all in a heap, frowning“, and later “screwing his face up… scowling, and frowning, and flushing with anger“. William Blake (“it is a terrible waste of time… How trifling it all is, how boring it all is“) and Charles Tansley (“what damn rot they talk“), both of whom preferred to dine alone. Lily Briscoe, trying to “not lose her temper, and not argue“, above all else, was fixated on moving the tree in her painting further towards the middle. Mrs. Ramsay, feeling the need to get everyone together, but wondering “what have I done with my life?“, looks over at her husband, and “could not understand how she has ever felt any emotion or affection for him“. What an emotionally wrought scene! Bon appétit! (At least Augustus was happy.)
Seems like this dinner is a bit special... the boeuf en daube, for instance... but I’m not sure.
"Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her. Again she felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility of men, or if she did not do it nobody would do it" Damn, Virginia. That description of emotional labor. This chapter! Already my copy is stuffed with book darts. Each person's flowing, contradictory thoughts and feelings, merging like a river.
And that line, "he would have whirled round and round and found rest at the bottom of the sea." Sarah Manguso has a sentence that says something like (and I know I'm getting it wrong) suicides are always easy to foretell in retrospect.
Love a line like "...rest at the bottom of the sea." whose imagery takes me deep into the emotional stakes of a scene.
Mrs. R takes no pleasure in her work (moving people) while Lily B. Enthusiastically plans hers (moving trees) (this being my twitter worthy comment for day 7). Happy Sunday all.
Happy Sunday! And Lily B is also painting Mrs. Ramsey, who she seems a bit in love with. Very complicated indeed!
Yet a vision is coming for Mrs. R!
I think Mrs R does take pleasure in her work, even as I feel she acts in its thrall, like the tide of the ocean, but it is also exhausting and it evaporates - leaving her nothing concrete to put on a wall or a shelf.
Woolf is, of course, wonderful on all the big stuff: what it means to be a self; how art is a form of "tribute"; etc. But she's also so good on the small comedies of social life.
For example, Mrs. Ramsay thinks of how noble her husband is, caring as he does for "fishermen and their wages." Woolf then writes, "Then, realising that it was because she admired him so much that she was waiting for him to speak, she felt as if somebody had been praising her husband to her and their marriage, and she glowed all over without realising that it was she herself who had praised him." Mrs. Ramsay feeling pleased that Mr. Ramsay is being praised, that her marriage is being praised, forgetting that she is herself the source of this praise: I laugh at this every time.
I laughed out loud at that passage. And I imagine I’ve done exactly that.
Such a great section!
“But what have I done with my life?”, Mrs. R asks. Again questions here about work vs. domestic life, gender roles. The men think/talk about work and politics. Mrs. R has a rich family life. But she waits for her husband to comment on politics. Lily must conform to expectations and be nice.
I love this observation, Mona: "The party continues on miserably. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay—at opposite ends of the long table—have a silent, kabuki fight.” There are so many “rules” and obligations and ritual to the art these people at the dinner party are enduring.
As I read Mrs. Ramsey’s painful lines opening Ch. 17-""But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs. Ramsay, taking her place at the head of the table...” I wondered if this was also a reflection of the "scrubbed kitchen table" that represents Mr. Ramsey's work. And in today's same paragraph—she, [had] only this—an infinitely long table and plates and knives. At the far end, was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap, frowning."
The gender tensions (awful Tansley) lie thick in today's reading. “The sterility of men” who depend on women to help their conversation at the table reminded me of the earlier phrase I underlined a few chapters back: “the arid scimitar of the male, which smote mercilessly, again and again, demanding sympathy.” So stifling for all; so awful for the women.
And there is so much foreshadowing, an actual ghost story: Mrs Ramsey " now she went among them like a ghost; and it fascinated her, as if, while she had changed, that particular day, now become very still and beautiful, had remained there, all these years."
If Mrs. Ramsey is the lighthouse, Lily Briscoe seems in a way to be Virginia Woolf, trying to figure out who these people/characters are as well the artistic choices for her work, and constantly hearing voices such as “women can’t write, women can’t paint.” So many undercurrents and images in this narrative stream-of-consciousness, I’m constantly struck by the way Woolf conveys how the boundaries between the perceptions people have of each other keep bumping into the reality of each other as they sit at this dinner table.
I enjoyed Woolf’s depiction of the silent mind meld conversation the long married couple could have.
Wonderful note about the Woolf conveying "how the boundaries between the perceptions people have of each other keep bumping into the reality of each other as they sit at this dinner table." This might make a great writing prompt.
"But what have I done with my life?" I'll admit that i ask myself this same question nearly every day of my life, and then I must run through the litany of all the things I have done (accomplished) so as to feel better about myself. This chapter, to me, is life-saving. To go into the minds of others and see the way they torture themselves with their thoughts. Mrs. Ramsey--hating her husband one moment, adoring him the next. Lily Briscoe, at the table, but her head inside her painting. The egos flailing and looking for balance. Everybody a hot mess inside while sitting and struggling to say something, anything. I'll confess I finished the chapter already--who could put that one down???
Yes. Yes and yes!
Agreed! This character packed scene has more “action” (albeit internal Woolf-ian action) than some of the previous perhaps more poetic sections.
It's a kind of Buddhist observation of the mind in a way: the way thoughts arise and then pass away in rapid succession, sometimes in opposition to each other.
More than once, i have thought of Buddhist thought while reading this chapter, so I'm happy to hear someone else had the same thought.
Point of view shifts within a single sentence! But of course the masters break the elementary POV rule all the time (In AK Tolstoy does something similar on a duck hunt among several nobles, even spending time in a dog's mind.):
"What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying down his spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had swept clean, as if, Lily thought (he sat opposite to her with his back to the window precisely in the middle of view), he were determined to make sure of his meals."
Pretty much sums up the chapter's dozen or so divergent viewpoints and all the mendacity.
Again, we see women catering to the vanity of men ... Lily Briscoe enlisted by Mrs. Ramsay to assist with Tansley. It reminds me of the exchange at the beginning of VII, when Mr. Ramsay demands sympathy, and Mrs. Ramsay responds.
Always fascinated by the presence (or the lack thereof) of the servants at the dinner party. Wouldn't happen without them, and yet they're mostly invisible. Mrs. R "helped the soup" and "ladled the soup" without a mention of who placed the tureen in front of her. Perhaps it is Ellen, who later is asked for the second bowl of soup.
Also—such attention to the soup throughout this section, but it seems notable that the type of soup is never identified, especially given the attention that will be paid to the main course. Does anyone besides Augustus enjoy it? The unhappiness ("awkward, unappreciated, and miserable," thanks, Mona!) of everyone in the first part of this chapter seems somehow connected to the soup.
And how credit is given for the main dish really stirred me in the second half of 17.
“…the fact remained, it was impossible
to dislike any one if one looked at them.” This seems to encapsulate Woolf’s message. Lily chides Tansley, perhaps deservedly, for his tiresome, quarrelsome condescension. Then his internal monologue defends him: he strives and sacrifices to avoid burdening his family, he’s embarrassed by his incivility before Mrs. Ramsey, he recognizes that his natural place is his room with his books, where the only pants he can afford will bring no disgrace. Wolf’s shifting point of view seems to emphasize that universal sympathy is the moral of her tale.
I agree. There is a sense that Woolf is fascinated by the complexity and even vulnerability of all of her characters, even those who come off as jerks.
especially as Tansley blamed Lily for his incivility
Oh sh**, I'm so sorry! I am an idiot. Did not see the cut -off! Actually relieved because .. yeah I thought I was missing something ... the thing I missed was the actual instructions .. sorry!
Thank you, I deleted my earlier comment .. nothing more annoying than a line jumper - jeez!
Wow my fellow travelers today are wise and now foreboding is in the air. This dinner party shows the veneer starting to come off. There is more tension more hostility more class and age separations, male female views, domesticity vs independent for both men and women and then the dinner party almost ruined by participants forgetting “their manners” - showing up after soup, arguing politics at the table- and then the humor of Augustus Carmichael asking for another bowl of soup. Yikes. Mrs Ramsey turned to speaking French and bashing English cooking. As others have said, at the table where manners are necessary everyone seems to have gone haywire, saying out loud what until now they have kept to themselves.
There is a rough wave coming.
One final observation Paul is the contrast to Mr. Ramsey and Minta is the contrast to Mrs Ramsey but both the Ramsey seem to be satisfied with their choice of marriage partner.
Finally although I finished the chapter because I didn’t see the break Woolf eases the tension once dinner is a memory in the past. A romanized version now, order is restored and the rough wave has gone out to sea.
“Poor old Augustus—he’s a true poet,” Contemplative, truth seeking, troubled--is this opium smoking Carmichael some version of Thomas De Quincey? Or Coleridge? Likely some original mix of many VW read and wrote about. Just wondering if others know.....
Yes ... that redemptive moment is coming.