Ramsay’s absence is enormous, as is the question of how to find union again, and the living characters struggle with both. Ramsay is back at the holiday house with some of the remaining children and original guests, including the artist Lily Briscoe. Part Three is a revisiting of Part One now Mr. Blackness and chaos lift at last as the housekeepers get to work on the dilapidated house and discuss the family’s coming return. Moreover, a daughter, Prue, has died in childbirth, and a son, Andrew, has been killed in First World War. In Part Two, things fall apart time ravages the house, and we learn in passing that Mrs. The day culminates in a dinner in which union is triumphantly achieved, at least for a moment. We see the shifting flow of thought and relationships from various points of view. Ramsay, but also within individual characters’ minds. Conflicts arise and fall in Part One, especially between Mr. Ramsay, a philosopher, and his wife, a famous beauty, both in middle age, are staying with their eight children and various guests at their summer holiday home in the Hebrides, islands off Scotland. What story there is can be summarized quickly: Mr. Why read To the Lighthouse? What is it? A novel? A painting with words? A fairy tale? A feminist manifesto? An autobiography? A declaration of war? An “elegy,” as Virginia Woolf put it? If so, for what?
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