In Search of the Present: Narrative Time in 'To the Lighthouse'

The objective of this thesis is to explore the intricacies of narrative time in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Philosophers and literary theorists of the last century have thoroughly mined this novel, identifying passages that seem to indicate that Woolf agreed with Bergson, or Russell, or McTaggart, or Heidegger. These theorists have investigated Woolf’s writings and bibliography with a fine-toothed comb, searching for evidence that would give them license to triumphantly consider the matter settled. I plan to take a different approach.

I begin by investigating the work of those that came before me, laying a philosophical foundation from which to begin my analysis. I consider the works of Paul Ricœur, Ann Banfield, Martin Hägglund, and Paul Sheehan in relation to time in To the Lighthouse.
I then follow a few images that, when juxtaposed, have particular pertinence to time: gardens and leaves, and knots and knitting. These images are powerful articulations of non-linear time and speak to the compression of time within the novel. The recurrence of these images condense the narrative discourse, shaping the reader’s understanding of time and duration. While characters throughout the book progress non-chronologically and are thrust back into their memories, the reader reenacts this process as she experiences recursive imagery, thus pulling the past into the present.

Finally, I turn to the role of the lighthouse as a mediator of the present. While water in the text calls to mind the terror of eternity and unmediated time, the lighthouse is an important interruption of the infinitude of the horizon. In some ways its beam is a faithful maestro of Chronos, marking the inevitable succession of nights following days. However, its main role in the text is to extend the present, thus staving off the dread of the future. I consider the strong identification between Mrs. Ramsay and the lighthouse’s beam, concluding that while Mrs. Ramsay plays a similar role of circumscribing the present, her mortality allows us glimpses of how characters might mediate their own time. Ultimately, the lighthouse interrupts the isolated gravity of the past and boundless ocean of the future–steering characters into a shared present.

I conclude that while narrative time is certainly nonlinear throughout the text, the phenomenological and chronological are inextricable. Delineations of time are portrayed as critical: even though the past often resurfaces, it must be intentionally woven into the present.