This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

CLOSE READING

CLOSE READING: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927)

Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse, which charts the dissolution of the Ramsay family in twentieth century Britain, is widely heralded as a classic portrait of familial belonging and loss in the midst of World War I. However, employing the theoretical framework of ‘deconstruction’ – conceived by French semiotician Jacques Derrida in his seminal 1972 essay Plato’s Pharmacy (Derrida, 1972) – effectively eschews the traditional critical inclination towards a human-oriented focus of Woolf’s text, in favor of an eco-critical approach. A comprehensive and deconstructive analysis of To the Lighthouse, that is bereft of the textual intentions of its author, subsumes the popular anthropocentric focus on domestic drama between human actors, thus unveiling the influential and unconventional motif of furniture in the everyday lives of Woolf’s protagonists. By examining the manner in which recurring fixtures of the material world constitute a discourse between human and environmental spheres, To the Lighthouse contributes to the growing assemblage of eco-critical literature.

In her 2012 article States of Suspension: Trans-corporeality at Sea, University of Texas at Arlington professor Stacy Alaimo dismantles the contemporary global capitalist dichotomy of active consumers and passive commodities, in order to conceive the material interchanges that occur between humans and objects. Alaimo’s perspective is reinforced by American feminist theorist Karen Barad’s assertion that the individual human’s immersion in a “dynamic process of intra-activity” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) with the material world evokes our post-humanity. Essentially, this notion revises the traditional perspective of humans as makers and creators of the material world, instead focusing on the “(post)human” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) as a progressive model, which is continuously “part of the world in its becoming.”

In To the Lighthouse, the ideas of Alaimo and Barad are reflected by the manner in which pieces of furniture enact as pervasive forces that infringe on the interiority of the human characters who utilise them. This is illustrated in a scene where Mrs. Ramsay sits on a chair whilst knitting. The standard chair is conventionally perceived as a human capitalist construct, in the sense that it is derived and created from features of the natural world – leather, metal, plastic, wood – and subsequently labeled in terms of its value in the economic marketplace. However, an examination of Woolf’s text questions the capacity of chairs to subversively escape the human-oriented role prescribed to them via their ability to expose seated subjects to unforeseen vantage points. For example, positioned on her chair, Mrs. Ramsay gazes at the beams of the lighthouse clashing against the vast, impenetrable ocean and is suddenly struck by the realization of, “[h]ow could any Lord have made this world […] [in which there is] no reason, no order, no justice.” (Woolf, 1927, p. 54) Mrs. Ramsay’s incidental epiphany highlights the potential of the material world – passive objects, generally considered submissive to the active consumer – to structure and restructure humanity’s place in the ecosphere. This coincides with the perspectives of Woolf, herself, who believed that genuine meanings existed behind the appearance of the material world, which occasionally revealed itself to “shock” humans, highlighting how “beneath the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we – I mean, all human beings – are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art.” (Chun, 2012, p. 53)

Another way in which intra-activity between the human and the material can be conceived in To the Lighthouse is evident in the manner in which objects effectively chart the political, social and cultural events which inflict their human owners. American marine biologist Rachel Carson’s correlation “temporal and oceanic expanses” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 485) is employed by Alaimo to explicate the extent to which the human and non-human combine in affairs of “science, politics, ethics, and the mundane.” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 489) In To the Lighthouse, the manner in which the human protagonists’ attempts to understand each other are effectively articulated and modulated by the furniture that surrounds, structures and comforts them. This idea achieves further resonance via the potential of furniture to express the novel’s divergent themes of peace and conflict. For example, Woolf’s central message of human connections being undergirded by material values – most prevalent in Mrs. Ramsay’s belief that the family legacy will thrive via the inheritance of antiques and heirlooms – is subsumed by a table subversively scripting the social sphere of a Ramsay family dinner. In chapter seventeen of ‘The Window’, the wooden dining table transcends into a resolute patriarch holding the fragmented family, or disembodied “faces on both sides of table,” (Woolf, 1927, p. 79) together, thus achieving stability within the human social sphere. Moreover, this concept of furniture as family – the inanimate object as animate human – is reinforced by “bare legs of tables”, “empty wardrobes” and “mattresses” (Woolf, 1927, p. 105-106) evoking the disintegration of the Ramsay family via the material mirroring and mimicking human emotion. Furthermore, American academic Christopher Watkin’s delineation of objects as “co-producers” in human society, due to the role of “nonsocial, non-human resources” in the creation of “gods, machines, sciences, arts and styles” (Watkin, 2018) can be extended to toy with the idea of the material as a close family member of the human, thereby strengthening the mutual ties between furniture and the Ramsays in To the Lighthouse.

Overall, a close reading of the role of furniture in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, in conjunction with a wide range of scholars, theorists and philosophers – such as Stacy Alaimo, Karen Barad, Rachel Carson and Christopher Watkin – highlights the manner in which the material autonomously infringes on the social sphere of humanity. Subsequently, the potential of the natural world to speak, comfort and strengthen the human subject effectively allows the environmental sphere to transcend into an 'eco-skeleton' which supports and structures the routine, existence and conscious of humanity, thus highlighting its invaluable role in our lives.

REFERENCES

Derrida, J. (1972). Chapter 11: Plato’s Pharmacy. Retrievable from http://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/derrida_platos_pharmacy.pdf.

Chun, M. (2012). Between Sensation and Sign: The Secret Language of the Waves. Journal of Modern Literature 36 (1): 53-70. Doi: 10.2979/jmodelite.36.1.53.

Watkin, C. (2018). To the Lighthouse Archives – Christopher Watkin. Retrievable from https://christopherwatkin.com/tag/to-the-lighthouse/.

Woolf, V. (1927). To the Lighthouse. New York, United States: Oxford University Press.

This page has paths:

This page has replies:

Woolf’s To the Lighthouse examines the ways that aggressive social and political events, such as modernity and war, change the dynamic between humans and materiality. The anthropomorphising of furniture in the novel indicates its pivotal role in creating and driving the relationships between the Ramsay family and their guests. Modernity represents the infiltration of man-made things into humanity as humans’ need for socialisation is emphasised. Just like how animals depend on the natural world to survive, humans depend on furniture to build intimacy. Through modernity and war, furniture becomes the natural world for humans, which sustains their need for emotional connections.
Contents of this reply:
1. CLOSE READING CLOSE READING: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927)
  
  Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse, which charts the dissolution of the Ramsay family in twentieth century Britain, is widely heralded as a classic portrait of familial belonging and loss in the midst of World War I. However, employing the theoretical framework of ‘deconstruction’ – conceived by French semiotician Jacques Derrida in his seminal 1972 essay Plato’s Pharmacy (Derrida, 1972) – effectively eschews the traditional critical inclination towards a human-oriented focus of Woolf’s text, in favor of an eco-critical approach. A comprehensive and deconstructive analysis of To the Lighthouse, that is bereft of the textual intentions of its author, subsumes the popular anthropocentric focus on domestic drama between human actors, thus unveiling the influential and unconventional motif of furniture in the everyday lives of Woolf’s protagonists. By examining the manner in which recurring fixtures of the material world constitute a discourse between human and environmental spheres, To the Lighthouse contributes to the growing assemblage of eco-critical literature.
  
  In her 2012 article States of Suspension: Trans-corporeality at Sea, University of Texas at Arlington professor Stacy Alaimo dismantles the contemporary global capitalist dichotomy of active consumers and passive commodities, in order to conceive the material interchanges that occur between humans and objects. Alaimo’s perspective is reinforced by American feminist theorist Karen Barad’s assertion that the individual human’s immersion in a “dynamic process of intra-activity” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) with the material world evokes our post-humanity. Essentially, this notion revises the traditional perspective of humans as makers and creators of the material world, instead focusing on the “(post)human” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) as a progressive model, which is continuously “part of the world in its becoming.”
  
  In To the Lighthouse, the ideas of Alaimo and Barad are reflected by the manner in which pieces of furniture enact as pervasive forces that infringe on the interiority of the human characters who utilise them. This is illustrated in a scene where Mrs. Ramsay sits on a chair whilst knitting. The standard chair is conventionally perceived as a human capitalist construct, in the sense that it is derived and created from features of the natural world – leather, metal, plastic, wood – and subsequently labeled in terms of its value in the economic marketplace. However, an examination of Woolf’s text questions the capacity of chairs to subversively escape the human-oriented role prescribed to them via their ability to expose seated subjects to unforeseen vantage points. For example, positioned on her chair, Mrs. Ramsay gazes at the beams of the lighthouse clashing against the vast, impenetrable ocean and is suddenly struck by the realization of, “[h]ow could any Lord have made this world […] [in which there is] no reason, no order, no justice.” (Woolf, 1927, p. 54) Mrs. Ramsay’s incidental epiphany highlights the potential of the material world – passive objects, generally considered submissive to the active consumer – to structure and restructure humanity’s place in the ecosphere. This coincides with the perspectives of Woolf, herself, who believed that genuine meanings existed behind the appearance of the material world, which occasionally revealed itself to “shock” humans, highlighting how “beneath the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we – I mean, all human beings – are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art.” (Chun, 2012, p. 53)
  
  Another way in which intra-activity between the human and the material can be conceived in To the Lighthouse is evident in the manner in which objects effectively chart the political, social and cultural events which inflict their human owners. American marine biologist Rachel Carson’s correlation “temporal and oceanic expanses” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 485) is employed by Alaimo to explicate the extent to which the human and non-human combine in affairs of “science, politics, ethics, and the mundane.” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 489) In To the Lighthouse, the manner in which the human protagonists’ attempts to understand each other are effectively articulated and modulated by the furniture that surrounds, structures and comforts them. This idea achieves further resonance via the potential of furniture to express the novel’s divergent themes of peace and conflict. For example, Woolf’s central message of human connections being undergirded by material values – most prevalent in Mrs. Ramsay’s belief that the family legacy will thrive via the inheritance of antiques and heirlooms – is subsumed by a table subversively scripting the social sphere of a Ramsay family dinner. In chapter seventeen of ‘The Window’, the wooden dining table transcends into a resolute patriarch holding the fragmented family, or disembodied “faces on both sides of table,” (Woolf, 1927, p. 79) together, thus achieving stability within the human social sphere. Moreover, this concept of furniture as family – the inanimate object as animate human – is reinforced by “bare legs of tables”, “empty wardrobes” and “mattresses” (Woolf, 1927, p. 105-106) evoking the disintegration of the Ramsay family via the material mirroring and mimicking human emotion. Furthermore, American academic Christopher Watkin’s delineation of objects as “co-producers” in human society, due to the role of “nonsocial, non-human resources” in the creation of “gods, machines, sciences, arts and styles” (Watkin, 2018) can be extended to toy with the idea of the material as a close family member of the human, thereby strengthening the mutual ties between furniture and the Ramsays in To the Lighthouse.
  
  Overall, a close reading of the role of furniture in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, in conjunction with a wide range of scholars, theorists and philosophers – such as Stacy Alaimo, Karen Barad, Rachel Carson and Christopher Watkin – highlights the manner in which the material autonomously infringes on the social sphere of humanity. Subsequently, the potential of the natural world to speak, comfort and strengthen the human subject effectively allows the environmental sphere to transcend into an 'eco-skeleton' which supports and structures the routine, existence and conscious of humanity, thus highlighting its invaluable role in our lives.
  
  REFERENCES
  
  Derrida, J. (1972). Chapter 11: Plato’s Pharmacy. Retrievable from http://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/derrida_platos_pharmacy.pdf.
  
  Chun, M. (2012). Between Sensation and Sign: The Secret Language of the Waves. Journal of Modern Literature 36 (1): 53-70. Doi: 10.2979/jmodelite.36.1.53.
  
  Watkin, C. (2018). To the Lighthouse Archives – Christopher Watkin. Retrievable from https://christopherwatkin.com/tag/to-the-lighthouse/.
  
  Woolf, V. (1927). To the Lighthouse. New York, United States: Oxford University Press.
The idea that material objects such as furniture can alter humanity’s place in the ecological world is an interesting one. In part II of To the Lighthouse, the narration takes a fascinating turn. As Anne Carson writes in her essay, ‘Every Exit is an Entrance’, “Virginia Woolf’s main narrative [becomes] a catalogue of silent bedrooms, motionless chest of drawers, apples left on the dining room table, the wind prying at a window blind, moonlight gliding on floorboards.” Human action is relegated to short blips at the end of sections, contained within square brackets. In this format, the non-living material objects of the house take on a greater impetus than the living human characters. The ability to affect is transferred from human beings to non-living entities, and moreover, the affected party has become humanity.

Works Cited
Carson, Anne. “Every Exit is an Entrance.” Decreation, Vintage, 2005, pp. 19-40.
Contents of this reply:
1. CLOSE READING CLOSE READING: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927)
  
  Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse, which charts the dissolution of the Ramsay family in twentieth century Britain, is widely heralded as a classic portrait of familial belonging and loss in the midst of World War I. However, employing the theoretical framework of ‘deconstruction’ – conceived by French semiotician Jacques Derrida in his seminal 1972 essay Plato’s Pharmacy (Derrida, 1972) – effectively eschews the traditional critical inclination towards a human-oriented focus of Woolf’s text, in favor of an eco-critical approach. A comprehensive and deconstructive analysis of To the Lighthouse, that is bereft of the textual intentions of its author, subsumes the popular anthropocentric focus on domestic drama between human actors, thus unveiling the influential and unconventional motif of furniture in the everyday lives of Woolf’s protagonists. By examining the manner in which recurring fixtures of the material world constitute a discourse between human and environmental spheres, To the Lighthouse contributes to the growing assemblage of eco-critical literature.
  
  In her 2012 article States of Suspension: Trans-corporeality at Sea, University of Texas at Arlington professor Stacy Alaimo dismantles the contemporary global capitalist dichotomy of active consumers and passive commodities, in order to conceive the material interchanges that occur between humans and objects. Alaimo’s perspective is reinforced by American feminist theorist Karen Barad’s assertion that the individual human’s immersion in a “dynamic process of intra-activity” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) with the material world evokes our post-humanity. Essentially, this notion revises the traditional perspective of humans as makers and creators of the material world, instead focusing on the “(post)human” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) as a progressive model, which is continuously “part of the world in its becoming.”
  
  In To the Lighthouse, the ideas of Alaimo and Barad are reflected by the manner in which pieces of furniture enact as pervasive forces that infringe on the interiority of the human characters who utilise them. This is illustrated in a scene where Mrs. Ramsay sits on a chair whilst knitting. The standard chair is conventionally perceived as a human capitalist construct, in the sense that it is derived and created from features of the natural world – leather, metal, plastic, wood – and subsequently labeled in terms of its value in the economic marketplace. However, an examination of Woolf’s text questions the capacity of chairs to subversively escape the human-oriented role prescribed to them via their ability to expose seated subjects to unforeseen vantage points. For example, positioned on her chair, Mrs. Ramsay gazes at the beams of the lighthouse clashing against the vast, impenetrable ocean and is suddenly struck by the realization of, “[h]ow could any Lord have made this world […] [in which there is] no reason, no order, no justice.” (Woolf, 1927, p. 54) Mrs. Ramsay’s incidental epiphany highlights the potential of the material world – passive objects, generally considered submissive to the active consumer – to structure and restructure humanity’s place in the ecosphere. This coincides with the perspectives of Woolf, herself, who believed that genuine meanings existed behind the appearance of the material world, which occasionally revealed itself to “shock” humans, highlighting how “beneath the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we – I mean, all human beings – are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art.” (Chun, 2012, p. 53)
  
  Another way in which intra-activity between the human and the material can be conceived in To the Lighthouse is evident in the manner in which objects effectively chart the political, social and cultural events which inflict their human owners. American marine biologist Rachel Carson’s correlation “temporal and oceanic expanses” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 485) is employed by Alaimo to explicate the extent to which the human and non-human combine in affairs of “science, politics, ethics, and the mundane.” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 489) In To the Lighthouse, the manner in which the human protagonists’ attempts to understand each other are effectively articulated and modulated by the furniture that surrounds, structures and comforts them. This idea achieves further resonance via the potential of furniture to express the novel’s divergent themes of peace and conflict. For example, Woolf’s central message of human connections being undergirded by material values – most prevalent in Mrs. Ramsay’s belief that the family legacy will thrive via the inheritance of antiques and heirlooms – is subsumed by a table subversively scripting the social sphere of a Ramsay family dinner. In chapter seventeen of ‘The Window’, the wooden dining table transcends into a resolute patriarch holding the fragmented family, or disembodied “faces on both sides of table,” (Woolf, 1927, p. 79) together, thus achieving stability within the human social sphere. Moreover, this concept of furniture as family – the inanimate object as animate human – is reinforced by “bare legs of tables”, “empty wardrobes” and “mattresses” (Woolf, 1927, p. 105-106) evoking the disintegration of the Ramsay family via the material mirroring and mimicking human emotion. Furthermore, American academic Christopher Watkin’s delineation of objects as “co-producers” in human society, due to the role of “nonsocial, non-human resources” in the creation of “gods, machines, sciences, arts and styles” (Watkin, 2018) can be extended to toy with the idea of the material as a close family member of the human, thereby strengthening the mutual ties between furniture and the Ramsays in To the Lighthouse.
  
  Overall, a close reading of the role of furniture in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, in conjunction with a wide range of scholars, theorists and philosophers – such as Stacy Alaimo, Karen Barad, Rachel Carson and Christopher Watkin – highlights the manner in which the material autonomously infringes on the social sphere of humanity. Subsequently, the potential of the natural world to speak, comfort and strengthen the human subject effectively allows the environmental sphere to transcend into an 'eco-skeleton' which supports and structures the routine, existence and conscious of humanity, thus highlighting its invaluable role in our lives.
  
  REFERENCES
  
  Derrida, J. (1972). Chapter 11: Plato’s Pharmacy. Retrievable from http://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/derrida_platos_pharmacy.pdf.
  
  Chun, M. (2012). Between Sensation and Sign: The Secret Language of the Waves. Journal of Modern Literature 36 (1): 53-70. Doi: 10.2979/jmodelite.36.1.53.
  
  Watkin, C. (2018). To the Lighthouse Archives – Christopher Watkin. Retrievable from https://christopherwatkin.com/tag/to-the-lighthouse/.
  
  Woolf, V. (1927). To the Lighthouse. New York, United States: Oxford University Press.
Virginia Woolf, in her novel 'To the Lighthouse' delves into the intricate relationship found between an individual and their physical surroundings. Being a modernist herself, one of the main concepts Wool delves into within her novel is the concept of interiority and the manner in which furniture anthropomorphism can invite one to a more concrete and clear understanding of their inner most abstract self. Very much like the human, house interiors such as the Ramsay house are susceptible to spatial changes which affect the experiences of those experiencing them. The integration of objects within a structure, like the individual as they come to interact with their environments, allows a space to grow and adapt, change and reverse, into an interior which is a better reflection of the innate human interiority. Works Cited: Ionescu, V. The interior as interiority. Palgrave Commun 4, 33 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0088-6
Contents of this reply:
1. CLOSE READING CLOSE READING: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927)
  
  Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse, which charts the dissolution of the Ramsay family in twentieth century Britain, is widely heralded as a classic portrait of familial belonging and loss in the midst of World War I. However, employing the theoretical framework of ‘deconstruction’ – conceived by French semiotician Jacques Derrida in his seminal 1972 essay Plato’s Pharmacy (Derrida, 1972) – effectively eschews the traditional critical inclination towards a human-oriented focus of Woolf’s text, in favor of an eco-critical approach. A comprehensive and deconstructive analysis of To the Lighthouse, that is bereft of the textual intentions of its author, subsumes the popular anthropocentric focus on domestic drama between human actors, thus unveiling the influential and unconventional motif of furniture in the everyday lives of Woolf’s protagonists. By examining the manner in which recurring fixtures of the material world constitute a discourse between human and environmental spheres, To the Lighthouse contributes to the growing assemblage of eco-critical literature.
  
  In her 2012 article States of Suspension: Trans-corporeality at Sea, University of Texas at Arlington professor Stacy Alaimo dismantles the contemporary global capitalist dichotomy of active consumers and passive commodities, in order to conceive the material interchanges that occur between humans and objects. Alaimo’s perspective is reinforced by American feminist theorist Karen Barad’s assertion that the individual human’s immersion in a “dynamic process of intra-activity” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) with the material world evokes our post-humanity. Essentially, this notion revises the traditional perspective of humans as makers and creators of the material world, instead focusing on the “(post)human” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) as a progressive model, which is continuously “part of the world in its becoming.”
  
  In To the Lighthouse, the ideas of Alaimo and Barad are reflected by the manner in which pieces of furniture enact as pervasive forces that infringe on the interiority of the human characters who utilise them. This is illustrated in a scene where Mrs. Ramsay sits on a chair whilst knitting. The standard chair is conventionally perceived as a human capitalist construct, in the sense that it is derived and created from features of the natural world – leather, metal, plastic, wood – and subsequently labeled in terms of its value in the economic marketplace. However, an examination of Woolf’s text questions the capacity of chairs to subversively escape the human-oriented role prescribed to them via their ability to expose seated subjects to unforeseen vantage points. For example, positioned on her chair, Mrs. Ramsay gazes at the beams of the lighthouse clashing against the vast, impenetrable ocean and is suddenly struck by the realization of, “[h]ow could any Lord have made this world […] [in which there is] no reason, no order, no justice.” (Woolf, 1927, p. 54) Mrs. Ramsay’s incidental epiphany highlights the potential of the material world – passive objects, generally considered submissive to the active consumer – to structure and restructure humanity’s place in the ecosphere. This coincides with the perspectives of Woolf, herself, who believed that genuine meanings existed behind the appearance of the material world, which occasionally revealed itself to “shock” humans, highlighting how “beneath the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we – I mean, all human beings – are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art.” (Chun, 2012, p. 53)
  
  Another way in which intra-activity between the human and the material can be conceived in To the Lighthouse is evident in the manner in which objects effectively chart the political, social and cultural events which inflict their human owners. American marine biologist Rachel Carson’s correlation “temporal and oceanic expanses” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 485) is employed by Alaimo to explicate the extent to which the human and non-human combine in affairs of “science, politics, ethics, and the mundane.” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 489) In To the Lighthouse, the manner in which the human protagonists’ attempts to understand each other are effectively articulated and modulated by the furniture that surrounds, structures and comforts them. This idea achieves further resonance via the potential of furniture to express the novel’s divergent themes of peace and conflict. For example, Woolf’s central message of human connections being undergirded by material values – most prevalent in Mrs. Ramsay’s belief that the family legacy will thrive via the inheritance of antiques and heirlooms – is subsumed by a table subversively scripting the social sphere of a Ramsay family dinner. In chapter seventeen of ‘The Window’, the wooden dining table transcends into a resolute patriarch holding the fragmented family, or disembodied “faces on both sides of table,” (Woolf, 1927, p. 79) together, thus achieving stability within the human social sphere. Moreover, this concept of furniture as family – the inanimate object as animate human – is reinforced by “bare legs of tables”, “empty wardrobes” and “mattresses” (Woolf, 1927, p. 105-106) evoking the disintegration of the Ramsay family via the material mirroring and mimicking human emotion. Furthermore, American academic Christopher Watkin’s delineation of objects as “co-producers” in human society, due to the role of “nonsocial, non-human resources” in the creation of “gods, machines, sciences, arts and styles” (Watkin, 2018) can be extended to toy with the idea of the material as a close family member of the human, thereby strengthening the mutual ties between furniture and the Ramsays in To the Lighthouse.
  
  Overall, a close reading of the role of furniture in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, in conjunction with a wide range of scholars, theorists and philosophers – such as Stacy Alaimo, Karen Barad, Rachel Carson and Christopher Watkin – highlights the manner in which the material autonomously infringes on the social sphere of humanity. Subsequently, the potential of the natural world to speak, comfort and strengthen the human subject effectively allows the environmental sphere to transcend into an 'eco-skeleton' which supports and structures the routine, existence and conscious of humanity, thus highlighting its invaluable role in our lives.
  
  REFERENCES
  
  Derrida, J. (1972). Chapter 11: Plato’s Pharmacy. Retrievable from http://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/derrida_platos_pharmacy.pdf.
  
  Chun, M. (2012). Between Sensation and Sign: The Secret Language of the Waves. Journal of Modern Literature 36 (1): 53-70. Doi: 10.2979/jmodelite.36.1.53.
  
  Watkin, C. (2018). To the Lighthouse Archives – Christopher Watkin. Retrievable from https://christopherwatkin.com/tag/to-the-lighthouse/.
  
  Woolf, V. (1927). To the Lighthouse. New York, United States: Oxford University Press.
Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse is acutely invested in highlighting the innate interconnectedness of the natural world and the human world. As part of her eco-critical approach, Woolf radically challenges human exceptionalism as she seeks to undermine the dichotomy of life and materiality (Lostoski 56). As such, Woolf explicitly engages with Jane Bennett’s theory of Vital Materialism and Bill Brown’s concept of thing power to liberate nonhuman entities from the constraints of anthropocentric values and create an equitable space for them in the foreground of her narrative. In the “Time Passes”, Woolf subversively omits the inclusion of human characters to focus her attention on the nonhuman elements that inhabit the “empty” Ramsay house. In describing the house as “empty”, Woolf paradoxically appeals to readers’ anthropocentric bias by way of challenging their human-centred perspective. She effectively does so when describing the furniture pieces, demonstrating the vitality of inanimate objects that continue to thrive and exist in the “empty” house: “hangings that flapped, wood that creaked, the bare legs of tables, saucepans and china already furred, tarnished, cracked.” Here, Woolf draws from Bennett’s theory of Vital Materialism to allow seemingly passive objects to exceed their human-imposed boundaries and limitations. Ultimately, Woolf revises the etymological meaning of the human constructed word “empty” by precariously suggesting the “empty” house is rather full of vitality. Moreover, Woolf continues to toy with this notion of thing power via her eco-diegetic representation of sunlight as an autonomous agent extending its unspoken influence on human sensibility. For example, Mrs Ramsay articulates that she feels deep injustice to “break up the shaft of sunlight, lying level across the floor”. In personifying the sunlight “lying” on the floor, Woolf’s aestheticisation of the natural world represents commodities as vibrant and spirited ‘things’ that are capable of transcending their human defined roles.

References:

Lostoski, Leanna. “"Imaginations of the Strangest Kind": The Vital Materialism of Virginia Woolf.” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, vol. 49, no. 1, 2016, pp. 53–74, JSTOR Journals, https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2016.0022.

Sarah Laanani (5260338)
Contents of this reply:
1. CLOSE READING CLOSE READING: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927)
  
  Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse, which charts the dissolution of the Ramsay family in twentieth century Britain, is widely heralded as a classic portrait of familial belonging and loss in the midst of World War I. However, employing the theoretical framework of ‘deconstruction’ – conceived by French semiotician Jacques Derrida in his seminal 1972 essay Plato’s Pharmacy (Derrida, 1972) – effectively eschews the traditional critical inclination towards a human-oriented focus of Woolf’s text, in favor of an eco-critical approach. A comprehensive and deconstructive analysis of To the Lighthouse, that is bereft of the textual intentions of its author, subsumes the popular anthropocentric focus on domestic drama between human actors, thus unveiling the influential and unconventional motif of furniture in the everyday lives of Woolf’s protagonists. By examining the manner in which recurring fixtures of the material world constitute a discourse between human and environmental spheres, To the Lighthouse contributes to the growing assemblage of eco-critical literature.
  
  In her 2012 article States of Suspension: Trans-corporeality at Sea, University of Texas at Arlington professor Stacy Alaimo dismantles the contemporary global capitalist dichotomy of active consumers and passive commodities, in order to conceive the material interchanges that occur between humans and objects. Alaimo’s perspective is reinforced by American feminist theorist Karen Barad’s assertion that the individual human’s immersion in a “dynamic process of intra-activity” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) with the material world evokes our post-humanity. Essentially, this notion revises the traditional perspective of humans as makers and creators of the material world, instead focusing on the “(post)human” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) as a progressive model, which is continuously “part of the world in its becoming.”
  
  In To the Lighthouse, the ideas of Alaimo and Barad are reflected by the manner in which pieces of furniture enact as pervasive forces that infringe on the interiority of the human characters who utilise them. This is illustrated in a scene where Mrs. Ramsay sits on a chair whilst knitting. The standard chair is conventionally perceived as a human capitalist construct, in the sense that it is derived and created from features of the natural world – leather, metal, plastic, wood – and subsequently labeled in terms of its value in the economic marketplace. However, an examination of Woolf’s text questions the capacity of chairs to subversively escape the human-oriented role prescribed to them via their ability to expose seated subjects to unforeseen vantage points. For example, positioned on her chair, Mrs. Ramsay gazes at the beams of the lighthouse clashing against the vast, impenetrable ocean and is suddenly struck by the realization of, “[h]ow could any Lord have made this world […] [in which there is] no reason, no order, no justice.” (Woolf, 1927, p. 54) Mrs. Ramsay’s incidental epiphany highlights the potential of the material world – passive objects, generally considered submissive to the active consumer – to structure and restructure humanity’s place in the ecosphere. This coincides with the perspectives of Woolf, herself, who believed that genuine meanings existed behind the appearance of the material world, which occasionally revealed itself to “shock” humans, highlighting how “beneath the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we – I mean, all human beings – are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art.” (Chun, 2012, p. 53)
  
  Another way in which intra-activity between the human and the material can be conceived in To the Lighthouse is evident in the manner in which objects effectively chart the political, social and cultural events which inflict their human owners. American marine biologist Rachel Carson’s correlation “temporal and oceanic expanses” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 485) is employed by Alaimo to explicate the extent to which the human and non-human combine in affairs of “science, politics, ethics, and the mundane.” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 489) In To the Lighthouse, the manner in which the human protagonists’ attempts to understand each other are effectively articulated and modulated by the furniture that surrounds, structures and comforts them. This idea achieves further resonance via the potential of furniture to express the novel’s divergent themes of peace and conflict. For example, Woolf’s central message of human connections being undergirded by material values – most prevalent in Mrs. Ramsay’s belief that the family legacy will thrive via the inheritance of antiques and heirlooms – is subsumed by a table subversively scripting the social sphere of a Ramsay family dinner. In chapter seventeen of ‘The Window’, the wooden dining table transcends into a resolute patriarch holding the fragmented family, or disembodied “faces on both sides of table,” (Woolf, 1927, p. 79) together, thus achieving stability within the human social sphere. Moreover, this concept of furniture as family – the inanimate object as animate human – is reinforced by “bare legs of tables”, “empty wardrobes” and “mattresses” (Woolf, 1927, p. 105-106) evoking the disintegration of the Ramsay family via the material mirroring and mimicking human emotion. Furthermore, American academic Christopher Watkin’s delineation of objects as “co-producers” in human society, due to the role of “nonsocial, non-human resources” in the creation of “gods, machines, sciences, arts and styles” (Watkin, 2018) can be extended to toy with the idea of the material as a close family member of the human, thereby strengthening the mutual ties between furniture and the Ramsays in To the Lighthouse.
  
  Overall, a close reading of the role of furniture in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, in conjunction with a wide range of scholars, theorists and philosophers – such as Stacy Alaimo, Karen Barad, Rachel Carson and Christopher Watkin – highlights the manner in which the material autonomously infringes on the social sphere of humanity. Subsequently, the potential of the natural world to speak, comfort and strengthen the human subject effectively allows the environmental sphere to transcend into an 'eco-skeleton' which supports and structures the routine, existence and conscious of humanity, thus highlighting its invaluable role in our lives.
  
  REFERENCES
  
  Derrida, J. (1972). Chapter 11: Plato’s Pharmacy. Retrievable from http://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/derrida_platos_pharmacy.pdf.
  
  Chun, M. (2012). Between Sensation and Sign: The Secret Language of the Waves. Journal of Modern Literature 36 (1): 53-70. Doi: 10.2979/jmodelite.36.1.53.
  
  Watkin, C. (2018). To the Lighthouse Archives – Christopher Watkin. Retrievable from https://christopherwatkin.com/tag/to-the-lighthouse/.
  
  Woolf, V. (1927). To the Lighthouse. New York, United States: Oxford University Press.

This page is referenced by:

Tension and Hybridity - An Eco-Complex Investigation - By Eva Caley

When reading through the living book, the first real connection I made was between the marginal world’s close reading of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and the plant world's video, by Simon and Natalie, about plant blindness. There seemed a similar impulse in the two of them to investigate what it might be to consider the ecosphere in a holistic way. In the video, Simon and Natalie are urging us to see cherry blossom trees in all their complex symbolism to humanity. They discuss how cherry blossoms have historically been used in both love songs and war songs, to represent Japan as a country as its national flower, and to represent Japanese patriotism. The mode of representation even flips when they discuss how, instead of using the cherry blossom as a symbol to represent something, the sakura sakura song is used to represent the blooming of cherry blossoms in spring. There is, therefore, a complexity to the cherry blossom’s position within human discourse.

The Marginal Worlds group’s close reading is, essentially, expanding on the Plant World's deconstructionist idea of plant-blindness to include non-living things. By investigating the furniture in To the Lighthouse, they engage in how the ecosphere around humanity can play a role in structuring an ecosystem dynamically, rather than passively as the standard narrative of environment says. They also introduce an idea of a discourse, or a tension, here. The same tension, of blossoms representing themselves and other things, and being represented by man-made things, seems to occur in To the Lighthouse. The key difference however, is that rather than acting as passive symbols, as the cherry blossom does in Simon and Natalie’s video, Woolf works to allow furniture “to structure and restructure humanity’s place in the ecosphere”. The furniture in the work is made by things derived from natural materials, and they are man-made, but they act as an element of the environment to evoke disintegration and hold emotion, particularly when the country is at war. What they call “the material mirroring and mimicking human emotion” is a two way dynamic, and occurs in Simon and Natalie’s video too.

This interplay between human and non-human, living and non-living, reminded me of the hybridity evoked by the animal worlds cluster, in their photo-essay on the chimera. At first this seems a bit of an odd leap, but there seemed an interesting power dynamic at play that mirrored these tensions between human, plant and non-living environmental elements. The tensions in the chimera photo essay, however, seemed to result not in a mutual shaping of action and identity as occurs in relationships between plants and non-living things and humans; instead, is results in a merging of human and non-human, or a merging of animals.

At what point does one call the hybrid mouse-rats a new thing? The same question can be applied to the pig heart (is it a human heart if it’s grown inside a pig?) and the Piccinini sculpture (this must, surely, be called a new thing). It seems that when the boarders between things are less able to be delineated, such as between animals, the tensions result in an uncanny blurring of existence, a hybrid being and a new being all in one.

This tension between boundaries seems to reach its peak in the striking images from Amelia and Bridget’s film, where they have taken ice in the shape of hands and placed them in nature to let them melt. This work recalls a local artist from my hometown, Townsville, who made sculptures out of ice and then placed them outside in the North Queensland heat. As they melted they made new shapes, and their form changed like the hands in the video. At what point to we delineate between these things as a sculpture, or as a hand? As ice? As water? At what point does it stop being a man-made thing, and simply become a thing in the landscape. The hybridity of the previous examples makes me wonder if these attributes are mutually exclusive.

Therefore, my last link takes us back to the work Ella and I produced over the first 9 weeks of semester. We developed the term eco-complex in order to discuss exactly these tensions between representation and actuality, and between all elements of the ecosphere, not just humanity and nature. There is an emphasis in eco-complex work on understanding nature symbols in human narratives, something I have focused on in my major creative work, and also an attempt to understand nature’s ability to exist beyond the binary, in a way that allows everything to be both things, all things, and one thing simultaneously.

This page has paths:

This page has replies:

This page is referenced by:

This page references: