So we're going to talk about certain characters in the book just to underscore what they're to represent for us in Woolf's understanding of intimacy and knowledge. There are lots of other angles in this book. There are lots of other ways of approaching this book that are at, at least as equally interesting, but we, we'll, we'll stay with our modern, post-modern themes as we, as we talk about to the Lighthouse. Let's start with Mister Tansley. He's usually called just Tansley, like Mr. And Mrs. Ramsay who are, again, go without first names throughout the novel, they are defined in their marriage. Tansley is, is, is we're always reminded that he is, he is poor. That he, he comes from the lower class. And he's always reminding people. He, he's, he's proud, right. To, to not be a rich guy. And, and, and at, at Wesley when I talked to my students about this. What how does this relate to social class on campus, let's say, at a university where lots of our students are on financial aid, a lot of them don't pay tuition because we have a scholarship program and but still when they get here just how do social classes appear and, and it does. I mean, there are some people able to do more things than others because they have more money. But on the whole social life on a campus mitigates many of the displays of wealth that you would find in other, in other places in this country and elsewhere. And in Virginia Woolf's time, in England, a social class was much more obvious and for Tansley it's obvious because people from the upper classes, as he would see them people from the upper classes have an income independent of their labor, that's really important. In other words and this goes back right to Aristrocracy, that aristrocrats don't have to work for their income and, and, that, that their income comes to them without labor, that's what it means to be a noble. And by the time we get to the beginning of the 20th century, people who have independent incomes have a certain freedom, right? They don't have to work for the money. The money comes to them out of a trust fund or out of rents or something like that. Tansley ain't like that. Tansley is the guy who says, I work for everything, I struggle for everything. I'm the guy, I'm, I have a, see this shoulder, there's a chip on it for a good reason, because I know what I have to do to support myself. And I'll support myself, Tansley says, because I'm really smart and hardworking. And I'm, I'm a student of Mister Ramsay. I want to be a philosopher, I want to understand things. And I have to work hard because I don't come from money. He'd always be the person to remind you that. Why do we call him an atheist? I think that's the interesting thing about Tansley, they call him the atheist. And I, I, I think there, there are several reasons. The one I want you to focus on is that Tansley doesn't believe in stuff. He just doesn't believe in things. You probably know people like that. You probably know people who they, they believe in everything, you know, if somebody comes along with some crazy idea they, oh, that's an interesting idea, I believe in that, some cure for the common cold or some short cut to a new place, they believe, they are credulous people. And then, there are other people who are really, they think they're so smart because they never believe in anything. Tansley is that second kind of person. He's the kind of person who, who is, his intelligence shows him why other people are believing on false premises. He's a skeptic, if you will. And he's an atheist. As the kids call him the Ramsey kids call him the atheist and they do that because they, he is then an enlightenment figure that's, that's for our purposes right. When atheism and enlightenment go together, they're like milk and cookie. So Tansley, Tansley is the, the, the enlightenment figure. Not as, as vain glorious, not as imposing as Mr. Ramsey. But nonetheless the person who will show you're, you're foolish, you're foolish to believe, you're foolish to believe. I was an atheist, Mister Tansley. Why an atheist? They called him the atheist. Why do they call him, is it a joke, right? But why do they call, why do they call him the atheist? He doesn't believe in anything. This is what, this is what philosophy in education produced in a certain kind of person, Woolf thinks, incapacity for belief. Which is a terrible mood. You know, we, in our, in our age, we talk about critical thinking as being so important, how teaching how to be critical. And so and so that they actually will never fall for something that somebody else is selling them, that is, in a in a less than sound way. But what happens is you're so good at being ironic or critical or distant is you never have the capacity to like anything or to have strong affection for things because strong affection is usually not based in reason. And Mister Tansley is an atheist because he just won't believe them. And that is an impoverishment. The other key person I want to talk a little bit about right now is Lily, the artist. And what, what kind of artist is Lily? Lily is a painter, Lily is a painter. And she is often the, the voice of Virginia Woolf int he novel. She's a, but it's interesting, isn't it, that Virginia Woolf has the artist in the, in the form of a painter. Her, Virginia Woolf's sister was a, a painter. What else do we know about her? What else do we know about her? We know that she, she has a hard time in the society. She can turn on the charm when she has to. She can connect to other people, but she has a had time in society and she has a particularly difficult time with men. She, she gets impatient with men, with their need for attention, for compliments for what Virginia Woolf called sympathy. Lily, Lily wants to do her art. She doesn't want to have to please people. She doesn't want to have to look pretty. She doesn't want to have to act in a certain way. She wants to make her art. She wants to make her art. She's trying to get it right. And getting it right for her as a painter means finding the proper relation, the proper distance to the object, to the, or to the, the thing that she's trying to depict. And that, I think, is an important facet of why Virginia Woolf makes her artist, Lily, a painter is because so much about a painter is finding, finding the appropriate distance. Right? You go in and out of focus, right, I could do that, right? And, and for Lily, she's always trying to find what is the appropriate distance? And that, for Virginia Woolf is such a powerful metaphor. How do you connect to other people, do you, do you, do you, like James, do you want to be submerged in your mother? Do you want to just merge and become one? That's, that could be disastrous, right? It could lead you to psychosis, if you just lose your complete identity in someone. Alright. But if you're just distant and aloof and never connect to anybody, that's a lonely and, and thin existence. How do you find the right place in relation to other people and in relation to other objects? That's the painterly problem. And is the human problem for Virginia, Virginia Woolf, it's the human problem. How do we connect to others, what is intimacy and how do we achieve it without losing ourselves or submerging someone else? Let's talk about Mister Ramsay, Mister Ramsay, he's such a interesting figure, right? He, he strides around the, the, the, the, the house right on the, the coast there and he's, you know, he's chewing on his pipe and he's cogitating and he's trying to understand the world and understand knowledge. And, and so, doing he seems blind to lots of things around him. And then, suddenly, he kind of wakes up and sees them again. And Mister, Mister Ramsay is, is, is loved and he is hated. He arouses strong emotions. Let me, Let me let me just read you a page. This is from page 31 of the Harcourt edition. It's the second page of chapter six. Mister Ramsay is saying to his wife, there wasn't the slightest chance they could go to the lighthouse tomorrow, Mr. Ramsay snapped that out irascibly. How did he know, she asked. The wind often changed, Mrs. Ramsay, say I'll just, the wind can change, which is true, although, all the indications are that it won't. And then Mister Ramsay, the extraordinary irrationality of her remark, the folly of women's minds, enraged, enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered and now, now, she flew in the face of facts, made his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies. He stamped his foot on the stone step. Damn you, he said. But what had she said? Simply that it might be nice tomorrow, that it might be fine tomorrow. So, it might. Not with the barometer falling and the wind due west. Mister Ramsay, and then, the next paragraph. We're not told who's thinking, who's, who's, who's seeing this, it just switch points of view. To pursue truth with such astonishing lack on consideration of other people's feelings. To rend the thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There was nothing to be said. This is a very important thing for Missus Ramsey. There was nothing to be said. Some things you should just know by her, her presence. Mister Ramsey stood by her in silence. Very humbly, at length, he said that he would step over and ask the Coastguards if she liked. There was no one who she reverenced as she reverenced him. And this is a little passage in this glorious novel, but it shows you the dynamic of these two people. Right? She's like, well, the wind could change, it could be nice, it's happened before. And Mister Ramsey would go, oh my god, this happened once out of a million times. How can you fill someone with false hope? And Missus Ramsey is thinking, how could you so brutally step on somebody's hope? And she acquiesces, I suppose you can say, or she seems to acquiesces. She bends her head, says let it, okay, let this, let this mad, monster of knowledge rage on. But then, Mister Ramsay, seeing her there, says, well, I guess I can ask somebody if it really will be nice tomorrow. [laugh] He let's somebody knows. The clouds are gathering. And then, she's filled with love that he's willing to bend even what he knows. That's this dynamic of this novel. Mister Ramsey is a philosopher and, and what kind of a philosopher is he? He is an analytic philosopher, and what does philosophy has to do with it? Someone asks, I think it's Lily who says, what kind of philosophy does, does Mister Ramsay do, and one of the kids says, he's the kind, he, he wonders whether or he, he investigates tables and, and, and, and things like that, that, that is he, he wants to know whether things are really there when no one' s there. I, I just knocked on the, on the table where our microphone is sitting on. You know or this, is there a sound in the room when no one's here listening? Is there a table when no one's here to sit at the table? These are the questions, they are ontological and epistemological questions that Mister Ramsey worries about.
