Virginia Woolf’s Ruined House, a Literary Complex

Abstract

Virginia Woolf’s central section in To the Lighthouse hinges upon the oxymoric nature of ruin, and ponders over disappearance. The family house is victim of a time that passes irremediably, yet remains and endures. In Woolf’s ‘elegy’, the Ramsays’ ruined and empty house is pictured as a transitional spectral place (visible/invisible, light/darkness, life/death), articulating waste and decay and the progressive vanishing of an older order and heritage with the promise of reconstruction through metamorphosis.We will see how through the ramshackle house Woolf reflects upon war (destruction, dislocation, fragmentation), mourning (decay, dust, darkness) and Time (memory). The text is born out of a reflexion about duration. Time is here a question put to humanity and literature, a question without definite answer, but rather a perpetual reworking of the question. We will see that Woolf uses the ruined house as a structural motif in To the Lighthouse to try and express the inexpressible in troubled times (traumatic aftermath of WWI). The ruin becomes a lieu de mémoire through striking images (influence of photography and cinema linked to questions of time and remembrance), a place of resistance too, underlining the crucial function of art when a whole civilisation is threatened by destruction

Keywords

• V. Woolf
• To the Lighthouse
• death
• disappearance
• lieu de mémoire
• ruins