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Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Key Examples in To the Lighthouse
The Window, 3
Explanation and Analysis—The Waves:
The sea is a recurring symbol in To the Lighthouse, and a recurring motif that establishes this symbol is the waves on the shore of Skye. Woolf frequently invokes waves as comparands in metaphor and simile, as in Chapter 3 of "The Window":
...the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, 'I am guarding you - I am your support,' but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life...
Related Themes:
The Window, 4
Explanation and Analysis—The Pretty Pretty Hen:
In its great catalogue of human relationships, To the Lighthouse contains many accounts of interpersonal tensions. The friendship between Mr. Bankes and Mr. Ramsay is no exception, and at one point in Chapter 4 of "To the Window," Bankes recalls the very moment it all went south. This moment makes a subtle metaphor about Mr. Ramsay's domestic role as husband and father:
Unlock with LitCharts A+...this was suddenly interrupted, William Bankes remembered (and this must refer to some actual incident), by a hen, straddling her wings out in protection of a covey of little chics, upon which Ramsay, stopping, pointed his stick and said 'Pretty — pretty,' an odd illumination into his heart, Bankes had thought of it, which showed his simplicity, his sympathy with humble things; but it seemed to him as if their friendship had ceased, there, on that stretch of road. After that, Ramsay had married.
Related Themes:
The Window, 5
Explanation and Analysis—Classical Allusions:
Mrs. Ramsay transfixes many of the characters in To the Lighthouse, who, in turn, comprehend and appreciate her beauty in each their own way. In Chapter 5 of "The Window," Mr. Bankes alludes to classical artwork as he makes a metaphorical comparison between Mrs. Ramsay and an ancient sculpture:
Unlock with LitCharts A+'Nature has but little clay,' said Mr. Bankes once, hearing her voice on the telephone, and much moved by it though she was only telling him a fact about a train, 'like that of which she molded you.' He saw her a the end of the line, Greek, blue-eyed, straight-nosed. How incongruous it seems to be telephoning to a woman like that. The Graces assembling seemed to have joined hands in the meadows of asphodel to compose that face.
Related Themes:
The Window, 7
Explanation and Analysis—Mr. vs. Mrs. Ramsay:
In To the Lighthouse, Mr. Ramsay constantly seeks praise and sympathy from the women in his life—particularly from Mrs. Ramsay, while she is alive. In Chapter 7 of "The Window," the reader sees James's experience of his father's neediness through both metaphor and simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+...and James, as he stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy. Filled with her words, like a child who drops off satisfied, he said, at last, looking at her with humble gratitude, restored, renewed, that he would take a turn; he would watch the children playing cricket.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Fisherman's Wife:
In Chapter 7 of "The Window," after a particularly intense altercation in which Mr. Ramsay desperately sought sympathy and praise from Mrs. Ramsay, Woolf depicts Mrs. Ramsay's recovery through metaphor and allusion:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Immediately, Mrs. Ramsay seemed to fold herself together, one petal closed in another, and the whole fabric fell in exhaustion upon itself, so that she had only strength enough to move her finger, in exquisite abandonment to exhaustion, across the page of Grimm's fairy story, while there throbbed through her, like the pulse in a spring which has expanded to its full width and now gently ceases to beat, the raptures of successful creation.
Related Themes:
The Window, 9
Explanation and Analysis—The Ramsay Portrait:
Throughout the novel, as characters come and go and even die, Lily Briscoe continues work on her painting of the Ramsays. She gets off to a rocky start, however, and conveys as much through a combination of imagery, metaphor, and allegory in Chapter 9 of "The Window":
Unlock with LitCharts A+She could have wept…. it was infinitely bad! She could have done it differently of course, the colour could have been thinned and faded; the shapes etherealized; that was how Paunceforte would have seen it. But then she did not see it like that. She saw the colour burning on a framework of steel; the light of a butterfly's wing lying upon the arches of a cathedral. Of all that only a few random marks scrawled upon the canvas remained. And it would never be seen… and there was Mr. Tansley whispering in her ear, 'Women can't paint, women can't write...'
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Explanation and Analysis—The Waves:
The sea is a recurring symbol in To the Lighthouse, and a recurring motif that establishes this symbol is the waves on the shore of Skye. Woolf frequently invokes waves as comparands in metaphor and simile, as in Chapter 3 of "The Window":
Unlock with LitCharts A+...the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, 'I am guarding you - I am your support,' but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life...
Related Themes:
The Window, 19
Explanation and Analysis—Mrs. Ramsay's Inner Ocean:
After the climactic dinner party in Chapter 19 of "The Window," Mrs. Ramsay gradually begins to reflect on the dinner conversation. She conveys her thoughts on the night through a beautiful combination of visual imagery and metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And she waited a little, knitting, wondering, and slowly those words they had said at dinner, 'the China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the honey bee,' began washing from side to side of her mind rhythmically, and as they washed, words, like little shaded lights, one red, one blue, one yellow, lit up in the dark of her mind...
Related Themes:
Time Passes, 2
Explanation and Analysis—The Dark Tide:
When the Ramsays leave the house in the beginning of "Time Passes," the rooms are plunged into darkness. In the beginning of Chapter 2, Woolf describes the steady onslaught of darkness using a potent combination of hyperbole, metaphor, and personification:
Unlock with LitCharts A+...with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creeping at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of drawers. Not only was furniture confounded; there was scarcely anything left of body or mind by which one could say 'This is he' or 'This is she.'
The Lighthouse, 11
Explanation and Analysis—Creative Machinations:
In Chapter 11 of "The Lighthouse," Lily reaches a new height of exasperation with her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay. She conveys this exasperation through metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Get that and start afresh; get that and start afresh; she said desperately, pitching herself firmly again before her easel. It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically one must force it on.
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