To the Light House and poems by Emily

1. Presented to:
Sir Abou Bakar
Presented By:
Jaweria Akram
09030602-033
BS(Hons)English
(VIII) Semester

2. ‘Comparison and contrast of the Theme of
Death in ‘To the Lighthouse’ by Virginia Woolf
and ‘I Felt a Funeral in My Brain’ as well as ‘I
Heard a Fly Buzz-When I Died’, poems by Emily
Dickinson’

3.  Emily Dickinson(1830-1886) and Virginia Woolf
(1882-1941) are held up as examples of
repressed women.
 The struggle for Virginia Woolf, a self-
proclaimed atheist whose life was shadowed by
death from an early age.

4.  “How could any Lord have made this world? she
asked…there is no reason, order, justice: but
suffering, death, the poor…[n]o happiness
lasted”.
To The Lighthouse

5. And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

6. And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then –
I felt a funeral in my brain

7. With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –
I Heard a Fly Buzz-When I Died

8.  Dust settles, books yellow, and silence ascends,
‘filling’ the rooms with emptiness. The stillness is
only occasionally interrupted by tinkling glass, or
a gust of wind.
To the Lighthouse
 And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
I felt a funeral in my brain

9.  I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –
I felt a funeral in my brain
 “[A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men
were blown up in France, among them Andrew
Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, was
instantaneous.]”
To the Lighthouse

10.  In short if Virgina Woolf gives life-in-death view,
Emily Dickinson talks about death of
consciousness, life after death, immortality of
soul and a satire on traditional Christian belief
on the other hand there are common aspects of
silence, isolation and attitude present in these
works.