this presentation is about Fluidity versus Muscularity and lily's delemma in Woolf's To The Lighthouse.

2. • Muscular
• Having strong
• Strong, robust
• well developed
MuscularityFluidity
• Fluid:-
• Any substance which can
flow with ease
• To assume the shape of its
container
• in a state of flux
• subject to change
• moving smoothly

3. Mrs.Ramsay's daughters are presented as
Infidel & Manliness in girlish hearts"
There is tension is signaled in girls- pressure to
conform to Mother
Nancy & Rose - non existent in novel
Prue-dies from complete obedience to mother's
wishes

5. • No biological link with family
• Lily - Orphan
• Functions as an adopted but marginalised daughter
• in part 1, when Lily was painting, Mrs. Ramsay
thinks that "one could not take her painting
seriously"

6. • Similarly Julia & Leslie Stephan thought about
Virginia.
• She said to be incalculable & eccentric
• Fight against patriarchy
• Angel in the house

7. Gender oriented criticism by Melaine
Klein & Julia Kristeva
• Lily has long been regarded as secondary
character
• Lily statastically more present than
Mrs.Ramsay
• 37% Lily
• 21% Mrs.Ramsay calculated by Mitchell
Leaska

8. Lily's triumph & modest Hubris
• Confident about her own ability.
• Telling Mrs.Ramsay that marriage had not been a
success.
the wages of obedience is death, and the daughters
that reproduces to mothering to perfection, including
child bearing, already on her cheek the pallor of
death.
And even beauty is not everything.

9. Lily's Dilemma
• "Mrs.Ramsay! Mrs.Ramsay! She cried, feeling
the old horror come back- to want and want and
not to have.
• Inspite of Lily's progress on her way to
liberation, the negative mother image is making
a forceful return.

10. Deification of Mrs.Ramsay
Mrs.Ramsay as "an august shape", "The shape of
dome"
Metaphor of beehive- suggest the image of
archaic great mother- a figure which has often
worshipped in mountain shrines or represented
as a queen bee.
But the archaic great mother, presiding over life
and death, was always characterized by her
double nature.
Bee is symbol of the feminine potency of nature.

11. Woolf's Biograpgy
Radical ambivalence, echoing that of the
primordial feminine figure is found in Woolf
about her mother.
In 1934 diary she described her mother as
"hard....a very selfish woman-(who) hated
motherless girls."

12. Dinner Party
Mrs. Ramsay betrays similar ambivalence at
dinner party.
male characters in the novel enjoy their food
in an unproblematic, pleasurable way
female characters share Lily’s lack of
enthusiasm for food.
the daughters are shown looking up from
their plates

13.  the most important thing being the severity of
the mother.
• Mrs. Ramsay keeps watch on fruit dish &
refuses peer. Lily is glimpsed at looking at her
empty cup- the urgency is to evade the
pressure of Mr.Ramsay.
• Cam can't finish her sandwich.
• even milk drinking carries negative
connotation in book.

14. Criticism
• Luce Iragaray, attacks mother for being
however unwillingly, in the patriarchal system
of oppression.
• Margaret Whitford says " The food and
protection which mother offers bring not the
longed for nurturance, but a poisoned and
imprisoning embrace.

15. Last scene of completing painting
• At last, the empty space on the canvas has
been filled by a figure which no longer
generates anxiety, but appears full of
"goodness".
• Lily views this as a 'miracle'-an ecstacy, now
instead of the burst of triumph that marred
the previous experiences
• she can feel what Klein calls " gratitude".

16. conclusion
• To achieve equilibrium between fluid and the
muscular is the solution.