The Voice of the Author

Abstract

In To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf offers the reader no definite standpoint from which to interpret the fictional world and partake in the author’s control of it. As Auerbach pointed out in Mimesis: ‘She does not seem to bear in mind that she is the author and hence ought to know how matters stand with her characters.’¹ She never explains why Mrs Ramsay is sad. There is no voice murmuring, as there is at the end of Vanity Fair: ‘Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or having it, is satisfied?’² When Lily Briscoe mourns Mrs Ramsay what is communicated is not the understanding which emerges from the author’s interpretation of her own text, but the reeling dizziness of trying to understand, in which writer and reader are equally caught up:

Was she crying then for Mrs Ramsay, without being aware of any unhappiness? She addressed old Mr Carmichael again. What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air?³