We first see Lily at the end of chapter III in “The Window” section through Mrs. Ramsay’s rather patronizing eyes: She doesn’t believe Lily (who is 34) could ever marry--a major fault to Mrs. Ramsay; she likes Lily for her independent spirit; and she feels that “one could not take her painting very seriously” (17).
It is through Lily that Woolf explains the struggle of an artist, especially a female artist. In Britain women were barred from becoming members of the Royal Academy until 1922. It was through association with the Academy that artists were trained and where they could exhibit their works and get commissions for future works. In his “Academy Notes, 1875,” John Ruskin wrote, “I have always said no woman could paint.”
His comment is echoed by Mr. Tansley in To The Lighthouse: “How he sneered at women, ‘can’t paint, can’t write’” (91). The comment haunts Lily throughout the novel. “It was in that moment’s flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears…She often felt herself struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage…And it was then too, in the chill and windy way, as she began to paint, that there forced themselves upon her other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road” (19).
Lily knows that she does not live up to the cultural ideal of femininity and feels depressed and often guilty that her aspirations are not “natural.” We often see her vacillation between what she wants to be and what she thinks she ought to be according to her social milieu. It is also through her perspective that we learn about the period and the people surrounding her.
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