I've always felt that Mr. Ramsay is the better parent. Our first introduction to him is on page four: "He was incapable of untruth; never tampered with a fact; never altered a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, least of all his own children, who, sprung from his loins, should be aware from childhood that life is difficult; facts uncompromising; and the passage to that fabled land where our brightest hopes are extinguished, our frail barks founder in darkness (here Mr. Ramsay would straighten his back and narrow his little blue eyes upon the horizon), one that needs, above all, courage, truth, and the power to endure." He is honest and knows that his children need to be strong in order to succeed in life. That, I think, is a better preparation than Mrs. Ramsay's cover-ups.
His children have very ambivalent feelings about him, James especially. "Had there been an axe handy, or a poker, any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it" (4). These are James' thoughts as a child of six after his father has dashed his plans to go to the lighthouse. It is a symbol that James repeats while in an "impotent rage" ten years later, sitting in the boat going to the lighthouse at his father's insistence. James claims to himself that he will never be like his father (184).
However, I think that James is very similar to his father. At six James wants his mother's full attention and is jealous when his father interferes. "By looking fixedly at the page, he hoped to make him move on; by pointing his finger at a word, he hoped to recall his mother's attention, which, he knew angrily, wavered instantly his father stopped" (37). Ten years later James has convinced Cam to make a compact "to resist tyranny to the death," the tyrant being, of course, their father. But Cam is having difficulty with the pact. She, like Mrs. Ramsay ten years earlier, is being torn between James and Mr. Ramsay.
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