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"To the Lighthouse" . . .is a novel of interrelationships among people, and
though there are major and minor characters, the major ones are more truly, the means for giving to the story its harmony and unity, its focal
points. so, what sports the major characters are the minor characters because,
Minor characters in To the Lighthouse have a specific functional role. Their main role is to present the central
characters more clearly and bring them to the foreground.
* So with her great skill in characterization Virginia Woolf
has clearly revealed the main traits of this minor
but important character in the very first
chapter of this novel.
* Macalister Character
* his character and function in the novel
* His boy.
* One of the gusts in the Ramasys house.
* He is a poet, succeed after the war.
* Critics relate him to the see god Proteus.
To Mrs. Ramasy:
* Frustrated her desire to give.
* Makes her aware of her true self.
* William is friends with Mr. Ramsay,
and thus he warrants an invitation to the
summer house. The man is a childless
widower who clearly adores Mrs. Ramsay while maintaining a friendship with Lily. His perspective on Mr. Ramsay is especially valuable because he knew Mr. Ramsay in his youth, before a wife and eight kids.
To Lily Briscoe:
* He sees past, present, future.
* Knows her unspoken question.
* Help her to gain her artistic vision.
* Although Mrs. Ramsay often feels bored
to listen to Mr. Bankes’ dull talks about
vegetables and English cooks, yet her sympathetic heart has a soft corner for this childless unhappy widower. She pities him and has specially invited him to dinner .And out of sympathy and pity for this poor scientist.
* Mrs. Ramsay strongly feels that Mr. Bankes
must marry Lily as they have so many things
in common. She must do something to
bring them together. She considers him to
be the kindest of men and with Mr.
Ramsay she also takes him to be the
first scientist of his time.
* Charles Tansley is a student of Mr. Ramsay’s who
was invited to the house for the summer.
* Tansley is a prickly and unpleasant man who harbors deep insecurities regarding his humble background. *He often insults other people, particularly women such as Lily. His bad behavior, like Mr. Ramsay’s, is motivated by his need for reassurance.
* Tansley is a confirmed egoist and suffers from perversity of temperament so much so that his power to assert himself and irritate and disappoint others can reach the point of destruction. “When they talked about something interesting then what they complained of about Charles Tansley was that until he had turned the whole thing round and made it somehow reflect himself and disparage them, put them all on edge somehow with his said way peeling the flesh and blood off everything, he was not satisfied.”
To Mr.Ramasy:
* Opposites.
* Does not require sympathy.
* He does not dwell on his failures.
* The great thing about Mr. Bankes is
that unlike Mr. Ramsay he never holds a very high opinion about himself nor does he care if his work and achievements are going to last long or not. He is never worried about the future, as he knows that changes of taste in literature is but natural. And then Mr. Bankes never requires any undue sympathy or assurance from anybody in this world. Lily’s long interior monologue in the third Chapter of the first part enables us to enter into the inner life of these two characters
so that we may have a clear picture
of the two different personalities.
Some of the important traits of Tansley’s character is clearly revealed during the course of the dinner party. As an embodiment of egoism he keenly desires that all conversation is centred round him. While others talk about different things he thinks they are all talking rot .So long as he is unable to assert himself, everything seems to him silly, superficial, flimsy. As he feels most women look down upon him, he cannot but think: “Women made civilization impossible with all their charm’, all their silliness.” And when Lily tries to pull his leg his vanity is wounded. He behaves rudely with her. And when the same Lily gives him a chance to assert and impress himself he talks and talks purely about himself
for long. The egoist relieves himself of his
egotism.
party.
“You have greatness, she continued, but Mr. Ramsay has none of it. He is petty, selfish, vain, egotistical, he is spoilt, he is a tyrant, he wears Mrs. Ramsay to death; but he has what you (she addressed Mr. Bankes) have not; a fiery unworldliness; he knows nothing about trifles, he loves dogs and his children. He has eight, you have none.”
* At last , Mr. Bankes does
very little in this novel, but still
his part is not a very insignificant one.
* From his talks and discussions with Lily we are able to know a lot about the personality of the Ramsays, especially that of Mr. Ramsay, when he tells Lily, how their boyhood friendship ceased on a stretch of road in Westmoreland and what a great change came on him after his marriage, we have Mr. Ramsay seen clearly through the eyes of William Bankes. In fact we may say
that Mr. Bankes combined with Lily forms
a kind of Greek chorus to comment on
the personality of the Ramsays.
Just as Mrs. Ramsay protects her husband, builds up his self-esteem, so she feels compelled to protect Mr. Tansley, who is an odious “little atheist” .
Mrs. Ramsay is compelled to protect the opposite sex even though she does not understand why.
It is odd that Mrs. Ramsay’s relationship with Mr. Tansley is described much sooner than her relationship with her own husband. In fact, Woolf purposely highlights this relationship first because she wants to show that even though Mrs. Ramsay seriously dislikes Mr. Tansley, she bends to his will in order to make him feel more masculine, more important. Her thoughts reveal that she dislikes how he bullies the children, especially James:
“There’ll be no landing at the Lighthouse tomorrow,” said Charles Tansley, clapping his hands together as he stood at the window with her husband. Surely he had said enough. She wished they would both leave her and James alone and go on talking.
Mrs. Ramsay is both ambivalent with her husband and Charles,
who constantly shatter James’ hopes about visiting the
lighthouse. Mrs. Ramsay is always trying to protect
her son.
* As they try to communicate,
Mrs. Ramsay admits her ignorance to
the reader; she has no idea what Charles is
babbling about:
“Mrs. Ramsay did not quite catch the meaning, only the
words, here and there…dissertation…fellowship…
readership….lectureship. She could not follow the ugly
academic jargon, that rattled itself off so glibly.
Of course, Mrs. Ramsay does not tell Charles that she does not understand him, which, conventionally, would be rude. Instead,
she patiently listens to him talk and fakes interest.
Likewise, Tansley does not care if Mrs. Ramsay agrees with him or not. He is more concerned about making himself sound smart, regardless of how it perpetuates Mrs. Ramsay as the uneducated
one.
* The irony of their relationship lies in the miscommunication
of it. Tansley feels that he has reached a special level of
understanding with Mrs. Ramsay, heightened by their walk
to town. In actuality, Mrs. Ramsay cannot stand his
pompous attitude. Again, after their walk, she reasserts
how he is an “odious little man”
His actions at the dinner party demonstrate his
insecurity. "He had come down in his ordinary clothes. He had not got any dress clothes" . Because Tansley is too poor to afford nice clothing, he feels very self-conscious. "He felt extremely, even physically, uncomfortable. He wanted somebody to give him a chance of asserting himself" . It should be noted that Tansley’s perversity, his irritating egoism are very much due to his bitter struggle for existence and a miserable past. And when he gets the first chance of walking with a beautiful woman, Mrs. Ramsay and get some recognition and sympathy from her, he becomes emotional and tells her almost everything about his past life. We come to know that his father was a poor shopkeeper. He himself had paid his own way since he was thirteen. Often he could not have a great-coat in winter and he smoked the cheapest tobacco. And as a student he worked very hard—seven hours a day. So Mrs. Ramsay’s heart melts, although he
seems to be an awful prig, an insufferable
bore. She would see that her children
do not mock at him
* Tansley greatly admires Ramsay, and hopes to
impress him.
Ultimately, Tansley is driven to succeed in life and
overcome his humble background. Although the Ramsay's
are not rich, Tansley admires Mr. Ramsay and considers him successful enough to follow his career path.
* When Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay argue about whether the weather will be suitable for a trip to the lighthouse, Tansley rushes to Mr. Ramsay's defense, saying that the wind is " 'due west'…that is to say, the wind blew in the worst possible direction for landing at the Lighthouse" . Tansley will often repeat things that Mr. Ramsay says verbatim. "All these young men parodied her husband, she reflected; he said it would rain; they said it would be a positive tornado" .
Because Tansley admires Mr. Ramsay and desires to become
more like him, Tansley adopts Ramsay's viewpoints in
all areas of life.