<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> This article examines art as it is depicted ekphrastically or merely suggested in two scenes from Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse, to critique its androcentric assumptions by appeal to art criticism, feminist theories of the gaze, and critique of the en-gendering of discursive practices in the West. The first scene concerns Mrs Ramsay’s artinformed appreciation of her daughter’s dish of fruit for the dinner party. I interpret the fruit composition as akin to Dutch still life paintings; nevertheless, the scene’s aestheticisation of everyday life also betrays visual affinities with the female nude genre. Mrs Ramsay’s critical appraisal of ways of looking at the fruit - her own as an art connoisseur’s, and Augustus Carmichael’s as a voracious plunderer’s - receives a philosophical slant in the other scene I examine, Lily Briscoe’s nonfigurative painting of Mrs Ramsay. The portrait remediates artistically the reductive thrust of traditional philosophy as espoused by Mr Ramsay and, like the nature of reality in philosophical discourse, yields to a “scientific” explication to the uninformed viewer. Notwithstanding its feminist reversal of philosophy’s classic hierarchy (male knower over against female object), coterminous with Lily’s early playful grip on philosophy, the scene ultimately fails to offer a viable non-androcentric outlook on life.</p></abstract>

This article examines art as it is depicted ekphrastically or merely suggested in two scenes from Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse, to critique its androcentric assumptions by appeal to art criticism, feminist theories of the gaze, and critique of the en-gendering of discursive practices in the West. The first scene concerns Mrs Ramsay’s artinformed appreciation of her daughter’s dish of fruit for the dinner party. I interpret the fruit composition as akin to Dutch still life paintings; nevertheless, the scene’s aestheticisation of everyday life also betrays visual affinities with the female nude genre. Mrs Ramsay’s critical appraisal of ways of looking at the fruit - her own as an art connoisseur’s, and Augustus Carmichael’s as a voracious plunderer’s - receives a philosophical slant in the other scene I examine, Lily Briscoe’s nonfigurative painting of Mrs Ramsay. The portrait remediates artistically the reductive thrust of traditional philosophy as espoused by Mr Ramsay and, like the nature of reality in philosophical discourse, yields to a “scientific” explication to the uninformed viewer. Notwithstanding its feminist reversal of philosophy’s classic hierarchy (male knower over against female object), coterminous with Lily’s early playful grip on philosophy, the scene ultimately fails to offer a viable non-androcentric outlook on life.

Food for Thought: Of Tables, Art and Women in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

American, British and Canadian Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

This article examines art as it is depicted ekphrastically or merely suggested in two scenes from Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse, to critique its...

Food for Thought: Of Tables, Art and Women in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

Published Online: Jan 16, 2018

Page range: 147 - 168

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/abcsj-2017-0023

Keywords
To the Lighthouse, en-gendering (Teresa de Lauretis), gaze (Laura Mulvey), aestheticisation of everyday life, art, pronkstilleven (“banquet still life” painting), “still life of disorder” (Norman Bryson), philosophy, orientation (Edmund Husserl)

© ABC Studies, Journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Food for Thought: Of Tables, Art and Women in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

Published Online: Jan 16, 2018

Page range: 147 - 168

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/abcsj-2017-0023

KeywordsTo the Lighthouse, en-gendering (Teresa de Lauretis), gaze (Laura Mulvey), aestheticisation of everyday life, art, pronkstilleven (“banquet still life” painting), “still life of disorder” (Norman Bryson), philosophy, orientation (Edmund Husserl)

© ABC Studies, Journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
To the Lighthouse, en-gendering (Teresa de Lauretis), gaze (Laura Mulvey), aestheticisation of everyday life, art, pronkstilleven (“banquet still life” painting), “still life of disorder” (Norman Bryson), philosophy, orientation (Edmund Husserl)