The Modernist LiteratureParmar Dipali K.Roll No: 24Topic: Colour in “To The Lighthouse” Unit: 2 To The Lighthouse: Virginia WoolfM.A. Sem. 3Batch: 2015-’17Email Id: dipaliparmar247@gmail.comDepartment Of English (M.K.B.U.)

In To The

Introduction

• To The Lighthouse written by Virginia Woolf.

• Genre of the novel is Modernism.• The novel covers the Ramsey

family and their visit to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.

• Writer has used many symbols in her novel like, Lighthouse, Time, Painting, Colour etc.

• Here we will focus on “Colour” in “To The Lighthouse”.

Colour in “To The Lighthouse”• How boring this world would be without colors. • Colors not only make life more vibrant, but they can also be linked to

characteristics and emotions. • In Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, color is frequently used to enhance

the imagery and to better represent the characters and the overall setting.

Elderly & Sleepiness

• She uses the color grey to represent the elderly and sleepiness when she wrote,

“When she looked in the glass and saw her hair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty,”

“…as he was in a grey-green somnolence which embraced them all…”

Loneliness

• When she introduces Mr. Carmichael who is surrounded by loneliness, Woolf describes his cat’s yellow eyes. • The color yellow

represents loneliness and depression.

• When Woolf describes Mr Carmichael’s mustache;

“vivid streak of canary-yellow in moustache and bear that were other milk white.” • The milk white in his mustache is

cocaine, a drug that can be used by depressed lonely people in order to escape their pain.

• Here The Yellow Colour is used to show depression.

Depression

Determination & Honor• Woolf uses color imagery to describe a

painting which is an advertisement for a circus;

“brush revealed fresh legs, hoops, horses, glistening reds and blues…” • Each color in her description is full of

life and this can be observed by the use of the adjective ‘glistening’ to describe them.

• The color blue represents determination and the color red represents honor.

Mixture of Emotions & Characteristics

• At the end of the story, she brings all of the colors together in order to form a reality of what life is; a mixture of emotions and characteristics.

• Woolf does this through Mrs. Ramsay when she speaks about the lighthouse, the blue water, and her eyes becoming “greyer-eyed”.

• When she has old memories, her eyes turn grey because dreaming about old memories is a common elderly trait.

• She then describes what the artists would paint; “yellow boots, little boys and their round

red face gazing, and dipped the paint into a mound of pink or green, then painting sail boats in the water, a lemon color and the women on the beach were pink.” • The yellow sailboats show that each sailboat

is a vehicle that can carry a person away from others which can lead to independence or loneliness.

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• Pink represents happiness indicating that the women are happy and peaceful.

• The red shows that the little boys are filled with honor, although they wear yellow boots that show loneliness, or in this case perhaps independence.

• And, the green represents a memory that is preserved for old age.

Conclusion• Woolf displays color as a way of life. No matter where one goes, color is

consistently there, as emotions are. • To Woolf color is more than just a reflection of different size light rays; it

is a representation of what a person goes through every day. • Just as there are many different human characteristics, there are

thousands of different colors. • By Woolf’s use of color imagery, the reader is enlightened as Woolf

allows them to look into a kaleidoscope of characteristics and emotions, and lets them view the world from a different perspective and in a different light.

Reference• http://blablawriting.com/the-color-imagery-in-the-lighthouse-

by-virginia-woolf-essay

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