character sketch of lily briscoe in to the light house

character sketch of lily briscoe in to the light house

 

Character sketch of Lily Briscoe

Lily Briscoe is an unmarried painter in her forties. Lily is a dedicated and enthusiastic artist. She has also chosen to remain unmarried because marriage and family life are likely to interfere with her artistic endeavours.

Lily Briscoe is the medium through which the past is brought to bear on the present, and a great deal of light is shed on the other characters. Because Lily's imagination is visual and pictorial, vivid images from the past keep coming to mind.

Mr. Ramsay appears to Lily as "a scrubbed kitchen table" in her imagination. She once asked to Andrew regarding his dad's books.

He replied:

" Think of a kitchen table when you're not there,"

He also said about his father studies, "subject and object and the nature of reality."

What a strange way of looking at the world, Lily thinks.

Mr. Ramsay is compared to Bankes by her. She considers Mr. Bankes is a good person. He is more impersonal and refined than Mr. Ramsay. He lives just for science, without a wife or child. Mr. Bankes is a wonderful chef, whereas Mr. Ramsay is not.

After ten years, Lily returns to the summer cottage and discovers that much has changed. Mrs. Ramsay is no longer alive, and the house is in shambles. And through her stream of consciousness, the reader learns once again. She sits on the grass, trying to finish her painting. She is unable to do so since Mr. Ramsay is pleading for her pity. Mr. Ramsay waits with a dreadful groan. Lily, on the other hand, remains silent. She doesn't seem to understand what he expects from her. "What wonderful boots!" she says as she suddenly stares down at Mr. Ramsay's boots. He smiles and regains his cheerfulness. And then she is overcome with feelings for him. She can sense his loneliness, sadness, and goodness.

She begins to lose knowledge of external things as she paints, adding green and blues. The image of Mrs. Ramsay comes to his mind. she thinks how Mrs. Ramsay spread happiness around her.  

"...… little islands of meaning scattered here and there, created by persons like Mrs. Ramsay,....existing as music exists in the memory."

She continues to think of  the multiplicity of Mrs. Ramsay’s  personality. She reasoned that fifty pairs of eyes would not be enough to get around that woman. Lily concentrates her concentration on her painting once more. Suddenly, she notices someone sitting by it inside the house.

Despite the fact that Lily is not the main character, she experiences more visions than any other character in the novel. Lily is well aware of the frustrations of attempting to convey intense moments into art. Lily's art is based on visual forms and colors rather than words. She completes her painting after four separate flashes of inspiration over a long period of time. Her fear is heightened by the repeated memory of Charles Tensely's challenge that women cannot paint or write. At the start of the story, she begins her image of Mrs. Ramsay with these self-doubts.

The first vision comes before the novel's action begins. She is working on a view of their house for the first half of the book. She gets her second inspiration while eating dinner in the evening. She saw her picture in flesh and thought.

"Yes, I shall put the tree further in the middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space."

Everyone departs Ramsay's summer home before she can finish her painting. Mrs. Ramsay then dies in the chapter "time pass." Lily misplaces her photograph. A decade has passed. However, Mr. Ramsay unexpectedly reopens the house and asks the summer house's guests to return. She was confronted with the identical sight she had been depicting in her artwork. When Lily recalls her earlier vision of inspiration, she has her third:

"Suddenly she remembered,....there had been a little spring or leaf pattern on  the table cloth,....paint that picture now."

 

 She works continuously all day after a little subsequent problems. And Mr. Ramsay and his children arrive to the Lighthouse. And it looks as if she was reminded by something when pausing to tell Mr. Carmichael about the shift in Mr. Ramsay's character. She picks up her brush and returns to her canvas. She analyzes the house's steps. Mrs. Ramsay appeared in her mind's eye. For a short moment, she saw it clearly. She drew a line down the middle. She stated that it was completed.

"Yes ,.....I have had my vision."