The Window: Knowledge of Other Minds in Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse

Abstract

then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they 1 Sitting to Mrs. Ramsay, close as she could (78), her arms around Mrs. Ramsay's knees, loving her intensely, Lily Briscoe wonders how to get inside her to see the sacred inscriptions in her heart, if one could spell them out, would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public (79). She searches for a technique by which these internal tablets might be read: What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? (79). The art eludes her, and yet she continues to long for it: How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the domeshaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives, which were people (79-80).