Time, Tense, Weather in Three 'Flood Novels', 'Bleak House', 'The Mill on the Floss', 'To the Lighthouse'

Abstract

to expostulate [. . .] Why day is day, night night, and time is time, Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. 'Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow.'[1] Mrs Ramsay's words at the beginning of To the Lighthouse are the bearers of a message that is more ambiguous than would at first meet the eye. Her 'if', inserted as it is in the middle of her sentence like a worm in a fruit, surreptitiously works at spoiling the future, already turning her son's dream into the plot of her creator. As a matter of fact, the very essence of plot is encapsulated in her reply, redundantly affirmative: 'Yes, of course', yet cautiously alarming: 'if it's fine', announcing with the minimal effects of Woolfian aesthetics a subtle conflict between desire and contingency. James himself, however, does not perceive at this stage the danger that weighs on his 'future prospects' (p. 5), well concealed as it is in his mother's answer. Is not the assumption that it will be fine justified, through language that betrays the grammar of wishful thinking, by the tense and mood of the restrictive clause, 'if it is fine'? Is not the listener invited to take it for granted that the conditions required for the trip to take place are going to be fulfilled? Jumping to conclusions, and eager to prevent anguish, the fond mother even adds at once, 'But you'll have to get up with the lark', cleverly managing to make her 'if' sound like an 'as if': 'as if it were settled the expedition were bound to take place', comments the narrative voice in case we had missed the point. The future has almost become an imperative. As the day unfolds, though, the inaugural sentence goes through a subtle series of modal alterations, most of which give the lie to the professed optimism of the first speaker: 'But, it won't be fine'. (p. 6) 'But it may be fine --I expect it will be fine'. But what had she said? Simply that it might be fine tomorrow. So it might. (p. 38) In a moment he would ask her. 'Are we going to the Lighthouse?' And she would have to say, 'No: not tomorrow; your father says not.' (p. 72) 'No going to the Lighthouse, Mrs Ramsay'. (p. 99) 'Yes, you were right. It's going to be wet tomorrow'. (p. 142) Mrs Ramsay's last remark, with its introductory 'Yes' and its closing 'tomorrow' that ostentatiously echo the words of her first declaration, is the most ironic variation on the theme. No 'if', no 'may', no question mark, but a plain statement in the indicative: we have entered the world of certitude in which the future of tomorrow, so close at hand in the middle of the night, is henceforth irreversible. In fiction as in real life, there is a wide range of possible obstacles to the fulfilment of wishes: parental authority, disease, class barriers, war, death are among the most frequent. By comparison, the obstacle to the realization of James's dream seems a trifling matter. But the uncertainty of the weather will have long-term consequences on the uncertain future, for it so happens that 'tomorrow' is the last day of the Ramsays' annual holidaying on the Isle of Skye so that, if Mr Ramsay's predictions prove right, the excursion will, under the most favourable circumstances, be postponed until next year. And, with death and war causing even further delay, the measure of the boy's expectations: 'a night's darkness and a day's sail' (p. 5), will turn out to have been years. In fact, it is almost as if Virginia Woolf were playing with our and James's eagerness to know whether and, if so, when the outing will occur, taking us through all the stages of suspense, 'this year, next year, sometime, never'. Ironically, 'sometime' proves almost synonymous with 'never'. An excursion does take place, but no fewer than ten years later, and James's visit to the lighthouse is a pilgrimage to the object of his childish desire, no longer its fulfilment. Hardly his visit, but rather his father's, it causes bitter feelings, anger, disappointment, even disbelief: 'So that was the Lighthouse, was it? …