Виржиния вулфнинг «маёқҚА» асарида мотифлар ва рамзлар ифодаси

ВИРЖИНИЯ ВУЛФНИНГ «МАЁҚҚА» АСАРИДА МОТИФЛАР ВА РАМЗЛАР ИФОДАСИ

Нигорабегим Хайруллоева Неъматилло кизи

Бухоро давлат университети Инглиз адабиёти кафедраси ўқитувчиси

Аннотация:

Ушбу мақолада инглиз модерн адабиётининг йирик намоёндаси В.Вулф каламига мансуб «Маёққа» асарида қўлланилган бадиий мотифлар ва рамзлар таҳлил қилинган. Жумладан, асардан келтирилган парчаларда акс эттирилган бош кахрамонларнинг ички кечинмалари тасвири орқали “маёқ”нинг маънавий ва психологик аҳамияти очиб берилган. “Маёқ” образининг турли рамзий маънолардаги ифодаси ёритилган. В.Вулф метафораларни дадил ва тиник ишлатган холда бир нарсанинг узи эмас, балки унинг ёрдамида ўз хаёлида акс этган каби аслига якинрок килиб ажойиб тасвирлайди.

Калит сўзлар: мотиф, образ, маёқ, рамз, ички кечинма, онг оқими
МОТИВЫ И СИМВОЛЫ В В.УЛФОМ «В МАЯК»

Нигорабегим Хайруллаева Нематилло кызы

Кафедра английской литературы, БГУ

Аннотация:

В данной статье анализируются литературные мотивы и символы, использованные в великом британском писателе В. Вульф «В маяк». В частности, моральное и психологическое значение «маяка» раскрывается в портретах главных героев, представленных в выдержки. Символизм «маяка» проиллюстрирован различными символическими терминами. Смелым и непрерывным использованием метафоры В. Вульф усилится и даст нам не саму вещь, а реверберацию и отражение, которые, по ее мнению вещь сделана: достаточно близко к оригиналу, чтобы проиллюстрировать это, достаточно далеко, чтобы увеличить, и сделать великолепным.

Ключевые слова: мотив, образ, маяк, символ, внутренние мысли, поток сознания

MOTIFS AND SYMBOLS IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S “TO THE LIGHTHOUSE”

Nigorabegim Khayrullayeva Nematillo qizi

English literature Department, BSU

Annotation

This article analyzes the literary motifs and symbols used in the “To the Lighthouse" by W. Wolf, the great modernist British writer. In particular, the moral and psychological significance of the “lighthouse” is revealed through the portraits of the protagonists featured in the excerpts. The symbolism of the “lighthouse” is illustrated in various symbolic terms. By the bold and running use of metaphor V.Woolf will amplify and give us, not the thing itself, but the reverberation and reflection which, taken into her mind, the thing has made; close enough to the original to illustrate it, remote enough to heighten, enlarge, and make splendid.

Keywords: motif, image, lighthouse, symbol, feelings, stream of consciousness

In a literary work, a motif can be seen as an image, sound, action, or other figure that has a symbolic significance, and contributes toward the development of a theme. Motif and theme are linked in a literary work, but there is a difference between them. In a literary piece, a motif is a recurrent image, idea, or symbol that develops or explains a theme, while a theme is a central idea or message.

Symbols and motifs are very important in the writings of Virginia Woolf. “She knew how an image could grow to symbolic potential in order to carry her narrative forward; and she was sensitive to the way poetic connotations accrue to define the numerous inflections upon which the meaning of her novel would rest.”¹ Virginia Woolf seems to have dedicated a large amount of her time and thought determining the nature and scope of symbols. In her diary as well as in her critical essays, she worked out a theory about the use of symbols.

In her famous and exceptional novel “To the Lighthouse” central themes are introduced to create a basis of general knowledge so that the subsequent analysis of motifs and symbols is expedient. Of course, a symbol or a motif supports the idea of a certain theme, but due to the fact, that in this case, a symbol sometimes can represent different themes, all symbols are dealt with in the one chapter and not, while dealing with a certain theme.

Although events in “To the Lighthouse” have a purpose, some undertakings in the story have no remarkable use. Critically, the use of numerous characters to depict one substantial theme is of no purpose. In some occasions, Woolf uses several imaginative concepts to help in building her themes. However, imaginations might dispute the story if they appear unrealistic. Another censurable moment is the confrontation amid Mr. Ramsay and his guest Mr. Carmichael over additional soup at the party. If Ramsay prepared a party for fifteen guests in his house, in Hebrides, it was inappropriate for him to deny one of the very guests to make additional requests. Evidently, the author used this moment to depict the selfishness of Mr. Ramsay; however, it is a false portrayal of men and this might indicate how the author intended to disfigure the male characters. Finally, on encountering the title of the novel, one might expect a narration full of episodes concerning a sea voyage towards the lighthouse.

However, it is disappointing to notice that the real journey to the lighthouse comes last when at least three members of Ramsey’s family have died, the portrait started by Lily was still undone, and several incidences have unfolded. This trend might be a massive disillusionment to a reader who only expected to read the exact voyage.

Furthermore, Virginia Woolf states that “the intuitive realization that a symbol imparts to us should be instant, because we start doubting the real and the symbolical if we do not apprehend symbol and meaning simultaneously”.By saying that “symbols should not inform but suggest and evoke”, ² Virginia Woolf stresses the importance of not completely working out a symbol’s meaning but leaving a part of it to the reader’s imagination.

The use of symbols should be conscious, as they function “to suggest and to give insight into the ineffable in human thought and feeling, or to heighten and make splendid the desired emotions and ideas”. Thus, the symbols used by Virginia Woolf also give insight into her mind and her feelings.

According to Woolf, repeated images, characters, atmosphere and actions can have symbolic value. She explains why we need symbols by stating that “words are meagre in comparison with ideas”.³

She made a frequent use of symbols which was partly due to her illnesses. Virginia Woolf was a very ill person throughout her whole life and she suffered from different diseases like influenza, headaches and even hallucinations. She had some nervous breakdowns and depressions and it often took her a very long time to recover. According to Virginia Woolf, insanity lies just beneath the surface of sanity. Her long-time illnesses frequently supplied her with ideas for her literary work.

Something happens in my mind. It refuses to go on registering impressions. It shuts itself up. It becomes chrysalis. I lie quite torpid, often with acute physical pain … Then suddenly something springs … ideas rush in me; often though this is before I can control my mind or pen.⁴

One of those attacks of depression happened during her work on To the Lighthouse, making her incapable of any steady work during two months.This depression might have had some impact on her fifth novel.The lighthouse is the central image as well as the strongest and most meaningful symbol of the novel. Firstly, this is indicated by being part of the title, immediately making it a focus of attention, and, secondly, by headlining Part 3 of the novel. It is also a recurring motif throughout the novel. Its reality in Virginia Woolf’s childhood years at St. Ives was the Godrevy light.

Virginia Woolf wrote in 1927:

I meant nothing by The Lighthouse. One has to have a central line down the middle of the book, to hold the design together. I saw that all sorts of feelings would accrue to this, but I refused to think them out, and emotions – which they have done, one thinking it means one thing another another. I can’t manage Symbolism except in this vague, generalised way. Whether its [sic] right or wrong I don’t know; but directly I’m told what a thing means, it becomes hateful to me.⁵

At first sight, this statement seems to be a contradiction to what she stated in her theory of symbols, namely that symbols should be used consciously. But in fact, she uses it intentionally as the function of the lighthouse is to evoke the reader’s imagination. She wants the lighthouse to mean various things to various readers. As there have been so many attempts to interpret the function of the lighthouse in the novel, her idea worked out in a more than satisfying way.

The lighthouse functions in two ways: as something to be reached, and as the source of a flashing light. But not only the physical presence of the lighthouse becomes important. It also exists within the consciousness of individual characters. The symbolic meanings of the lighthouse differ, change and are even contrasted in different contexts and with regard to different characters in the novel. Due to these multiple and varying meanings, the lighthouse carries the narrative forward. The first mentioning of the lighthouse is very realistic and primarily negative. It describes the disadvantages of having to live and work in a lighthouse. The following abstract highlights the literary idea of the novel:

… to give those poor fellows who must be bored to death sitting all day with nothing to do but polish the lamp and trim the wick and rake about on their scrap of garden, something to amuse them. For how would you like to be shut up for a whole month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size of a tennis lawn? She would ask; and to have no letters or newspapers, and to see nobody; if you were married, not to see your wife, not to know how your children were, - if they were ill, if they had fallen down and broken their legs or arms; to see the same dreary waves breaking week after week, and then a dreadful storm coming, and the windows covered with spray, and birds dashed against the lamp, and the whole place rocking,

The lighthouse seems more of spiritual and psychological value than being just a place. For one of the main characters, Lily, and for most of the characters, the lighthouse carries all the memories of the past and all the visions for the future. To Lily, the lighthouse represents the symbols toward the unreachable future, and the far-fetched dream, which from her point of view cannot be attainable. The lighthouse represents the unreachable dream that reflects her own dream, which we do not see come into being, but it remains Lily’s vision which is correlated with the dream of art and life. From the very beginning of the novel, the lighthouse looks like a destination for hope, happiness and a place for contemplating one’s self. And for Lily, it is part of her own psychological life; it is more like an ultimate dream which remains unfulfilled up to the very end of the novel. This image is constantly developing and changing in accordance with the development of the psychological maturity within Lily’s self, and also with the maturity of her experience of the philosophical and critical views of life. Psychologically speaking, the fear of loss, despair and failure appear to dominate a great part of the inner psychic motivation that keeps making Lily change her perceptions about things. ⁶

In addition, Lily keeps projecting her own inner views about life and art on the place, and she also keeps emptying her own emotions on her painting and through her reflections on the lighthouse, which exercises a tremendous influence on her own artistic wishes. For example, the lighthouse seems so far to her in the same way she thinks that she is so far from grasping her own dreams, and her own artistic wishes. This is a quotation that describes Lily’s feelings about the lighthouse:

Her sympathy seemed to be cast back on her, like a bramble sprung across her face. She felt curiously divided, as if one part of her were drawn out there-it was a still day, hazy; the light house looked this morning at an immense distance; the other had fixed itself doggedly, solidly, here on the lawn. She saw her canvas as if it had floated up and placed itself white and uncompromising directly before her. It seemed to rebuke her with its cold stare for all this hurry and agitation; this folly and waste of emotion.⁷

The image of the lighthouse is always connected with someone’s attitude toward life, art, hope, despair, achievement, or death. To Lily, the lighthouse is also connected with the most intense psychological moments of self-realization and epiphany which the characters experience but in totally different psychological responses that express their dreams and ambitions. Lily could see in the lighthouse the things that she aspires to get. She could see the missing things that she keeps searching for but never have found like the ultimate freedom, the beauty of the self, eternity and continuation. The more she contemplates the lighthouse, the more she discovers the harmony and the unity of the self and the very axioms of life and death. Lily can see how much she belongs to the place through seeing the very human images of life as well as the very true relations of being and harmony with the place. She begins to realize that deep intimacy of the self with nature, and with the very surroundings of the place. Lily can also see the paradoxes and juxtapositions of life and death, sorrow and happiness, depth and shallowness, light and darkness. She knows that only through darkness could one see light, and that through the others one could see the self:

Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were all the places she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no one saw it. They could not stop it, she thought, exulting. There was freedom, there was space, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge of darkness. ⁸

However, to some of the characters of the novel the lighthouse seems like a dream that should come true, while some of them see it as a destination for happiness or childhood dreams. Also, the lighthouse means a lot to Mr.Ramsay’s sons. For example, the lighthouse means childhood dreams, the past and the future as we see when Paul expresses his feelings after he came to the lighthouse saying:

“‘I have done it, Mrs. Ramsay; thanks to you.’ And so turning into the lane that led to the house, he could see lights moving about in the upper windows. They must be awfully late then. People were getting ready for dinner. The house was all lit up, and the lights after the darkness made his eyes feel full, and he said to himself, childishly, as he walked up the drive, lights, lights, lights, and repeated in a dazed way, lights , lights, lights, as they came into the house staring about him with his face quite stiff. But, good heavens, he said to himself, putting his hand to his tie, I must not make fool of myself”⁹.

To Paul, the lighthouse means what it means to Lily, but with different ambitions, views, and aspirations.

All in all, we can affirm that Virginia Woolf, one of the most important authors who were affected from the ideas which emerged because of the wars and their effect on society, used stream of consciousness in her writings and she managed to reflect the reality transmitted from character’s mind and feeling. In her prominent novel “To the Lighthouse” she was able to reflect the perspective of her characters in such a way that readers felt as if they were in character’s mind. Throughout the novel the author successfully presented the symbols and motifs. By the bold and running use of metaphor V.Woolf will amplify and give us, not the thing itself, but the reverberation and reflection which, taken into her mind, the thing has made; close enough to the original to illustrate it, remote enough to heighten, enlarge, and make splendid. “To the Lighthouse” is an exceptional novel that the readers feel like investigating the vast amount of symbols used in the novel in order to realize the central idea of the work.

The List Of Used Literature
1.T.E. Apter. Virginia Woolf – A Study of Her Novels. London: Macmillan Press, 1979, p. 75-76.

2.Mitchell A. Leaska. The Novels of Virginia Woolf – From Beginning to End. New York: John Jay Press, 1977, p. 150.

3.A survey of some interpretations by various critics can be found in: Christoph Schöneich. Virginia Woolf. Darmstadt: WBG, 1989, p. 60-64.

4.Margaret Drabble, ed. Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse. New York: OUP, 1999

5.Bani-Khair, Baker & Neimneh, Shadi. (2016). The Image of the Lighthouse and Lily's Pursuit of Artistic Dreams in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies. 2. 244-256.
Internet Sites:

1. 
   https://www.researchgate.net/publication/Virginia_Woolf_EstablishedHuman_Relationship_Through_Effective_Characterization_in_her_Novel_To_the_Lighthouse
   
2. 
   https://ivypanda.com/essays/criticism-of-novel-to-the-lighthouse-by-virginia-woolf/
   

1^ T.E. Apter. Virginia Woolf – A Study of Her Novels. London: Macmillan Press, 1979, p. 75-76.

2^ A survey of some interpretations by various critics can be found in: Christoph Schöneich. Virginia Woolf. Darmstadt: WBG, 1989, p. 60-64.

3^ Margaret Drabble, ed. Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse. New York: OUP, 1999, p. 251.

4^ Margaret Drabble, ed. Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse. New York: OUP, 1999, p. 253

5^Mitchell A. The Novels of Virginia Woolf – From Beginning to End. New York: John Jay Press, 1977, p. 15

6^ Bani-Khair, Baker & Neimneh, Shadi. (2016). The Image of the Lighthouse and Lily's Pursuit of Artistic Dreams in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies. 2. 244-256.

7^ Margaret Drabble, ed. Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse. New York: OUP, 1999, p. 156

8^ Margaret Drabble, ed. Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse. New York: OUP, 1999, p. 63

9^ Margaret Drabble, ed. Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse. New York: OUP, 1999, p. 78