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Literary Devices
Definition of Allegory
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The Tortoise and The Hare" is... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and... read full definition
The Window, 9
Explanation and Analysis—The Ramsay Portrait:
Throughout the novel, as characters come and go and even die, Lily Briscoe continues work on her painting of the Ramsays. She gets off to a rocky start, however, and conveys as much through a combination of imagery, metaphor, and allegory in Chapter 9 of "The Window":
She could have wept…. it was infinitely bad! She could have done it differently of course, the colour could have been thinned and faded; the shapes etherealized; that was how Paunceforte would have seen it. But then she did not see it like that. She saw the colour burning on a framework of steel; the light of a butterfly's wing lying upon the arches of a cathedral. Of all that only a few random marks scrawled upon the canvas remained. And it would never be seen… and there was Mr. Tansley whispering in her ear, 'Women can't paint, women can't write...'
In this passage, Woolf uses the language and visual imagery of paint and painterly technique to catalogue Lily's creative crisis: she frets over the mixing and application of colors, the merits of an impressionist "etherealizing" aesthetic, and the influence of the painter character Paunceforte. Though Lily has a visceral artistic vision for her piece, she is beset by doubt from the criticism of Mr. Tansley, who insists that women are incapable of creative expression—even as Lily determinedly sees her painting through to completion over the course of the novel.
Lily's painting process, affected by both personal and societal woes, functions in To the Lighthouse as an allegory for Woolf's own writing process and, more generally, for creative expression as an ineffable human pursuit. For women like Briscoe and Woolf, who found themselves up against the gender roles of their time and the misogynistic expectation that works of art were for men alone to create, this expression is an existential challenge to their place in society.
Related Themes:
