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1、The Death of AngelAbstract: Virginia Woolf once put forward the concept “the angel in the house” in one of her feminist works, and Mrs. Ramsay is such an angel in To the Lighthouse, while she died early in the middle of the novel, the author think it is of great importance to learn the reason of her
2、 death if we want to understand Virginia Woolfs feminist idea well. In the male society of Victorian Age, it is the spiritual confusion, the absence of Self, not the physical exhaustion that give the fatal punch to Mrs. Ramsay, which originates the male-centered patriarchy.Key Words: the angel in th
3、e house the absence of Self patriarchy.摘要 弗吉尼亚伍尔夫曾在她的一部女性主义作品中提出过“房子里的天使”这一概念，她的到灯塔去中的拉姆齐夫人就是这样一位“天使”，然而她却在小说中间就猝然而终。要想更好地理解弗吉尼亚伍尔夫的女性主义思想，探究她的死因极为重要。在维多利亚时代的男权社会，是精神的困惑，自我的缺失而非身体的劳累给了她最后一击。关键词： 房子里的天使 自我的缺失 父权制In Virginia Woolfs very first reviews and essays for periodicals, she has addressed the i
4、ssues of “masculine” and “feminine” writing and the nature of their differences, the place of women in the literary tradition and the explanations for their relative absence until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Jane Marcuss Thinking Back Through Our Mothers , she claims that Virginia Woo
5、lf as a revolutionary writer who confronts the system of patriarchy and the dominance of men in all her writing, (and who suffers, not madness, but terror at the danger of doing so). Many of her writings explores the ways in which girls and women are restricted in the middle-class drawing room, and
6、excluded from the education and public life which their brothers and fathers take for granted. She attaches much importance to financial independence and autonomous space of the female, argues that securing peace depends on the end to womens oppression, and an end to hierarchical stratification of s
7、ociety. To deconstruct the connection between the female and private life and the male and the public realm is the most urgent social change, which could be thought out. Imaging herself a woman warrior, Virginia Woolf lives, and writes and battles against the fathers. Throughout her life, she seeks
8、“protection from living women as well as historical mothers”, and she knows by experience how women influence each other. There is much of culture and little or nothing of biology in Woolfs feminist arguments. Just as she writes in Professions for Women, she says: “ what is a woman? I assure you, I
9、dont know, I do not believe that you know, I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expresses herself in all the arts and professions open do human skill.” (Rachel Bowlby ed. The Croweded Dance of Mordern Life. Harmondsworth： Penguin, 1992, pp 103-5) Most of her works have been used as k
10、ey evidence and example in the most significant and recurrent feminist debates, the most effective vehicle for a feminist politics. Gender and politics, morality and psychological desire are mixed together inextricably in Woolfs presentation of human motivation. The need for freedom for the female i
11、s primary in her ethical scheme. Her feminist theories are well reflected in To the Lighthouse. It has been the focus in criticism of Virginia Woolfss writings from the 1930s to the present day. Her friend E.F.Froster thinks that To the Lighthouse is his favorite, even her opponent, Bennett says：“It
12、 is the best book of hers that I know”Virginia Woolf once defines the image of the angel in the house：“If there was chicken, she took the leg；If there was a draught, she sat in it.”. Above all, she should be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; and deceive. Mrs. Ramsay, the heroine in To the Lighthouse,
13、 is such an angel of the house. While Mrs. Ramsay died early in the middle of the novel, the author think it is of great importance to learn the reason of her death if we want to understand Virginia Woolfs feminist idea well. The followings are some of the reasons:1 The physical and mental exhaustio
14、nMill points out that women are brought up from earliest years to live for others, to make complete a negation of them, and to have no life but in their affections. These affections must be severely restrained by the marriage bond. The great business of a married womans life is to soothe and cheer h
15、er husband up, so giving herself fully to her husband is the wifes first duty in the Victorian Age. Firstly, to her husband, “the fatal sterility of the male plunged itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare,” “and into this delicious fecundity.”(38) Mrs. Ramsay tries her best to look after him
16、as her child. “Filled with her words,” Mr. Ramsay “like a child who drops off satisfied” ,he “looking at her with humble gratitude.”(38) After comforting her husband, “Mrs. Ramsay seemed to fold her together, one petal closed in another, and the whole fabric fell in exhaustion upon itself.”(38) Even
17、 little James can sense his mothers great sacrifice for his father. Thus when Mrs. Ramsay is safeguarding and maintaining the sanctity and dominion of the patriarchy, she is consuming herself unconsciously at the same time. Secondly, being a mother of eight children, she shows unselfish love and ama
18、zing patience to them. When her youngest son James hope to the lighthouse can not be realized temporarily owing to the bad weather, she wants to give him a gleam of hope and to avoid him being hurt by the cruel reality, so she comforts him like this：“Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shining
19、 and birds singing,” Though she is extremely tired out after the grand dinner, she still has to go to the nurse upstairs to see if the children are sleeping well. When she finds that children are arguing over a boars skull, she does not blame them and tries to cover the cruel reality the skull by he
20、r scarf. Thus the reality in Cams eye is not so rigid and merciless, and James becomes more emotional than before. From these household affairs, it is obvious that Mrs. Ramsay is already exhausted for childrens growth. Thirdly, her love is not only for her families but also for all the people surrou
21、nded her, it goes everywhere and benefits others. At least her love makes others feel the harmony and tenderness. The function of love reaches the peak during the dinner party：Impelled by Mrs. Ramsay, Lily acknowledges the creativity of love and the advantage of truth, so she finds out the answer fo
22、r her problem in art move the tree to the center of the picture；Mr. Ramsay, Mr. Tansley and Mr. Bankes become more agreeable with each other gradually in their argument；Minta and Paul get engaged happily；Even Mr. Carmichael, the one who always tries to avoid the human love and the human relationship
23、 takes part in the party and gets on well with others. Like the subjects of God who are influenced by God, all of the people in the party are harmonized by the Mrs. Ramsays love. At that moment, their inner world is not hollow and lonely, but full of hope for the life. In addition, Mrs. Ramsay shows
24、 great interest in charity. She often visits the ill woman in the nearby village, took several hours to knit stockings for the lighthousekeepers son, and is worried about the fifty pounds for renovating the house. All in all, those heavy household chores impair her health seriously and her unselfish
25、 sacrifice to Mr. Ramsay and their eight children as well as her consideration for others makes her more exhausted physically and mentally.2 The absence of selfTo some extent, this presence except self results in the absence of self, so the hollow inner world and the absence of Self make Mrs. Ramsay
26、 lose the power which functions as support for the pressure of realistic life. She presents the modern peoples feeling which is a mixture of confusion and nihility. She makes Herculean efforts to get everything ready in the party in order to obtain others praise, while what she thinks just before th
27、e dinner is “But what have I done with my life?”(82) During the dinner, Mr. Bankes sighs with emotion：“People soon drift apart,” which echoes and intensifies the certain nihility under the superficial prosperity. After the dinner, when she turns back with her foot on the threshold, she felt that the
28、 scene “was vanishing even as she looked”(111) “She knew giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past.”(111) Besides, though Mrs. Ramsay takes great efforts in safeguarding the “weak flame”(83) of the harmonious atmosphere, she always feels that “she was out of ” the eddy and somet
29、imes “she could not understand how she had ever felt any emotion or affection for”(83) Mr. Ramsay. Only when she is alone or in a silent evening can she feel her existence of self：“And that was what now she often felt the need of to think；Well, not even to think. To be silent, to be alone.”(62)Since
30、 To the Lighthouse was written between the two world war, what social vicissitudes and turbulence bring to the modern people is confusion, loneliness, sadness and nihility. Their inner world are brimmed with, the sensation of loneliness and estrangement which are much more strong than any time. All
31、this makes life a canoe drifted aimlessly in the darkness, so there is no any hope and help for it. “All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. ” (
32、62) From the bottom of her heart, Mrs. Ramsay has a feeling of awe as she faces life, and she thinks that she always fights against life, while “she must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance.”(60) She regards suffer
33、ing, deaths, and poor as the eternal problems of life. If her children grow up, they have to face these terrible things in the realistic world, so she never wants James and Cam to grow a day older. Even her husband criticizes her for taking such a gloomy view of life. She manages to make Minta and P
34、aul, Lily and Bankes get married, because she thinks marriage and family are the most forceful power used to against the pressure of life.Owing to the absence of Self, Mrs. Ramsay has a feeling of awe and void. “She leant on them（the male）, on cubes and square roots, that was what they were talking
35、about now, on Voltaire and Madame de Stal, on the character of Napoleon, on the French system of land tenure, on Lord Rosebery, on Creeveys Memoirs”(106) While the female just stay at home, they can not interpose the male discourse, so it is impossible for them to understand it. The male are at the
36、very core of culture and they are the creator and successor of culture, while the female are at the margin of culture and they are even excluded from it. The famous American sociologist Park said：“In a broad sense, marginal man refers to the person who does not participate in any social groups fully
37、.” Mrs. Ramsay is such a “marginal woman”. In the family life, she is only a wife and mother with husband and children；In the social life, she is a hostess with guests and friends. But to some extent, she doesnt obtain the real reception of her husband, children as well as friends, so she will never
38、 reach the self-aimed object the lighthouse. In a narrow sense, marginal man refers to the person who participates in more than two social groups at the same time and behaves strangely. Family life is the only behavioral pattern of Mrs. Ramsay. According to the Self, she is a self-damaged and a self
39、 absent female. Marginal man is often the product of cultural conflicts. One of their characteristics is the lack of group reception and they never really regard them as any culture groups. A persons marginalized degree and extent are influenced by cultural pattern, group pressure as well as ones at
40、titudes. Faced with the various rules of different groups, marginal man often get confused which will result in their internal contradiction and lead to their uncertain identities. Mrs. Ramsay is excluded from the male world she lives and it is incredible for her to be melted into the mainstream soc
41、iety, which is male-centered, then family is the only stage of her life. However, her ability cannot be limited in family and she longs to become an investigator of social problem, such as the living situation of the poor and the milk supply of London. Though she is eager to do something, the societ
42、y does not allow her to get involved and she does not have adequate time to do so, Her comments during the dinner only attract others laughter. Her capability changes into a deformed desire of manipulation because she is not allowed to use it in the realistic world. The desire to manipulate others i
43、s derived from her deep love for her husband. When she is reading the fairy tale about the fisherman and golden fish, others charges against her occurs continuously：“Wishing to dominant, wishing to interfere, making people do what she wished.”(57) Obviously, there is a metaphorical relationship betw
44、een the fishermans wife and Mrs. Ramsay, Minta and Pauls marriage made by Mrs. Ramsay is proved to be a failure and it is also a result of her deformed desire to manipulate. It is this mental suffering and sadness accelerates. Mrs. Ramsays death. It is clear that female has already partly become the
45、 victim of the patriarchal system.In one word, in the male society of Victorian Age, it is the spiritual confusion the absence of Self, not the physical household chores that give the fatal punch to Mrs. Ramsay. The origin of the punch is the male-centered patriarchy, which has a profound effect to
46、the human society.BibliographyRaman Selden: The Theory of Criticism From Plato to The Present. London and New York: Longman ,1988.Stella McNichol: Virginia Woolf and the poetry of Fiction. London and NewYork: Routledge, 1990.Su Reid : To the Lighthouse. London : Macmillan Education LTD, 1991. 葛桂录：边缘对中心的解构伍尔夫的另一种阐释视角当代外国文学1997.2. 171-175弗吉尼亚伍尔夫著：To the Lighthouse 伦敦：牛津大学出版社, 1992 译文参见达洛维夫人到灯塔去瞿世镜译：上海文艺出版社，2000.瞿世镜著：伍尔夫研究 上海文艺出版社，1998.宋素凤著：多重主体策略的自我命名：女性主义文学理论研究，济南：山东大学出版社，2002.束永珍：区别与整合：的女性主义解读，外国文学研究2001.1.伍厚恺著：弗吉尼亚伍尔夫存在的瞬间，成都：四川人民出版社，1999.
