To the Lighthouse: The Lighthouse, 3 Summary & Analysis

Relieved to be alone, Lily confronts her canvas thinking how different the “planning airily away from the canvas” is from “actually…making the first mark.” She is unsure where to begin but once she begins, attains a rhythmic motion. She thinks how, painting, she is “drawn out…of living, out of community with people.” She asks herself why she does it, especially since her painting will surely be hung in a servant’s room or forgotten or packed away. She hears “some voice saying…can’t paint, can’t write,” as if repeating speech spoken by a speaker she can no longer remember. She paints “losing consciousness of outer things,” discarding her name and outward appearance and surroundings.

Suddenly, Lily remembers it was Mr. Tansley who’d originally said the words she murmured and she starts to reminisce about her stay at the summerhouse ten years before. She recalls skipping stones on the sea with Mr. Tansley while Mrs. Ramsay sat on a beach rock writing letters and, by the power of her soul, making “out of that miserable silliness and spite…something…which survived, after all these years, complete…almost like a work of art.”

Taking a break from painting, Lily thinks as she has often thought, “What is the meaning of life?” She reflects that there has been no “great revelation,” only “little daily miracles.” She compares Mrs. Ramsay’s “making of the moment something permanent” to her own project as a painter. Both bring stability to life’s flow, and find a shape within shapeless chaos.

Lily looks at the house, “faint and unreal…pure and exciting.” She looks at her canvas. She walks to the lawn’s edge to see if she can see Mr. Ramsay, Cam, and James setting sail and imagines that one of the distant boats whose sail is just being hoisted is theirs.