To the Lighthouse: The Window, 1 Summary & Analysis

The novel opens in a summerhouse on the Isle of Skye with Mrs. Ramsay, Mr. Ramsay, their little son James (who is cutting pictures from a magazine), and Mr. Ramsey’s student Charles Tansley. The first words of the text are Mrs. Ramsey’s reply to a question James has apparently asked about going to the Lighthouse the next day. She assures him he’ll get to go as long as the weather is fine and James’ heart soars with a joy quickly dashed by Mr. Ramsey’s insistence that the weather will certainly be poor. James internally despairs for, though he thinks his mother “ten thousand times better in every way,” what his father says “was always true.” He could stab his father in the heart, he is so angry. Tansley points out the wind’s unfavorable direction.

Mrs. Ramsay thinks how “odious” Charles Tansley is, but also how she chastises her children for teasing him and protects him against their mockery. She goes on to reflect that she is protective of all men “for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valour” and for their “trustful, childlike, reverential” demeanor around her. She has, despite difficulties, no regrets about the conventional domestic life she’s lived. It is only when Mrs. Ramsay is silent that her daughters (Prue, Nancy, and Rose) are able to entertain ambitions of “a wilder life; not always taking care of some man or other.” When their mother is speaking, Mrs. Ramsay’s “strange severity, her extreme courtesy” brings out “the manliness in their girlish hearts” and makes them “honor her.”

Mrs. Ramsay reflects on Tansley’s self-absorption, which is what makes the children hate him. She remembers having invited him to run errands in town with her and James after discovering him one day deserted by everyone else. She had reflected then on how petty her children were and thought about “real differences,” the “problem of rich and poor” whose evidence she witnessed helping out families around London “in the hope that thus she would cease to be a private woman” just acting charitable to appease herself or sate curiosity, and would instead become “an investigator” of the social problem.

On their way off to town, Mrs. Ramsay asked the stoned Mr. Carmichael if he wanted anything, then flattered Tansley during the walk by confiding in him about Carmichael’s failed marriage and intimating the superiority of the male mind and the rightful “subjection” of wives to their husbands. Tansley felt self-satisfied and tried to carry Mrs. Ramsay’s purse for her, an offer she firmly refused.

Mrs. Ramsay exclaimed at a circus tent and Tansley awkwardly confided to her that he had never been to a circus, having been born poor and financially independent since thirteen. He has always had the cheapest of everything and couldn't “return hospitality” in school. He rambled on about his future hopes for professional success in academia and Mrs. Ramsay, despite feeling sorry for him, thought him a “prig.”

Passing the quay where a bunch of artists are gathered painting, Mrs. Ramsay marveled at the beauty of the view then reflected that “since Mr. Paunceforte had been there, three years before” everyone was painting with gauzy pastel shades. She remembered and remarked to Tansley how her grandmother’s friends painstakingly mixed their own paints and Tansley was unsure if “she meant him to see that” the painting being done before them is “skimpy.”

Waiting downstairs as Mrs. Ramsay visited one of the houses in town, Tansley realized “she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen,” despite being over fifty and a mother of eight. On her way out, Tansley insisted on taking her bag for the walk back to the summerhouse. He swelled with pride.