Persuasion and transcendence in to the lighthouse.

Abstract

This article is for instructors who wish to use rhetorical theory in the literature classroom. It provides a rhetorical analysis of a dinner scene in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. The dinner scene is subjected to two forms of Kenneth Burke's analysis: 1) the dramatic pentad or dramatism, and 2) consubstantiality, or identification. The theory of rhetorical consubstantiality and the dramatistic terms act, agent, scene, agency,and purpose coordinate well with the critical approach of deconstruction, which can apply to any form of symbolic language.

Introduction

As Eudora Welty notes in the foreword of To the Lighthouse, subjectivity is the key to this novel. Each character moves alone through his or her feelings without connecting emotionally to the other characters. This division, or lack of consubstantiality, motivates Mrs. Ramsay to create an "argument," through which she attempts to "persuade" her friends and family to be consubstantial with one another by way of carefully staged social events. The dramatic pentad connects rhetorical insight with one of the themes of To the Lighthouse: how the character of Mrs. Ramsay manipulates reality, creating dramatic occasions by which to persuade her loved ones to merge emotionally and achieve transcendence in the form of domestic bliss.

Theoretical Review

Kenneth Burke spent his life establishing connections between rhetorical and critical theory. In his perspective, "useful" (rhetorical) communication and "artistic" (poetic) communication are far more alike than distinct. In A Grammar of Motives, he concluded that all language situations are symbolic of human action and thus interrelated.

Burke's Dramatic Pentad

The Dramatic Pentad involves five parts--agent, act, scene, agency, and purpose. The agent is the person or character who acts, the act is the action taken, the scene is the setting, the agency is the means by which the agent acts, and the purpose is the reason or motivation behind the act. In rhetoric, the Pentad is useful for understanding rhetorical motivations: why a speaker or writer communicated in the way he or she did, through what means, to what purpose. In literature, the Pentad can also be useful for understanding character motivation: how the character's language and behavior support a larger theme in the work.

Burke's Theory of Consubstantiality

A great part of rhetorical persuasion lies in the ability to achieve unity with an audience, to persuade the audience to identify with the speaker or writer. Kenneth Burke explains consubstantiality in his A Rhetoric of Motives as a joining of two people's interests or "substance":

   is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their
   interests are joined, A is identified with B. Or he may identify
   himself with B even when their interests are not joined, if he
   assumes that they are, or is persuaded to believe so (20).

But even in joining, the individual remains unique:

   Here are ambiguities of substance. In being identified with B, A is
   substantially one with a person other than himself. Yet at the same
   time he remains unique, an individual locus of motives. Thus he is
   both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and
   consubstantial with another. (20)

This perception allows, according to Burke, a common culture or society to develop in which "a way of life is an acting-together and in acting together, men have common sensations, concepts, images, ideas, attitudes that make them consubstantial" (21). Such a view of language correlates well with literature, which uses imagination to reflect on the human condition, to increase empathy and to understand the ways in which human beings are interconnected.

Deconstruction and Division

Burke asserts, "to begin with identification is, by the same token, though roundabout, to confront the implications of division." That is, "identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division" (22). Division, or avoiding division, is the commodity in which rhetoric deals because "if men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity" (22). Such an awareness of merging and dividing is very familiar to the deconstructionist, for whom every symbolic action is both building towards an idea, and tearing down that idea simultaneously. The close reading of a single sentence can render "ambiguities of substance" that both confirm and deny the concepts it contains.

Teaching the Pentad and To the Lighthouse

To teach the Pentad in a literature classroom, the above theoretical discussion should be shared with the class. Explain how the five key terms of Dramatism--act, agent, scene, agency, and purpose--can provide insight into a character's motivation, and thus insight into a novel's theme. As an example, consider using the character of Mrs. Ramsay as the agent, and the dinner scene in Chapter XVII of the first book "The Window" to explore act, agency, scene and purpose. The agent or character is Mrs. Ramsay. Her act is throwing a dinner party for friends and family. The scene or setting is Mrs. Ramsay's dining room. The agency or means is the food and conversation. The purpose is to create domestic stability and transcend to happiness, which connects to the theme of the novel.

To understand the agent and her purpose, consider that Mrs. Ramsay has reached a pinnacle moment in her life; a victory symbolized by a successful dinner party. Seated at one table is her entire family, a couple whose successful engagement she has engineered (Paul and Minta), and a male family friend, Mr. Bankes, she can rarely convince to stay for dinner. At this one meal she succeeds in gathering all the happy elements she wishes would merge into one eternal unity: husband, children, engaged couple (representing the tradition of marriage and children), and good friends. The dinner party scene can be described as moving through three stages, as if we were watching three scenes in the act of a play:

1. an opening set in which everything and everyone is placed for effect;

2. a stirring to life in which the set melts into an atmosphere of reality;

3. a transcendence beyond the material objects and people.

Opening Scene

The opening scene begins rather awkwardly, and the setting supports the theme that people are divided and rarely connect. Mrs. Ramsay has been looking forward to this dinner but now she takes "her place at the head of the table" and looks "at all the white plates making circles on it" (Woolf 82). She begins to tell her family and guests where to sit, setting the stage, but feels that she has "only this--an infinitely long table and plates and knives" (83). It was "as if a shade had fallen, and, robbed of colour, she saw things truly. The room (she looked round it) was very shabby. There was no beauty anywhere" (83). This description of the setting adds to the reader's understanding of the novel, in that human relations are difficult and often lack "colour," or beauty, despite our best efforts.

Second Scene

However, as food and conversation begin to work their magic, the scene becomes more relaxed, and halfway through the dinner, the mood shifts. The candles are lit, and the "faces on both sides of the table were brought nearer by the candlelight, and composed, as they had not been in the twilight, into a party round a table" (97). After the addition of the candlelight, the guests find that "some change at once went through them all, as if this had really happened, and they were all conscious of making a party together in a hollow, on an island" (97). A simple change of scene, the addition of candlelight, begins to fulfill Mrs. Ramsay's purpose: the individuals begin to identify with each other and feel like a group.

If Mrs. Ramsay can just hold her party together, persuading her family and guests to merge emotionally, then division may be overcome. This is a very rhetorical purpose. Mrs. Ramsay is behaving as a rhetor would, focusing on persuading an audience to identify with her argument, providing persuasive evidence through the agency of food and conversation. The scene or setting is providing evidence that emotional consubstantiality is possible.

Final Scene

Finally, as the successful party ends, Mrs. Ramsay leaves the scene, "which was vanishing even as she looked, and then ... it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past" (111). The perfect moment passes, but Mrs. Ramsay has achieved her purpose. She has created her consubstantial, and transcendent act.

Now that Mrs. Ramsay, as the agent and main character, is leaving the scene, the scene changes. It is her last scene before she dies, and her absence is juxtaposed with a new narrator in the next chapter: Lily. Lily's narration overlaps with Mrs. Ramsay's departure and reiterates her thoughts: "Then one saw Mrs. Ramsay in the midst of this hubbub standing there with Minta's arm in hers ... And directly she went a sort of disintegration set in; they wavered about, went different ways" (112). To Lily, who is the second major female character, Mrs. Ramsay is clearly the agent of the dinner scene.

Teaching Consubstantiality and To the Lighthouse

Mrs. Ramsay's purpose is quite plainly to produce consubstance (merging) and emotional transcendence. Everything she says and does is motivated by the need to eliminate emotional division: "there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity" (63). She wants to achieve a transcendent happiness with her loved ones, to create an ideal emotional moment through domestic arrangement.

Mrs. Ramsay also seeks to grant a larger meaning to her existence. She sees a "coherence in things, a stability; something ... immune from change, and shines out ... in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral" (105), hence the symbolism inherent in the lighthouse. She tries to connect to the eternal, to make something lasting that withstands the spectral, fleeting image she sees reflected in life:

   They would, she thought, going on again, however long they lived,
   come back to this night; this moon; this wind; this house; and to
   her too. It flattered her, where she was most susceptible of
   flattery, to think how, wound about in their hearts, however long
   they lived she would be woven. (113)

Here Mrs. Ramsay expresses her full rhetorical motivation or purpose. Not only does she want to merge with friends and family, she also wants to be immortal in their memories. To add to her sense of immortality, Paul and Minta will carry on when she is gone, getting married, having children, and creating their own circle of happiness (114). Mrs. Ramsay's desire for domestic immortality is an excellent thematic avenue for discussing the symbolism of the lighthouse, the desire for a guiding light, and constancy.

Mrs. Ramsay Wrestles with Self-Doubt

However, early on she privately worries that "Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her" (83). Mrs. Ramsay desperately wants the merging to happen, for each person to feel the emotional bond, but feels burdened by the knowledge that she's the only one who cares. Her task is made more difficult because she herself doubts the authenticity of the experience. Not only must she persuade others that merging is possible, she must convince herself.

Because Mrs. Ramsay is so aware of bridging substance, she is equally aware of emotional division when she takes "a look at life ... something real, something private, which she shared neither with her children nor with her husband" (59). Mrs. Ramsay struggles with an inconstancy of feeling, reflecting the struggle between consubstantiality and division:

   At the far end, was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap,
   frowning. What at? She did not know. She did not mind. She could
   not understand how she had ever felt any emotion or affection for
   him. (83)

Juxtapose this feeling with an earlier one: "instantly a Heaven of security opened before her. There was nobody she reverenced more. She was not good enough to tie his shoe strings, she felt" (32). Inconstancy of feeling is expressed also by Mr. Bankes, who said, "people soon drift apart" and then found himself feeling "treacherous, that he could sit by her side and feel nothing for her" (88). These three statements create a tension of emotional inconstancy. The theme of tangled communications between men and women add to the difficulty of overcoming division in this scene.

Through the omniscient narrator, we learn that the others were having similar thoughts about the lack of unity: "Lily was listening; Mrs. Ramsay was listening; they were all listening. But already bored, Lily felt that something was lacking; Mr. Bankes felt that something was lacking. Pulling her shawl round her Mrs. Ramsay felt that something was lacking" (94).

All of the Ramsay family and dinner guests pretended to be in the moment, but felt decidedly unmerged: "All of them bending themselves to listen thought, 'Pray heaven that the inside of my mind may not be exposed,' for each thought, 'The others are feeling this ... Whereas, I feel nothing at all'" (94). Nevertheless, the others follow Mrs. Ramsay's lead as hostess and scene's agent, which indicates some desire on the part of the other characters to go along with Mrs. Ramsay's "argument," to at least show respect for a kind hostess. Although the party is divided, they are at least united in pretense. To make matters worse, Mrs. Ramsay's purpose faces a huge obstacle in the character of Mr. Tansley, who actively dislikes Mrs. Ramsay's methods:

   He was not going to be condescended to by these silly women. He had
   been reading in his room, and now he came down and it all seemed to
   him silly, superficial, flimsy. Why did they dress? He had come down
   in his ordinary clothes. He had not got any dress clothes.... They
   did nothing but talk, talk, talk, eat, eat, eat. It was the women's
   fault. Women made civilisation impossible with all their 'charm,'
   all their silliness. (85)

With such an unreceptive audience, Mrs. Ramsay has a great deal of persuading to do. Luckily, she has something of a lieutenant in Lily, who recognizes at one point how valiantly Mrs. Ramsay is trying to salvage the evening. She reads into Mrs. Ramsay's glance, although not a word is spoken:

   I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some
   balm to the anguish of this hour and say something nice to that
   young man there, life will run upon the rock--indeed I hear the
   grating and the growling this minute. My nerves are taut as
   fiddle strings. Another touch and they will snap (92)

Lily accepts the silent appeal and enables Mrs. Ramsay's domestic bliss by participating in and encouraging the consubstantiality of the group, even learning to accept the disagreeable Mr. Tansley.

Lily as a Pseudo-Agent, or Echo, of Mrs. Ramsay

As can be seen by the preceeding example, Lily's character is intended to pick up the theme of unity and division. She echoes Mrs. Ramsay's worries. She feels that "it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself" (51). Unity, however, implies the possibility of division and Lily wonders: "How then ... did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were?" (51). This question into the nature of unity and division gets to the heart of To the Lighthouse: How do you understand the people you love? How do you transcend the dividing forces?

Conclusion

Unity and division, subjectivity and consubstantiality, are major themes in To the Lighthouse. Analyzing the character of Mrs. Ramsay through the dramatic pentad sheds a rhetorical light on the themes at work in the novel: the agent is a character behaving rhetorically, the act is persuasive, the agency is the food and conversation that so often bring human beings together, the scene is the setting intended to create an atmosphere conducive to persuasion, and the purpose is to argue that division can be overcome if only briefly. Of course, deconstructively speaking, the division is ever-present in the unity, so that, as Burke wrote "if men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity" (Grammar 22).

References

Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.

--. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.

Welty, Eudora. Foreword. To the Lighthouse. By Virginia Woolf. 1927. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1989.vii-xii.

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. 1927. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1989.

Amy A. Childers, North Georgia College and State University

Childers, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric/Composition