Oedipus in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

Something that caught my attention in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is the language that Virginia uses to describe James and Mrs. Ramsey's relationship. One could easily forget the James is Mrs. Ramsey's six year old son and think that there is some kind of sexual tension between them. I thought that Woolf would extend the Oedipal complex throughout the novel. She does in a way, but I thought that it would be more prevalent. Other than this language in “The Window” the text loses all indication of the notion until “The Lighthouse.” In this last section, the rift between James and Mr. Ramsey is clear and James’s memories of Mr. Ramsey stealing Mrs. Ramsey’s attention still weighs heavily on his mind. This memory actually plays a major role in damaging his relationship with his father.

Just as with the contrast between Mrs. Ramsey and Lily Briscoe, there is a distinct contrast between Cam and James. These are the two youngest of the Ramsey children. Cam is described as “wild.” She is not shown much in the novel, but the reader knows some parts of her personality. For example, as a child she refuses to give William Bankes a flower for his lapel, she runs wildly past people without much regard for them, and the boar’s skull scares her. James on the other hand, as a child, is described by Mrs. Ramsey as the most sensitive of her children. They are able to share many moments because they are so much alike. He however, likes the boar’s head.

I noticed the contrast most when Mrs. Ramsey puts them to sleep by addressing them each in a distinctive manner. She tells Cam to ignore the skull and think of mountains, valleys, stars, antelopes, parrots, and gardens. This set of things really doesn’t match logically. Mrs. Ramsey pacifies Cam by freeing her imagination. Her speech here is described as “nonsensical.” She wants Cam to think of impossible combinations: parrots and antelopes, antelopes and bird nests, and maybe bird nests and women, women and art, etc. and she wants Cam to ignore the skull, which may be read as frighten patriarchy.

However, Mrs. Ramsey addresses her very sensitive son, James, in a very logical manner, much in the same way that Mr. Ramsey and Tansley address him. She says that the boar’s head is still there under the shawl even though it looks different. Then when he asks if they can go to the lighthouse the next day, she does exactly what she criticizes Ramsey and Tansley of doing: She gives James a dose of reality and kills his hope. Mrs. Ramsey gives into the dominance of patriarchy, thus going against her intuition and perpetuating the patriarchical institution.

So with patriarchy as the dominant theme, how does James’s Oedipal complex support or undermine patriarchy? I think that it supports it in that James thinks he owns his mother just as much as Mr. Ramsey does. It indicates that no matter how sensitive the son is, he is selfishly interested in continuing the patriarchy at a very early age. His way of perpetuating the patriarchy is to overthrow his father and to seduce his mother. So just like his father “James…stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy.”