Disrupting Imperial Linear Time:

Virginia Woolf's Temporal Perception in To the Lighthouse

By Chen-ou Liu ()
The prevailing emphasis of early studies on Virginia Woolf focuses
on her literary experiments which center on the inner workings of the mind
and portray an individuals stream of consciousness; Woolf adopts a new
aesthetic attitude towards the modern world. It was not until the rise of
feminist criticism in the 1970s and cultural theories in the 1980s that her
corrosive power in criticizing the patriarchal ideology of the British society
was gradually recognized. Yet a growing number of Woolf scholars believe
that the poignant depiction of gender inequality in her works is simply one
aspect of British imperialism that she undertakes to criticize. (Hung 1-2).
In her post-colonial reading of Woolfs work, Kathy Philips argues
that
from her first book to her last, Virginia Woolf
consistently
accomplishes

satirizes
this

by

social
means

institutions.
of

She

incongruous

juxtapositions and suggestive, concrete detail, which can

be interpreted as metaphor. One of her most interesting
juxtapositions associates Empire Building, war making,
and gender relations in a typical constellation. [] Her
novels de-emphasize the failings of characters in their
personal relations and instead investigate personalities as
products of dangerous ideologies (vii xiii-xiv).

In other words, behind her literary skill, Woolf wants to open the
readers eyes to contradictions and questions embedded in British imperialist
ideology. In this short essay, I will address Woolfs critique of imperial
linear temporality in To the Lighthouse.
Before analyzing Woolfs criticism of imperial linear temporality, I
would like to start with discussing the essence of the imperial time. As Chialan Wang notes, "to maintain the national order, the empire needs to solidify
the national identity. The creation of a solidified national identity requires
the empire to impose a linear temporality" (51). This kind of linear
temporality places a special emphasis on two aspects of what Tom Nairn
calls the Janus-face of nationalism (348-9): looking back to past imperial
glories and Victorian values while simultaneously undertaking a kind of
modernization in preparation for a new stage of global capitalist competition
to project a promising future. In light of Benedict Andersons theory of the
nation as an imagined community, Homi Bhabha contends that
the steady onward clocking of calendrical time, in
Andersons words, gives the imagined world of the
nation a sociological solidity; it links together diverse
acts and actors on the national stage who are entirely
unaware of each other, except as a function of this
synchronicity of time which is not prefigurative but a
form of civil contemporaneity realized in the fullness of
time (308).

By civil contemporaneity Bhabha means that the imperial order

imposes a homogeneous time on the nationals in aid of ideological and
technological apparatuses. As historians Jeffrey Richards and John M.
MacKenzie remark:
For the system to work efficiently this had to be standard
national time and not solar time. So Gods time, or
natural time, the time dictated by the suns progress
through the heavens and the countrymans age-old
rhythm of life, was superseded by Mans time (qtd. in
Stevenson 117).
In To the lighthouse, instead of identifying herself with the imperialist
ideology, Woolf presents two perception of time: one experienced or
subjective, the other physical or objective. More strikingly, in Time
Passes, she is more interested in two contrasting forms of temporality:
human time and natural time. Her uncanny temporal perception questions
the imperial time order.
Woolfs formative years coincided with the historical period of radical
change in the worlds whole sense of time, the era of increasing
systemization of time in public life; the particular question of the reality of
temporal change preoccupied her. As Woolf points out,
time, unfortunately, though it makes animals and
vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality, has
no such simple effect upon the mind of man. The mind of
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man, moreover, works with equal strangeness upon the

body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer
element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a
hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour
may be accurately represented on the timepiece of mind
by one second. This extraordinary discrepancy between
time on the clock and time in the mind is less known, it
should be and deserves fuller investigation (Orlando 69).
Unlike Bergsons belief that time exists truly as duration, within the
self, and that the conscious states constituting this duration are seamlessly
continuous, Woolf views times passing as a series of separate moments
like her character, Mrs. Ramsay, who ponders life "being made up of little
separate incidents which one lived one by one" (To the Lighthouse 65). Her
literary experiments start with impressionism; she works out literary
impressionism through writing short stories, "each a moment, an
impressionist canvas" (Banfield 470). For Woolf, the essence of human
consciousness is momentary, and she must include moments of being and
non-being for the large shape of the novel (Vogler 30). As Thomas Vogler
emphasizes, "when such moments are the basic units of experience, the
artists difficulty, like that of her characters, is in relating these moments,
finding an order or pattern or form among them" (Vogler 30).
Woolf develops time relations in To the Lighthouse through the notion
of lapse of time. As Banfield states, "that is, in the interval dividing
moment from moment, we can be sure something is happening, even if we
cannot observe the passage of time itself" (499). Woolf uses Time Passes
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as the structural equivalent of the interval, the interlude, to "convert The

Window and The Lighthouse from two unrelated moments into the series
of representative moments of a novel" (Banfield 499). Time Passes,
functioning as a corridor joining two blocks, placed between The Window
and The Lighthouse, is what Woolf describes as "break" and "bridge". As
Banfield argues, "Woolf's two words indicate that her theory of time
presents not a Bergsonian duration but a continuity dependent on logical
relations between discrete units (500). To the Lighthouse is not a philosophic
novel, but Woolf is definitely philosophical about time.
Woolfs new understanding of time leads her to believe that
consciousness has no absolute linear existence in time and to find that
conventional fictions chronological narratives"stories of childhood,
stories of school, love, marriage, death, and so on" are "none of them [. . .]
true" (The Waves 238). In her often-quoted essay, she questions "Is life like
this? Must novels be like this? " (Collected Essays Vol. II 106). She urges
the reader to "look within and life, it seems, is very far from being like
this" (Collected Essays Vol. II 106):
Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary
day.

The mind receives myriad impressions--trivial,

fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of

steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of
innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape
themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the
accent falls differently from of old; the moment of
importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer
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were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he

chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon
his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be
no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or
catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single
button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it.
Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged;
life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope
surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to
the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this
varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit,
whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as
little mixture of the alien and external as possible?
(Collected Essays Vol. II 106-7)
Woolf criticizes realist writers who fail to convey the real life,
including the reality of time's passing because they fail to understand that "in
or about December, 1910, human character changed"(Collected Essays Vol.
I 320). In order to reflect a fragmentary, disjointed human character in
modern life, she believes that literary work must ignore or destroy the
convention of linear time as a primary principle of artistic form. Therefore,
she dispenses with the realist chronological ordering of plot in order to
render the inner workings of the human mind. Her unique idea of the
moment and the innovative method of stream of consciousness allow her to
keep track of non-linear thought processes, make a-chronological jumps in
time, and create contrapuntal multiple plots; she establishes her own ways of
cutting and stitching up time again. Woolfs temporal perception reveals her
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dissatisfaction with the unified linear time: less emphasis on the linear
ticking of clock and more focus on non-linear time of the human mind.
The idea of the moment and the innovative use of stream of
consciousness are the key elements that shape Woolfs narrative point of
view. Her attempt to represent the moment captured by the perceiving mind
is found throughout the novel to show vividly characters consciousnesses
operating. By constantly revealing the contradictory views of her characters
in the passage of time, Woolf demonstrates that knowing is elusive and
perhaps different versions of truth are possible ("Nothing was simply one
thing" (To the Lighthouse 251), "One wanted fifty pairs of eyes to see with"
(To the Lighthouse 266)); besides, in The Window, she "presents the mind
of Mrs. Ramsay so thoroughly, [] and also moving so fluently into and
between the consciousnesses of several characters" (Stevenson 56). In his
essay, Erich Auerbach offers a detailed analysis of Woolfs use of
multipersonal representation of consciousness and of her exhibition of
what he refers to as omnitemporality, which is the coexistence within
experience of different time frames (Vogler 39-52); in particularly, the
opening chapter regarding an ambiguous prospect of a planned trip to the
lighthouse

brilliantly

reveals

the

Ramsays

personalities

through

multipersonal representation of consciousness and omnitemporality. That

means that, for Woolf, the imperial order fails to impose on the nationals a
homogenous and unified time regulating their lives by clock hours.
More importantly, Woolf also finds past experiences triggered
powerfully by events in the present moments, and shows that the time her

characters perceive in the present moment is complex and multi-layered. The

following is a typical passage:
The gruff murmur, irregularly broken by the taking out of
pipes and the putting in of pipes which had kept on
assuring her, though she could not hear what was said (as
she sat in the window which opened on the terrace), that
the men were happily talking; this sound, which had
lasted now half an hour and had taken its place
soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top of her,
such as the tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark
now and then, "How's that? How's that?" of the children
playing cricket, had ceased; so that the monotonous fall
of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a
measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed
consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with
the children the words of some old cradle song,
murmured by nature, "I am guarding you--I am your
support," but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly,
especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the
task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but
like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the
measure of life, made one think of the destruction of the
island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her
whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after
another that it was all ephemeral as a rainbow--this sound
which had been obscured and concealed under the other
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sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made

her look up with an impulse of terror (To the Lighthouse
23-24).
This one single complex sentence consisting of 260 words brilliantly
captures the complexity of one moment through a skillfully layered structure
of parenthetical phrases and clauses, modifying phrases, and a rich array of
various subordinate clauses. As Ian Johnston states,
The structure of this sentence itself presents the central
issue of Mrs. Ramsay's character, that she is constantly
dependent upon the existence of family rituals all around
her, that, although she may not participate directly in
them or even be fully aware of what is going on, she
relies upon such a background sense of ongoing domestic
order to sustain her tranquil mood. ("LBST 402")
Mrs. Ramsays mind constantly moves back and forth through
memory and conjectures to connect the present moment to past experiences
and future anxieties. One sound stops, so Mrs. Ramsay becomes aware of
another, and ends with a momentary feeling of terror. Mrs. Ramsay has so
gloomy a sense of life that she must constantly rely on the existence of
family rituals all around her to assert her energies against the forces of death
and decay. Yet Mrs. Ramsay is not exceptional; as Drabble stresses, "the
riddle of survival and the fear of sudden or slow extinction haunt the novel"
("To the Lighthouse" xxii). In Woolfs effort to achieve a means of
expression that combines the inner workings of her characters minds with
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the outer frame of time and events, she spatialises the performative present
that characters live in, which is rather perceived as disjointed, intermingled,
sometimes frightening and by no means linear. Although imperialist
discourses persistently attempt to produce the idea of the nation as a
continuous narrative of national progress and to assume a unified time flow
regulating the nationals daily life by clock hours, as it turns out, Woolfs
characters constantly keep digressing and acting out differently from the
official script of the imperial linear time order; additionally, her exposure of
the characters sense of uneasiness and insecurity uncovers the delusion of a
continuous narrative of the progress of the British Empire.
In To the Lighthouse, Woolf presents an uncanny temporal perception.
She picks out two days full of representative moments and emotionally
describes the conflicts and uneasiness her characters go through in the
performative present, where the perceptions of the past, present and future
all mix together. More ironically, she builds up an almost cyclical and static
middle part, a huge gap of the years, to disrupt the events of these two days.
In Time Passes, human consciousness is barely present, and human time,
both subjective and objective, is almost extinguished. Woolfs use of
brackets throughout Time Passes signifies that roles and priorities are
reversed. In The Window and The Lighthouse, the minds of the
characters have been central; their concerns, anxieties, and lives are key
issues. However, in Time Passes, all of these become unimportant and
brief, and they are put into the background or fallen into oblivion. What is
left is cyclical natural time. Time Passes gives a vivid yet sorrowful
example of Andrews explanation to Lily about his fathers work: "Think of
a kitchen [] when youre not there" (To the Lighthouse 33), and it enacts
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formally the theme of Mr. Ramsays philosophy: "Subject and object and the
nature of reality" (To the Lighthouse 33)
In her diary, Woolf viewed Time Passes as "this impersonal thing,
[] the flight of time and the consequent break of unity in my design. [] I
have to give an empty house, no peoples characters, the passage of time, all
eyeless and featureless with nothing to cling to" (qtd. in Volger 33). The
world of Time Passes is no longer regulated by the imperial time order.
That is to say, when the imperial time order loses control of the world of
Time Passes, "time is merely a cyclical repetition embodied by the diurnal
and seasonal rotation" (Wang 76). Contrary to British historians views
mentioned above, it is natural time, the time dictated by the suns progress
through the heavens and the countrymans age-old rhythm of life, that
supersedes Mans time.
More importantly, when the silent and bracketed deaths of Mrs.
Ramsay, her daughter Pru, her son Andrew and 23 unnamed soldiers suggest
the scale of the slaughter of the First World War, the imperial illusion of
linear progression falls apart, for they are innocent victims of an imperial
ideology. As Randall Stevenson notes,
the wars enormous violence not only swept away a style
of life, a sense of integration in the flow of time. [] A
sense of security within history, and a belief in the
attractive qualities of the future to which it probably led,
had sustained a good deal of thinking and fiction at
least since the latter part of the Victorian period (140).
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In Woolfs description of Time Passes, Bowlby stresses that

"natural rhythms take precedence over the appeal to any kind of progression
or linear development; there is no specificity of a differentiated past or
elsewhere structuring the present" (qdt. in Wang 76). This leads to the
disclosure of the delusion of the supposedly progressive history of the
British Empire, and it satirizes a faith in advancing the imperial power of
Britain.
In a nutshell, Woolf accomplishes her criticism of imperial linear time
by her skillful use of stream of consciousness that reveals her characters
uneasiness and anxieties living in linear temporality and her uncanny
temporal perception that uncovers the imperial illusion of linear progression.
The problematics of the imperial linear progression of time are fully
demonstrated in Mr. Ramsays inability to get beyond Q. Mr. Ramsey, an
intensely passionate pursuer and representative of the progress of British
civilization, likens his academic progress to the alphabetical order, A to Z.
His academic pursuit can be interpreted as a metaphor for the British Janusface nationalism: looking back to past imperial glories and Victorian
values while simultaneously undertaking a kind of modernization in
preparation for a new stage of global capitalist competition to project a
promising future. Mr. Ramsays "splendid mind had one by one, firmly and
accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q" (To the Lighthouse 47).
More ironically, he gets stuck at Q and admits to himself that "R was
beyond him. [] He could never reach R" (To the Lighthouse 48-49). R
happens to be Ramseys initial. As Wang suggests, "his failure to get to R
might suggest he cannot get beyond the present Qestion to achieve a full
self-knowledge" (66). Just as the promising future projected by the imperial
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discourses is an illusion and unreachable, the academic future, for Ramsey,

lies too far ahead as after Q "there are a number of letters the last of which is
scarcely visible" (To the Lighthouse 47).

(The original version was first published in Cultural Studies Monthly, 62,
November 2006)

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Works Cited

1.

Auerbach, Erich. "The Brown Stocking." Thomas A. Vogler. 39-52.

2.

Banfield, Ann. "Time Passes:Virginia Woolf, Post-Impressionism,

and Cambridge Time. " Poetics Today 24.3 (2003): 471-516.

3.

Bhabha, Homi K., ed. Nation and Narration. New York: Routledge,

1993.
4.

Bowlby, Rachel. Virginia Woolf: Criticism and Interpretation.

Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.

5.

Hung, Min-yueh. Class and Gender Relations in Virginia Woolf's

Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. Taipei: National Taiwan University,

2002.
6.

Johnston, Ian. "LBST 402: Lecture on Virginia Woolf's To the

Lighthouse." Johnstonia. May 1999. Malaspina University. 14 June 2004.

<http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/woolf.htm>
7.

Nairn, Tom. The Break-up of Britain. London: Verso, 1977.

8.

Phillips, Kathy J. Virginia Woolf against Empire. Knoxville: U of

Tennessee P, 1994.
9.

Richards, Jeffrey, and John M. Mackenzie. The Railway Station: A

Social History. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988.

10.

Stevenson, Randall. Modernist Fiction: An Introduction. Lexington: U

of Kentucky P, 1992.
11.

Vogler, Thomas, A. "Introduction." Thomas A. Vogler. 1-38.

12.

Vogler, Thomas, A., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of To the

Lighthouse: A Collection of Critical Essays. New Jersy: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

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13.

Wang, Chia-lan. Reading the (Dis)Contents of the British Empire:

Imperialism, Heterosexuality, and Time in Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and To

the Lighthouse. Taipei: National Taiwan Normal University, 2002.
14.

Woolf, Virginia. Collected Essays, 4 vols. London: Hogarth, 1966-67.

15.

---. Orlando: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,

1928.
16.

---. To the Lighthouse, ed. Margaret Drabble. Oxford: Oxford UP,

1999.
17.

---. The Waves. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959.

18.

---. A Writers Diary, ed. Leonard Woolf. New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1954.

Short Biography
Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Chen-ou Liu ( ) was a college teacher,
essayist, editor, and two-time winner of the national Best Book Review
Radio Program Award. In 2002, he emigrated to Canada and settled in Ajax,
a suburb of Toronto, where he continues to struggle with a life in transition
and translation. Featured in New Resonance 7: Emerging Voices in EnglishLanguage Haiku, Chen-ou Liu is the author of Ripples from a Splash: A
Collection of Haiku Essays with Award-Winning Haiku, Following the
Moon to the Maple Land (forthcoming in July 2011), and Broken/Breaking
English: Selected Short Poems (forthcoming in December 2011). His tanka
and haiku have been honored with 20 awards. Read more of his poems at
Poetry in the Moment, http://chenouliu.blogspot.com/

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