"For there are times when you can neither think nor feel. And if you can neither think nor feel, he thought, where is he?" (Woolf, 193-4) Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf illustrates a divide between her male and female characters. Males commonly represent left-brain, concrete, calculating, and predictable approaches to thinking, while female characters exemplify the opposite of right-brain, creative, spontaneous, and emotional forms of expression. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay best demonstrate the opposite sides divided by a barrier between the sexes that snubs any real communication. While Mr. Ramsay is comfortable in the structured constraints of language and the structure it provides, Mrs. Ramsay is more adept at the artistic and emotional modes of perception that she feels rather than articulates. Woolf portrays the feminine as the representation of semiotics, a constantly flowing chain of signifiers that occurs with the use of language and never stops at a single, fixed "meaning". The relatively safe meanings of "ordinary" language are harassed and disrupted by this. flow of signification, which pushes the linguistic sign to its extreme limit... Semiotics is fluid and plural, a sort of pleasant creative excess over precise meaning, and takes sadistic pleasure in destroying or denying such signs... the ideologies of modern male-dominated class society relies on such fixed signs for its power." (Eagleton, 163) The female character seems to have some understanding that comes close to this "meaning", through flashes of artistic inspiration, but has difficulty to express this feeling in words The male character, on the other hand, is described by Woolf as a master of language, but despite his talent in verbal articulation, he often speaks meaninglessly rather than balancing each other's differences, Due to opposing approaches to expression, male and female characters have difficulty experiencing communication and understanding. The division between male and female, represented by Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, first appears when talking about a possible trip to the lighthouse the next day. Mr. Ramsay, who thinks on a purely linear and systematic level, recognizes the warning signs of an approaching storm and knows from these signs that going to the lighthouse is out of the question. "We're not going to the lighthouse, James," he said, as he stood by the window... Hateful little man, thought Mrs Ramsay, why keep saying such a thing? (Woolf, 14-5) For Mrs. Ramsay, the presence of wind and clouds are not necessarily indicators of an impending storm. He cares more about his son's feelings than weather factors. When attacked by her husband in the name of his uncompromising Reason or Logos, Mrs. Ramsay defends herself in the name of "the feelings of the people." Right now she is aligned with the values ​​of art versus philosophy. (Minow-Pinkney, 86) It is open to the possibility of change over time, apparent signifiers do not require a true meaning or conclusion. “It is possible to read the polarity of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay as an opposition between literal meaning and metaphoricity.” (Minow-Pinkney, 85) This is unthinkable for Ramsay, who sees events as cause and effect and there is no room for the possibility of alternatives in his way of thinking. The rigorous propositional discourse of the philosopher is at odds with the symbolic language of art. Priding himself on his accuracy of judgment, "Ramsay refuses to tamper with the facts, never altering aunpleasant word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being." (13) Mrs. Ramsay, on the other hand, as an artist whose raw material is emotion, distorts and exaggerates as much as necessary depending on the human context of her speech... Enraged at his wife's "extraordinary 'irrationality', Ramsay regards her remark to James as a mere story from some fabled land"; (Minow-Pinkney, 86) Mrs. Ramsay serves as a representation of semiotics. Wind and rain do not necessarily indicate "storm", but unravel a chain of signifiers that can end in "storm". ," and it may not be. Contrary to Mr. Ramsay's view, there is no true meaning that follows the presence of signifiers. "In his mind he had always grasped the fact that there is no reason, no order, no justice," Mrs. Ramsay considers (Woolf, 64) Unlike Mrs. Ramsay's seemingly chaotic perspective, Woolf portrays the male hidden behind an orderly screen of linear, precise, but often meaningless language appearing as a scholar. He wanted to establish himself, and would always be so with him until he got the professorship or married his wife, and then he did not need to always say, "II I," for that was what he criticized poor Sir Walter, or perhaps it was Jane Austin, amounted to, "II I." He was thinking of himself and the impression he was making, as he could tell from the sound of his voice, his emphasis and his discomfort. (Woolf, 106)Mr. Ramsay's thoughts during dinner were also indicative of Woolf's male vision. When the conversation turned to books and fame, his expression changed as he considered his books and whether he would be remembered for them. Mr. Ramsay's inability to manage emotions results in a performance that Mrs. Ramsay fears the guests will notice. "Why could he never hide his feelings? Mrs. Ramsay wondered." (Woolf, 96) While Mrs. Ramsay is used to experiencing and managing emotions, Mr. Ramsay acts in a way that he will soon regret, causing him even more anxiety, as he even begins to suspect that the children are laughing at him. He always worried about himself… He always worried about his books: will they be read, are they good, why aren't they better, what do people think of me? He didn't like to think of it that way, and he wondered if at dinner they had guessed why he suddenly became irritable when they talked about fame and the length of books, he wondered if the children laughed at it. (Woolf, 118) The overwhelming emotion represents a break from the predictable and fixed methodological manner used by Mr. Ramsay. It was a separation from the "masculine, metaphysical world, symbolized by abstract truths, sharp divisions and fixed essences." (Eagleton, 164) Mr. Ramsay also acknowledges his inability to express emotion as he considers the pleasures of his life. “It was a disguise,” he reveals. “It was the refuge of a man who was afraid to own his feelings, who couldn't say: this is what I like, this is who I am.” (Woolf, 45) The barrier that divides male and female revolves around differences in their approach to language. The male character uses language to adapt to his linear and rigid mentality. Mr. Ramsay demonstrates linear thinking when considering his alphabet-based ladder of success. The average person starts at "A" and progresses sequentially by letter, most never having the ability to get anywhere near the end. "[Mr. Ramsay] had, or might have had, the power of accurately repeating each letter from A to Z in order." (Woolf, 34-5) He sees only one methodological procedure to follow. His work in philosophy parallels his way ofthink. This is evidenced by Mr. Ramsay's attempt to arrive at a final answer by manipulating language to form a solution to a puzzle that in all likelihood cannot be solved. Woolf portrays Ramsay as a hard-working philosopher who cares deeply about his success in writing, but his field of work seems to be out of touch with the events of everyday life. Lily compares her work to "a meditation on 'a clean kitchen table': 'this seeing angular essences, this reducing the beautiful evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a silver fir.' four-legged table'." (Minow-Pinkney, 94) While for Lily, the colorful images around her are a natural and important part of the world, Mr. Ramsay sees only words and the linear process of finding answers. Lily comments, "She would never have known him. He would never have known her. Human relationships were all like that, he thought, and the worst thing... it was between men and women. Inevitably these were extremely insincere, she thought." (Woolf, 92) In contrast, the female characters are a representation of semiotics. They see that in language, as in life, one signifier implies another, and of another, and so on ad infinitum…Along this metonymic chain of signifiers, meanings, or signifieds, will be produced, but no object or person can ever be fully “present” in this chain (Eagleton, 145) This is why the woman has difficulty at times in the novel to express themselves using male-dominated language. In the novel, society is dominated by a structural, linear, masculine way of thinking. "The feminine... signifies a force within society that opposes it," Eagleton writes (165) Female characters are forced to struggle with methods of expression, as for them language is too vague to fully express ideas. image, from the meaning, but since they are also in the "negative" of that social order there is always something residual, superfluous, unrepresentable, which refuses to figure in it. (Eagleton, 165) Woolf describes women as a representation of semiotics. The female characters realize the futility of attempting to use language to convey a single, defined image. No word is precise enough to convey an idea in its entirety from one person to another. "Meaning is always, in some sense, an approximation, a near-failure, a partial failure, mixing non-sense and non-communication into meaning and dialogue. We can never articulate the truth in a 'pure' way and unmediated." (Eagleton 146-7) Language can only serve as a likeness of the real, but can never fully reveal what was originally intended. Eagleton writes: This potentially infinite movement from one signifier to another is what Lacan means by desire. Every desire arises from a lack, which it continually strives to fill... To enter language, then, is to become prey to desire... To enter language means to be separated from what Lacan calls the "real", the inaccessible. realm that is always outside the reach of signification, always outside the symbolic order. (Eagleton, 145) In an artistic mode, where a person is more likely to perceive flashes of Lacan's "real", rather than a progression of discourse that attempts to add up to a whole idea, communication is difficult, if not impossible . . Ramsay subconsciously realizes her inability to verbally communicate her love for her husband. "He found talking much easier than she did. He could say things that she could never say... She just could never say what she felt,",, 1927.