On The Gaze Theme In To The Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf is one of the literary giants in the history of English literature, and she is mainly famous for her novels. To the Lighthouse is one of her masterpieces. Since its publication, scholars at home and abroad have been showing great interest in To the Lighthouse. Many of the researches have been conducted from the perspectives of formalism, feminism and psychoanalysis, etc, but few researches on the novel have been done from the perspective of cultural studies.In cultural studies, gaze refers to a way of looking carrying power or desire. By gazing, the gazer aims to obtain dominion over the gazee; while the gazee feels overwhelming pressure from the gazer, and he/she may even internalize and absorb the gazer’s values. According to Jacques Lacan’s gaze theory, gaze plays an important part in the formation of one’s self-identity. In Discipline and Punish:The Birth of Prison, Foucault introduces panopticon in which inmates are constantly visible to the supervisors in the centre tower of it, and the state of conscious and permanent visibility assures the automatic functioning of power.In To the Lighthouse, the summer house is very much like a panopticon. As an unmarried female artist, Lily Briscoe lives under constant gazes of the others. However, since anyone can be in the tower of panopticon to observe others, Lily can also gaze at (or observe) others so as to gain an in-depth understanding of the world. Based on Jacques Lacan’s and Michel Foucault’s gaze theory, the thesis explores the dissolution and reconstruction of Lily’s subjectivity and self-identity under the power mechanism of gazing. Analysis of the gaze theme contains the following three sections.Firstly, the thesis explores Lily’s role as the gazee. Under gazes of men, including Mr. Ramsay, Charles Tansley and William Bankes, Lily feels great pressure from male authority; while under gazes of women, especially under Mrs. Ramsay’s gaze, Lily feels great pressure from "the angel in the house". Under gazes of these people, Lily feels so oppressed that she involuntarily examines herself according to the gazers’expectations and their values which may be quite different from hers. As a result, Lily cannot help doubting both her role as a painter and her role as a woman. Secondly, the thesis explores Lily’s role as the gazer. By gazing at men, including Mr. Ramsay and Charles Tansley, Lily sees through men’s tricks and recognizes that men’s superiority is just an illusion. Through gazing at women, including Mrs. Ramsay and Minta, Lily has a deeper understanding about the role of women. At the meantime, she also gets to know herself better and recognizes her own desire to be a woman different from the traditional ones, which is an attempt to subvert tradition. By gazing at her picture, Lily redefines the value of painting and becomes more certain of her art dream.Lastly, based on the analysis of Lily’s roles as the gazee and the gazer, the thesis then goes to the contest of visual power between Lily and others. Lily goes through three stages in the contest of visual power. At first, Lily makes attempts to escape people’s gazes, but to no avail. Under inevitable gazes, she is compelled to surrender to the control of gazers only to find the dissolution of her subjectivity. Yet where there is oppression, there is resistance. In order to resist the gazer’s power, Lily, in turn, grasps opportunities to cast her gaze at the previous gazer and she not only succeeds in freeing herself from oppression but also constructs her subjectivity. From escaping gazes to counter-gazing, Lily gradually seizes the initiative in the battle of visual power.The analysis above shows that everyone is under the gazes of other people and the roles of the gazer and the gazee are constantly changeable. Gazes of others deprive Lily of her subjectivity and make her doubt her self-identity, while gazing at others provides Lily with the way to reconstruct her subjectivity and self-identity. With the experiences of Lily, Virginia Woolf not only exposes the disciplinary power of gazes but also explores the oppression and hindrance that women encounter in the process of pursuing their art dreams. What’s more important is that women may make use of gazing to fight against injustice in a patriarchal society. Finally, the escape from the restraint of patriarchy and women’s liberation can be achieved.