Faith and Fabrication in To the Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf’s Table-Cloth(s)

Abstract:Critics often identify the Ramsays’ kitchen table from To the Lighthouse (1927) as the principal object of philosophical inquiry in Virginia Woolf’s work, but their accounts have never taken the Ramsays’ table-cloth into careful consideration. Like the table, the table-cloth had profound significance for Woolf, who used it to engage in early twentieth-century debates regarding the nature of reality, perception, and representation. In To the Lighthouse and beyond, the table-cloth elucidates Woolf’s philosophical position—her awareness of dramatic shifts in the epistemology of science, her references to the philosophy of mathematics, and her faithful commitment to a fabricated reality. Ultimately, the Ramsays’ table-cloth is an essential part of Woolf’s project to “reach what [she] might call a philosophy” that was built primarily on her own terms and no one else’s.