Struggling to Find Answers

Lily Briscoe, while staying with the Ramseys, is attempting to complete her painting that captures the essence of Mrs. Ramsey and her son James. But the journey to do this involves struggling with trying to answer the “simple question…What is the meaning of life?” (161). Lily is convinced that Mrs. Ramsey holds “in her heart” the answer to this question and thus is infatuated with her. She is “in love” with the world that Mrs. Ramsey has built around her through her relationships with her husband, her children and her friends. She recognizes that Mrs. Ramsey possesses a special quality, a quality that “people must have for the world to go on” (50). As she tries to capture the essence of Mrs. Ramsey, Lily asks herself, “Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge?” (50) that made Mrs. Ramsey so special. Lily struggles with her painting for she cannot initially find the connection and understanding that she seeks with Mrs. Ramsey. She knows that “knowledge and wisdom are stored up in Mrs. Ramsey’s heart” (51), but she does not know how to attain this knowledge.

Lily tries to capture this knowledge from Mrs. Ramsey by physically embracing her and hoping that this knowledge would permeate from Mrs. Ramsey’s body into hers. She leans her head against Mrs. Ramsey’s knees; she wraps her arms around her knees; she places her head in her lap, all in an attempt to draw out this knowledge from her physical closeness. But Lily despairs that this knowledge does not come easily and compares it to treasures that are “sealed” and are locked away in “secret chambers” (51). There are “intricate passages of the brain” (51) that must be navigated to find the answers that Lily is certain Mrs. Ramsey holds. Again stressing that these answers are not obvious or easy to find, Woolf writes they are “not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men” (51). Lily’s quest to answer the meaning of life will not be handed to her, but will require a struggle.

Woolf introduces a second metaphor of a beehive to continue the inaccessibility of Mrs. Ramsey’s “knowledge.” The beehive, like the “secret chambers in a tomb of kings,” attracts bees, which represent humans, but is essentially “sealed off” and impenetrable. The “dome shaped hive” that represents Mrs. Ramsey’s is “haunted” swarms of bees that are attracted to its “sweetness.” The swarming bees signify that many people are seeking the answer to the meaning of life, but what is heard around the bee hive are “murmurings and stirrings.” Nothing is clear or explicit, but elusive and intangible. Lily hopes that by deceiphering these “murmurings,” she could make sense of the world.