Essay On Mr Tansley

radiance, a glow that captivates all those around her. Mrs. Ramsey exudes an almost mystical grace and elegance, only seen in the women of high society Victorian life. The other side of Lily's relationship to the "family" is her dislike for Charles Tansley, the man who tells her that women can't write or paint. It is well known that male friends and family, in terms of what they were capable of achieving in this day and age constantly belittled women, but one man in Lily’s life takes this too far. Tansley is a disagreeable sort, a hypercritical type like Mr. Ramsay, but even more cruel in his judgments of people and things. He seems to constantly have a chip on his shoulder that keeps him from being seen as a tolerable guest by any one in the party. Nevertheless, Lily, with her artist's eye, is unable to despise him completely:
Everything about him had that meager fixity, that bare unloveliness. But nevertheless, the fact remained; it was almost impossible to dislike any one if one looked at them. She liked his eyes; they were blue, deep set, frightening.4

As the first part of To The Lighthouse moves toward its conclusion, Lily considers each of the members of the Ramsay family and the guests, not with the cold, analytical outlook of the men, but with the compassion and exactitude of an artist …show more content…
In defiance of the urgings of his comrades, he rejects the democratic aspirations of the Irish Republican movement, and scorns Temple and even Cranly for their futile humanism. Curiously, Stephen is closer in his apostasy to the Dean than he is to his fellow students, as he quotes Aquinas, "pulcra sunt quae visa placent", and declares that he would never forsake a coherent absurdity (namely Catholicism) for an incoherent one