ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

of the night. Seasonal narrative, even as it seems to contradict the narrative of a single
night, attempts to conform itself to the night’s logic and to the basic metaphors of fear
and destruction which night commands. Initially, however, the late spring is still a
time of optimism, cementing collectively the consonance between nature and
humanity suggested by the juxtaposition of the spring with Prue’s marriage. The
mystic or visionary introduced in section five, asking existential questions on the
beach, gives way to a mass of “the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring
the pool” (132). For these anonymous visionaries, the “mirrors” of nature seem to
provide “the strange intimation […] that good triumphs, happiness prevails, order
rules” (132). Although Prue’s death and the end of spring seem to break the
confluence of nature with optimistic human narrative, they do not (initially at least)
break the connection between seasonal and human narrative. If anything, this
connection strengthens, as spring “seemed to have taken upon her a knowledge of the
sorrows of mankind” (132). Once again, spring anticipates bracketed events: the next
sentence contains the first sorrowful individual event of To the Lighthouse: “[Prue
Ramsay died that summer in some illness connected with childbirth, which was
indeed a tragedy, people said, everything, they said, had promised so well.]” (132).
Not only does spring’s knowledge of sorrow foreshadow Prue’s death, but Prue’s
death is explicitly related to attempted heterosexual reproduction. The disruption of
the relationship between the narrative of the seasons and the narrative of human
events is initially one of defied expectations, rather than a complete break between
the levels of narration.
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