Family Stress in Virginia Woolf's, To the Lighthouse, and William Faulkner's, The Sound and the Fury

Family Stress in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury:
The Role of the Mother Figure

The Sound and the Fury, written by William Faulkner, and much like Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, works hard to capture each respected character’s individualistic experience, reality, and growth by the use of stream of consciousness. Though these literary titans would never meet, both of their works published around the same time and experimented with the same form from half a world away. These great novels share many themes and qualities influenced by modernistic thought, in which, the literary scope scrutinizes the role of the individual and the struggle to combat an ontological crisis. Both The Sound and the Fury and To the Lighthouse depict individual experience and their respected roles within a stressful family environment. I will argue that the cause of the universal family stress derives from oppressive maternal values and the absences of Mrs. Compson in The Sound and the Fury and Mrs. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse.
Historically, the views of women and their expected roles in America’s Old South and England’s Victorian era are practically identical. The patriarchal government, political and social, expected women to function within their own demure and domestic spheres. The mother’s role, constantly monitored in higher-class families, was to love her family and uphold its image to the highest achievable standard. In The Sound and the Fury, Mrs. Compson fails to structure a cohesive family unit. Mrs. Ramsay, while living, succeeds in unifying her family in To the Lighthouse. The reason for Mrs. Compson’s failure and Mrs. Ramsay’s success curtails to their relationships and attitudes towards their children.
Mrs. Ramsay’s selfless and empathetic character, truly loves and accepts that “they were gifted, her children, but all in different ways” (Woolf 27). However, Mrs. Compson’s cold and selfish character, judges and rejects each of her children in different ways. She asks what she has done “to have been given children like these”, mostly in regards to Benjy and Caddy (Faulkner 103). Mrs. Compson believed that Benjy, her mentally ill child, was “punishment enough for any sins I [Mrs. Compson] have committed” but that she “loved him above all of them because of it because of my duty”; however, in the same passage she deems Jason, her youngest and favorite child, her “joy and salvation” (103). Mrs. Compson is also ashamed and embarrassed by her daughter, Caddy, who she blames for destroying the family name.
While Mrs. Compson obsesses over keeping the family name infringed with gold, Mrs. Ramsay obsesses over the thought of passing time, death, and with those inevitable forces, the aging of her children. Mrs. Ramsay loves all her children and expresses that “she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters (Woolf 58). Mrs. Compson views her role as a mother as a duty and that she must obey the rules placed before her because she is expected to. Mrs. Ramsay finds it much easier to fulfill her role as a mother because of the genuine love she showers her children with.
Mrs. Ramsay states that “[A] mother and child might be reduced to a shadow without irreverence” which is exactly what happens to Mrs. Compson in Faulkner’s novel (Woolf 53). Mrs. Compson’s constant complaining, self-loathing, and over all selfishness enabled her to truly love her children which pressured her daughter, Caddy, into the mother role which she could not fulfill. Though Mrs. Compson is alive throughout the entire novel her lack of love and respect for her children casts a shadow over the family. The Compson children wander around aimlessly searching for motherly love in all the wrong places and all of them, except Caddy, meet their destructions along the way.
The sense of loss and longing is also seen in To the Lighthouse. When Mrs. Ramsay suddenly dies, the reader is only allowed access to a few of the character’s emotions concerning her death. Her youngest son, James, now in his adolescent years asks from a memory of his mother, “where did she go that day?” (Woolf 187). Mr. Ramsay stomps around the yard demanding sympathy from anyone he can manage and finds little success in satisfaction. Even Lily Briscoe calls out Mrs. Ramsay’s name in vain to lure the ghost back into being. All of these characters search for the motherly presence and the love that Mrs. Ramsay had offered during her life. All of them, except Lily, would have any conflicts resolved.
Lily and Caddy both experience resolution in different ways. Caddy never knew a mother’s love and was cast out of her family by her family, in turn, making her an outsider as well. Her expulsion only guaranteed her freedom. Lily was not a Ramsay by blood. She was an outsider looking in on the family, though she was still close enough to them to guarantee Mrs. Ramsay’s love. She is deeply upset by Mrs. Ramsay’s death and is only able to come to terms with her grief when she returns to St. Ives and finishes the painting she had begun ten years earlier. Lily realizes that Mrs. Ramsay was able to create works of art in the form of memories by making “life stand still here” (161). Mrs. Ramsay used the grandeur of the domestic sphere to create permanent moments that Lily could envision at any time. The unity that Mrs. Ramsay was able to create out of the chaos of life and the genuine love she had for people, helped Lily finish her painting and “[S]he owed it all to her” (161).