Minor Epiphanies in "To The Lighthouse"

I have noticed that Virgina Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" has numerous minor epiphanies, of the "oh" variety, that are dispersed with frequent regularity throughout the novel.

The assignment of this blog was to write about only five instances of minor epiphanies that occur in "To the Lighthouse". Only five, well we could probably find 50 quite easily or wait there are 209 pages in "To the Lighthouse" and if one were so inclined to look someone could probably find at least 209 minor epiphanies in the novel. To prove this point, or at least attempt to I will randomly open my book to any given page and write the quote that, at least in my mind, best embodies the minor epiphany that I observed on that page.

Here we go...in numerical order (not the order in which I turned to them originally)...

On page 29 "She was silent always. She knew then-she knew without having learnt. Her simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified. Her singleness of mind made her drop plumb like a stone, alight exact as a bird, gave her, naturally, this swoop and fall of the spirit upon truth which delighted, eased, sustained-falsely perhaps.

Page 62 "She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of-to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments free for the strangest adventures.

Page 128 "...the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach answers to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul.

Pages 150 -151 "And then, and then-this was one of those moments when an enormous need urged him, without being conscious what it was, to approach any woman, to force them, he did not care how, his need was so great, to give him what he wanted: sympathy.

Page 174 "But the dead...They are at our mercy. Mrs. Ramsay has faded and gone, she thought. We can over-ride her wishes, improve away her limited old fashioned ideas."

Page 176 and this one is not quite so random as I remembered that there was a followup epiphany to the one on page 174. "She had been looking at the table cloth, and it flashed upon her that she would move the tree to the middle, and need never marry anybody, and she had felt an enormous exultation. She had felt, now she could stand up to Mrs. Ramsay - a tribute to the astonishing power that Mrs. Ramsay had over one."

From these five quotes from "To the Lighthouse" we can see that these minor epiphanies are all small, though revealing, personal moments of epiphanies that continue to grow over the course of the novel.