Syuzhet

To the Lighthouse is divided into three parts: ‘The Window’, ‘Time Passes’ and ‘The Lighthouse’. The syuzhet map registers the underlying spatiality of this structure: the predominantly internal spaces of ‘The Window’ (‘dining-room’, ‘drawing-room’, ‘bedrooms’) are connected to the more external ‘lawn’ and ‘boat’ of ‘The Lighthouse’ via the less delineated ‘house’ of ‘Time Passes’. According to Woolf, and as illustrated by her diagram, her work was conceived as ‘two blocks joined by a corridor’ (see The Original Holograph, ed, by Susan Dick). Woolf’s description, like the chronotope, describes the text in terms of space-time. Two vertical blocks or spatial synecdoches – ‘The Window’ and ‘The Lighthouse’ – are connected by the horizontal line of time, made visible as a corridor. This ‘H’ form is traceable in the syuzhet map, where the topoi clusters on either side are joined by a less populated middle.

Setting aside the direct lines that connect ‘lawn’ to ‘dining-room’ (the ‘lawn’ is present in both the first and last section of the novel), the middle part’s topoi are joined by jumps, interrupts and intratextual connections that imply the prominence of time over space. This is because ‘The Window’ all takes place on a September evening; ‘the Lighthouse’ a September morning. ‘Time Passes’, on the other hand, covers a ten-year hiatus. The overall dominance of jumps and interrupts demonstrates that while the plot moves directly through the limited spatial confines of the house and its locality, the ‘other’ places – ‘Marlow’ and ‘Mr Bankes’ house’, for instance – are imagined or recalled rather than visited. This all speaks for the telling of the tale – the narrative abruptly shifts between multiple perspectives. It also shows how mapping depth as well as breadth counters the seeming simplicity of the plot.