THE PROTEAN IMAGE: THE ROLE OF MR. CARMICHAEL IN "TO THE LIGHTHOUSE"

Over twenty years ago Joseph Blotner drew attention to Virginia Woolf's use of classical myth?the Demeter and Persephone myth in particular?as an important element in her novel To the Lighthouse.1 More recently Avrom Fleishman has examined in much greater detail how Virginia Woolf's wide reading led her "to form her works around metaphors, allusions, and quotations drawn from the classics?ancient and modern."3 Both critics have quoted the illuminating entry in her Diary which refers to the completion of The Waves: "What interests me in the last stage was the freedom and boldness with which my imagina? tion picked up, used and tossed aside all the images, symbols which I had prepared. I am sure that this is the right way of using them?not in set pieces, as I had tried at first, coherently, but simply as images, never mak? ing them work out; only suggest."4 We may regard her use of myths as images and symbols, then, as an established aspect of her technique. It is Fleishman who refers to Augustus Carmichael's role in the novel as "shamanistic" and describes him as a "melange of sea-beast, poet, priest, and presiding deity . . . brought into the action as an ef? ficacious force for the continuity of life."5 I think it is possible to identify Mr. Carmichael more precisely, and by so doing enlarge and illuminate the role of this enigmatic, but clearly crucial, character. When creating Mr. Carmichael, Virginia Woolf most likely had in mind the real character of Professor Wolstenholme, the