This formal understanding of space

This formal understanding of space as balanced between a number of individuals unified by the central image of Mrs. Ramsay runs throughout the novel. Because this strictly circumscribed space is organized around contrasting locations, the novel is in many ways an encyclopedia of the types of access relations that we have discussed in this section. Within this general scheme of accessible and inaccessible spaces, Woolf creates a tension between (in turn) imaginative, perceptual, and physical access to the lighthouse. The characters move from imagining a trip to the lighthouse in the first part of the novel (especially Mrs. Ramsay and James) to visually studying it in the second half (especially Mr. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe) and finally physically traveling to it (James, Cam, and Mr. Ramsay). In the process, Woolf shuffles between the various characters and their means of access to distant spaces, and studying how characters change as they access these spaces in different ways.