Mrs.Ramsay and Skipper’s Complexity

Thesis Statement: Mrs. Ramsay and Skipper are psychologically complex characters that are not easy to understand. By saying psychologically complex, I mean that you often catch them thinking in one way and acting in another, or acting a certain way with some people and the opposite way with others.

The first thing that we notice is how each character contradicts themselves. Since Second Skin is narrated by the main character, Skipper, the reader is presented with the chance to know what he thinks and compare that to what he does. In To the Lighthouse there is not a consistent narrator so we will observe how Mrs. Ramsay acts in one way to her guest in the dinner scene and in another to Mr. Ramsay. In the dance scene, when Skipper is dancing with Cassandra, he seems to be very concerned whether she is enjoying herself or not. His gestures show how desperate he is to cling on to her.

“You aren’t having fun, Cassandra?’ I said, and squeeze her hand, wondered whether I might not be able to imitate the sons of the sea and whirl her around by that little tapering white hand for our amusement, hers and mine, and whirl her so that her skirts would rise.”

It shows how concerned he is and how much he would like to stay dancing with her. He even feels like he’s getting kicked and punched when Bub takes her to dance; showing how much it hurts him to be separated from her. He got pulled in to the belly-bumping fight, even though it was against his will, he voluntarily continues, losing time he could have spent with Cassandra and giving others a chance to spend time with her. This shows that Skipper is an easily distracted character that sets goals and has difficulty in following through with them. In To the Lighthouse, we see Mrs. Ramsay’s putting all her effort into uniting all her guests at dinner and is obviously burdened by the thought of having to keep the conversation going. She often pities her guests, like William Banks in this particular scene. When she is sitting in the room with Mr. Ramsay, she is not saying much and is occupying herself with sewing and reading Shakespeare. It is obvious that he wants her to verbally express her love for him, and despite her awareness of this, she refuses to, instead agreeing with him about the weather.

“Yes, you were right. It’s going to be wet tomorrow. You won’t be able to go” (124).

Both Mrs. Ramsay and Skipper have their own complicated web of thoughts that changes rapidly and often distorts the truth. In Second Skin, when Skipper is called out to the field of snow, he immediately thinks that the reason is because Miranda is having an asthma attack. He goes on thinking this thought for some time and goes on into depth about it, imagining it in great detail, that for a brief moment the reader confuses it with reality. The way Skipper often misleads the reader causes us to question his reliability as a narrator.

“I wondered too what Miranda could possibly be doing in the cemetery. And at that moment I had a vision of Miranda leaning against a lichen-covered monument I her old moth-eaten fur coat and signaling me with Jomo’s flashlight, and I hurried, took large determined strides through the trackless snow” (86).

The image he has is filled with details one often does not consider when they are merely supposing something, leading the reader, again, to misunderstand it as an event that is actually taking place. What makes Skipper even harder to understand is that he is not intentionally misleading the reader, but indeed believes that what he is imagining is true. This makes it all the more difficult for the reader to distinguish what is true and what is merely a figment of his imagination. In To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Ramsay is consistently having contradicting thoughts during dinner, at times she is very happy and content with how everything is going and at others, she is always worrying and feels burdened to conform to her social duties as the host