I read To the Lighthouse about three years ago. Perhaps it goes without saying, but there have been things that have popped out to me this time around, re-reading it, that I didn't catch the first time. One of these is the connection(if any) between the fairy tale and the rest of the Vision of Virginia(couldn't resist, sorry).

Mrs. Ramsey is reading The Fisherman's Wife to her little son James in chapter X of The Window section.

" ' And when he came to the sea, it was quite dark grey, and the water heaved up from below, and smelt putrid. Then he went and stood by it and said,

Flounder, flounder, in the sea,
Come I pray thee here to me;
For my wife, good Isabil,
Wills not as I'd have her will.

Well, what does she want then," said the Flounder.' And where were they now? Mrs. Ramsey wondered, reading and thinking, quite easily, both at the same time; for the story of the Fisherman and his wife was like the bass gently accompanying a tune, which now and then ran up unexpectedly into the melody. And when would she be told?" (pg. 56)

I wonder if this can be construed as a reflection on the relation that story has for Real Life(whatever that is anyway), the bass gently accompanying the tune, and hence a part of the overall music of our existence. It isn't so much that the fairy tale relates in some sort of perfect microcosmic way into the rest of the story; though in a sense it does: the fisherman's wife wants everything that can possibly be had, and ends up ultimately with nothing. Mrs. Ramsey's epiphany on page 65 where she becomes one and the same with the lighthouse beam and "She felt, It is enough! It is enough!" Which is to say that, paradoxically, nothing is perhaps Everything after all, and vice-versa. That at any given moment you are in contact with everything you'd ever need or want to be. You just don't know it. And it is through the sharing of stories, from one age to another(ie. Mrs. Ramsey and James) that we can come a little bit closer to understanding this.

Or Kari could be off-base, which is also a possibility.