Cunningham uses the motif of light to develop the theme of genius and its attendant flip side, affliction. He frequently plays on the different meanings of the word “brilliance” to express the connection between genius and affliction. For Virginia, brilliant light is both the cause of her suffering and the source of her genius. Her migraines are a “realm of relentless brilliance” that “enshroud her, hour by hour, like a chrysalis” (83). The analogy of the chrysalis connotes rebirth, and indeed her migraines re-attune her to the world, affording renewed creative vision. Consequently, Virginia has a tortured relationship with her affliction that, after years in Richmond, becomes self-destructive. Though Richmond has mostly cured these headaches, she longs to return to London: “Better to die raving mad in London than evaporate in Richmond” (84). Virginia is the “tortured genius” who values art more than life itself.

Brightness reveals Clarissa’s inadequacies and ordinariness—her lack of genius. In Richard’s building, Clarissa fears becoming trapped in the elevator, a “tiny chamber of intensified, bleached brightness” (65). Her fear of becoming trapped in the “brilliant, stale-smelling emptiness” (65) in front of the mirror that distorts her reflection, is her fear of confronting her actual self in all its imperfections.