To The Lighthouse

(Virginia Woolf)
Prep. By: Waliullah, BS 8th Literature
Virginia
Woolf
ADELINE VIRGINIA STEPHEN
 Woolf’s Writings

 Virginia Woolf is recognized as one of the most innovative writers of the 20th
century. Perhaps best known as the author of Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the
Lighthouse (1927).
 she was also a prolific writer of essays, diaries, letters and biographies. Both in
style and subject matter.
 Woolf’s work captures the fast-changing world in which she was working.
 Woolf’s work explores the key motifs of modernism, including the subconscious,
time, perception, the city and the impact of war.
Cont…

 She refused patriarchal honors like the Companion of Honor (1935) and
honorary degrees from Manchester and Liverpool (1933 and 1939).

 She wrote polemical works about the position of women in society, such as A
Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938).
 Stream of Consciousness

 The term “stream of consciousness” originated in the 19th century by William

James.
 psychologists coined the term to describe the constant flow of subjective
thoughts, feelings, memories, and observations that all people experience.
 Beginning in the early 20th century, however, literary critics began to use
“stream of consciousness” to describe a narrative technique pioneered by writers
like Dorothy Richardson, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Many
of these writers were interested in psychology and the "psychological novel,"
 Woolf’s Writing Style

 Virginia Woolf was one of the most distinctive writers of the English Literature
using the stream of consciousness technique masterfully.
 It is clear from her use of sentence structure and vocabulary in understanding
Woolf's style better.
 In this study, I have dwelled on Virginia Woolf's three novels; Mrs. Dalloway, To
the Lighthouse, and The Waves. These are Virginia Woolf's well-known novels,
which are considered to have established her mastery in the use of stream of
consciousness technique in an effective way.
 However, in each of the novels, mentioned; a different way of the stream of
consciousness technique is employed, which makes it peculiar and spectacular
to Virginia Woolf.
 To The Lighthouse (1927)
 To the Lighthouse (1927), one of Woolf’s most experimental works, the passage of time, for example, is
modulated by the consciousness of the characters rather than by the clock. Its language is dense and
the structure amorphous. Compared with the plot-driven Victorian novels that came before it, To the
Lighthouse seems to have little in the way of action. Indeed, almost all of the events take place in the
characters’ minds.
 Although To the Lighthouse is a radical departure from the nineteenth-century novel. Woolf’s
experimentation has much to do with the time in which she lived. To the Lighthouse exemplifies Woolf’s
style and many of her concerns as a novelist. With its characters based on her own parents and siblings,
it is certainly her most autobiographical fictional statement, and in the characters of Mr. Ramsay, Mrs.
Ramsay, and Lily Briscoe, Woolf offers some of her most penetrating explorations of the workings of the
human consciousness as it perceives and analyzes, feels and interacts.
 Characters and their relations

 Mrs. Ramsay; A wife and Mr. Ramsay; A husband

 Sons: James, Andrew, Jasper and Roger
 Daughters: Prue, Nancy, Rose and Cam
 Lily Briscoe: A painter and friend to Ramsays
 Charles Tanslay: A young philosopher and Mr. Ramsay pupil
 Williams Bankes: A Botanist
 Plot Overview

 The novel is divided into three Parts,,,

 The Window Section: Part One spans approximately seven hours and takes up more than half the book.
It’s set at the Ramsay’s summer home, where the Ramsays and their eight children are entertaining a
number of friends and colleagues. The novel begins with the wish of James to go to the lighthouse.
Then series of events follows like Mr. Tanslay’s encounter with Mrs. Ramsay, Lily painting, portrait of Mrs.
Ramsay. William Bankes proposal to Lily and a dinner party takes place.
 Time Passes Section: Part Two compresses ten years into about twenty pages. All the traditionally
important information in a story. We learn that Mrs. Ramsay died at night; Prue died in childbirth (after
first getting married); and Andrew died when a shell exploded in France. Oh, right. There also happens
to be a war going on World War I.
 The Light House: Part Three takes place at the summer house and begins with Mr. Ramsay and two of
his children, Cam and James, finally going to the Lighthouse, and Lily working on the painting of Mrs.
Ramsay that she never finished. Via Lily’s thoughts, we hear that she never married, but remained good
friends with William Bankes. Paul and Minta’s marriage fell apart. Mr. Ramsay, Cam, and James actually
make it to the Lighthouse. Lily finishes her painting. Throughout this last part of the novel, it’s clear that
Mrs. Ramsay is sorely missed.
 Stream of consciousness in ‘To the
lighthouse’

 Let us examine the following passage in the first chapter of part one. • “…For
how would you like to be shut up for a whole month at a time, and possibly
more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size of a tennis lawn? She would ask;
and to have no letters and newspapers, and to see nobody; if you were married,
not to see your wife, not to know how your children were, --if they were ill, if
they had fallen down and broken their legs or arms; to see the same dreary
waves breaking week after week, and then a dreadful storm coming, and the
windows covered with spray, and birds dashed against the lamp, and the whole
place rocking, and not be able to put your nose out of doors for fear of being
swept into the sea? How would you like that? She asked
 Explanation of textual quote

 The passage in previous is represented in the manner of straight narration by the

author, – but it is clearly what the character feels and thinks, and it reflects the
character’s consciousness and inner thought. – In this passage, Woolf facilitates the
indirect interior monologue with her unique skills. –
 Firstly, she uses the conjunction “for ” as an indication of the beginning of this
monologue and produces an easy and natural shift from objective description to the
character ’s interior monologue. –
 Secondly she presents Mrs. Ramsay’s consciousness by the guiding phrases “she
would ask” and “she asked” to make the reader wonder about unhurriedly in Mrs.
Ramsay’s consciousness. –
 Thirdly, here she employs semicolons to indicate the continuation of the
consciousness. The use of semicolons characterizes Woolf’s skill in dealing with
indirect interior monologue
 Themes and Symbols

 The Transience of Life and Work

 Art as a Means of Preservation
 The Subjective Nature of Reality

Symbols
 The Lighthouse
 Lily’s Painting
 The Ramsays’ House
 The Sea
 The Boar ’s Skull
 Modernism in To The Lighthouse

 To the lighthouse is a modernist novel, written by Virginia Woolf in 1927, which uses
elements taken from Mrs. Woolf’s own life.
 As modernism establishes, To the lighthouse is a novel where the plot is not as
important as the psychological development of the characters and where a principal
value is deeply supported. The novel contains as well a deeper exploration into the
human mind.
 The novel exhibits its argument with different kinds of devices; the two principal
devices are narrators and dialogues.
 The analysis of the different voices that the novel contains enables the reader to draw
some important conclusions. The novel drifts basically between two minds, Mrs.
Ramsay’s and Lilly Briscoe’s; both characters are the ones that make possible the
novel’s development
Cont…

 Another important aspect of the novel is the use of time, the novel has three parts.
 Another important feature in the novel is the use of symbolism and imagery.
 Gender is significant in the novel. Women characters seem to be strong, able and
influential, some times even clever. Men appear more like weak characters, or
characters subordinated to women, depending on them. This could be not only
because Woolf is a woman but because in the novel she apparently seems to see the
world through women’s eyes, to depict and write down life as a woman.
 Finally I would say that this novel is an important example of modernism, of women
literature and a psychological novel.
Thanks