To the Lighthouse is a novel full of hidden messages, symbolism and history. All of these elements make “To the Lighthouse” a novel that is not easy to read. There are no clears signs within the novel telling us “Hey look here!! This is where the action is!!” The novel also lacks to mention when the events all takes place, who is speaking, and lastly does not give us an indication in what way we should think and feel of them. Virginia Woolf’s novel opens with an answer to a question that hasn’t been asked yet. This answer is given by a character who is not identified or described, and is addressed to the child who is sitting on the floor near a “drawing room window” in an undisclosed place that is also not described or identified. Also within this novel, there is not much respect for the standard novelistic conventions of clock time or consecutive action. Just when the audience starts to think that they’ve begun to establish an order of events, they start to realize that Woolf seems to take pleasure in confusing her audience by inserting an event or idea that has happened in the past or she anticipates a reaction, so that time in her novelistic world, the past and present and future, seem to flow into one another in an unbroken stream of consciousness.
In modern fiction today, one of the modern themes that can be seen throughout these works is the Das Unheimliche or “The Uncanny” due to the influence of Sigmund Freud during this era and also due to the life style of post war era as well as authors wanting the fiction to be relatable to the real world today. First I would like to provide some historical background for Woolf’s novel “To the Lighthouse.” This background information will be about the time when Virginia Woolf was livi...
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...l its civilizing influences are doomed to be “pitched downwards to the depths of darkness” (TL: 138). A place which is all too familiar to Mr. Ramsay because throughout the novel he has become a prisoner in this darkness because he has allowed himself to be trapped within the confines of the uncanny that exists in his subconscious mind and is starting to bloom and grow in his conscious state of being. In essays written between 1919 and 1925, Woolf talks mostly, as we have already seen, about extending the novel to embrace human consciousness, to provide a more accurate record of the flickering emotions of everyday life. By doing this, Woolf has created a bridge between the fictional world of her novel and the reality of the world in which we live. These ideas of consciousness play on our emotions and as an audience it allows to be emotionally involved in the novel.
Dozier, Richard. "Adultry and Disappointment in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?" Modern Drama Vol11. No 4, (Feb 1969): 432-436.
The Webster Dictionary defines a lighthouse as “a structure (as a tower) with a powerful light that gives a continuous or intermittent signal to navigators.” (Webster) So, in other words, a lighthouse is a beacon, a beacon to many. It's a place people who have lost their way look toward for direction. A lighthouse is a "tall” unmoving structure. The lighthouse also has a light that does often move. As the sun sets the light is turned on, however, as the sun rises the light is turned off. The Lighthouse offers a force for life towards the Ramsey family, pushing on both the plot (the novel begins with the conflict arising because James's desire to go to the lighthouse) and the streams of consciousness that go along. The Lighthouse has a clear
Virginia's relationships throughout her life contributed, not only to her literature, but the quality of her life as well. Perhaps the greatest influence in Virginia's life is her mother, Julia Stephen. "Julia Stephen was the most arresting figure which her daughter [Virginia Woolf] tried to resurrect and preserve" (Gordon 4). Woolf, a manic-depressive, found herself constantly searching for approval. "Virginia needed her mother's approval in order to 'measure her own stature" (Bond 38). Battling with a sense of worthlessness, Virginia's mother helped her temporarily rid herself of self-criticism and doubt. This however was short-lived. When Mrs. Stephen rejected Virginia, she felt her mother's disapproval directly related to the quality of her writing. "Virginia Woolf could not bear to reread anything she had written… Mrs. Stephen's rejection of Virginia may have been the paradigm of her failure to meet her own standards" (Bond 39). With the death of her mother Woolf used her novel, To the Lighthouse to "reconstruct and preserve" the memories that still remained. According to Woolf, "the character of Mrs. Ramsey in To the Lighthouse was modeled entirely upon that of her mother" (Bond 27). This helped Virginia in her closure when dealing with the loss and obsession with her mother. Although Virginia clung to the relationship with her mother, she favored her father, Leslie Stephen. Virginia resembled her father uncannily in character traits, in her writing and self-doubts, in her great and malicious sense of humor, in her marriage, in her frugality, in her fear of aging, and in her social consciousness. (Bond 59) They were both extremely outspoken while sparing no one's feelings with their comments. Virginia and Leslie both had strong personalities and rapid mood changes. Woolf portrayed her father, like her mother, through characterization in To the Lighthouse. Mr. Ramsey captures her father as a man of "baffling mutability, a lightening switch from the most lovable of men, to a 'famished wolfhound' and back again" (Gordon 22). This portrayal of Leslie Stephens relates to his uncontrollable rages and mood swings. Leslie Stephen not only controlled Virginia's mental development, but her intellectual development as well.
Pause, reflect, and the reader may see at once the opposing yet relative perceptions made between life, love, marriage and death in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. In this novel, Woolf seems to capture perfectly the very essence of life, while conveying life’s significance as communicated to the reader in light tones of consciousness arranged with the play of visual imagery. That is, each character in the novel plays an intrinsic role in that the individuality of other characters can be seen only through the former’s psyche. Moreover, every aspect of this novel plays a significant role in its creation. For instance; the saturation of the present by the past, the atmospheres conjoining personalities and separating them, and the moments when things come together and fall apart. This paper will explore such aspects of To the Lighthouse while incorporating the notion that the world Woolf creates in this novel is one that combines finite and infinite truth. A created world that recognizes both limitation and isolation and how these themes are interrelated in and throughout the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. Conceptually, Woolf combines all of the aforementioned realities of life into the presentation of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, a married couple that seem to stand for both accurate and visionary approaches to the reality of life. It is important, then, to consider that To the Lighthouse is not only representational of life, but that it also catches life. It is thus the goal of this paper to readily show why this is so.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Fall of the House of Usher, the character Roderick Usher exhibits severe mental illness. Most of Poe’s writings are psychological in nature. The Fall of the House of Usher is a great example of this. Poe’s life was filled with many tragic events. The unpleasant outcome of his early years resulted in a great Gothic Romantic writer. He is a master of writing psychological thrillers, adding suspense and mystery in his stories. The topics of his writings are a concoction of unpleasant, austere, and grotesque things, thus the reader can be left feeling squeamish and susceptible. We are drawn into Poe’s stories by our intrinsic human nature of curiosity and intrigue. This paper gives examples of Poe’s literary style as we examine Roderick’s metal state through his words and appearance.
Core Question 1: On the last paragraph on page 360, Woolf asks (regarding “rooms of your own in the house”), “How are you going to furnish it, how are you going to decorate it? With whom are you going to share it with, and upon what terms?” What is the purpose of including these rhetorical questions?
Woolf shifts from describing the process of writing to describing an obstacle. Woolf encapsulates the essence of female expectations by citing the Angel in the House. The Angel in the House references a narrative poem written in the nineteenth century to describe the ideal Victorian woman. Woolf illustrates the Angel in the House “as shortly as [she] can” in order to acknowledge her audience and to make her speech brief and comprehensible for the listening women. Through employing anaphora, Woolf explains, “she was intensely sympathetic...intensely charming...utterly unselfish…” These descriptions are standards for women which the Angel in the House embodied. Woolf expands the audience’s understanding of the Angel in the House by providing concrete examples of her self-sacrificing nature. This is juxtaposed with Woolf’s behavior; Woolf purchased a Persian cat instead of using her earnings to purchase something more practical. Her impractical tendencies are contrasted with the selflessness of the Angel in the House, outwardly depicting that Woolf challenged her expectations as a woman. Woolf employs profound imagery to describe her haunting by the Angel in the House, “The shadows of her wings fell on my page; I heard the wrestling of her skirts in the room.” Through appealing to both visual and auditory senses, Woolf develops the Angel in the House from a creation of her subconscious into a concrete being, which is how she viewed it. Woolf finds the Angel in the House so intolerable she kills it in an act of “self-defence,” claiming that the Angel in the House would have killed her if she had not killed her first. Woolf definitively states, “She died hard,” which is emphatic
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is a story that centers around the the value of memory to self. The story does this by centering around the characters that Woolf writes about, and their thoughts pertaining to their memories of one another. Woolf’s writing in To the Lighthouse is rich in her characters, Mrs. and Mr. Ramsay, their kids, and their friends’ thoughts and feelings towards everything they are going through, and more importantly, their thoughts and memories of one another. The reader learns about the characters’ through the complex thoughts Woolf’s characters’ have.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Introduction by D.M. Hoare, Ph.D. London: J.M. Dent and Sons
Imagery is used in the story very often and is used by giving the reader a mental picture of what is being described. There are many examples of imagery in this story with the use of metaphors and similes such as “The doors go shutting in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.” this imagery allows the readers to picture in their mind the image of the ghost roaming the house and shutting doors in their wake. The title A Haunted House is an irony in itself most people associate haunted house with horror and evil creatures, but in reality this story is the opposite of that, “This gentle tale both references and refuses many of the characteristics of conventional ghost stories, and so ‘we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak’.43 A ghostly couple preside over the house, ensuring its safety and that of those who live in it. Their stirrings are not those of destructive poltergeists.” Woolf decided to reject the conventional ghost stories that have been told time and time again and give people a different view on ghost by making the ghost in this story protagonist who are just reminiscing about good times and the love they share throughout the story. this shows the readers that things are not always as it seems and to not judge a book by its
Woolf’s concerns and anxieties regarding how social and historical forces shaped individual’s life which is embodied artistically in “Mrs. Dalloway” reveals the fact that her aesthetic experience is totally different from previous literary form. For a deep perception of Woolf aesthetic experience, take into consideration the perplexity of major characters in “Mrs. Dalloway” accompanied with the way they are influenced by contradictions and ambivalences governing in the society; these approaches open the path to consider this novel a social and historical criticism. In this sense, Mrs. Dalloway expands our perception of modernism and modern aesthetic by presenting a profound critique of crisis in modernity which diminishes the vital need to literature and art.
“I meant to write about death only life came breaking in as usual.” Virginia Woolf was a popular modernist back in the twentieth century. She wrote various novels, each novel different, but all connecting the same theme. Woolf struggled with a bipolar disorder and a deep depression within her years of living, and showed through her work the struggles she was faced with. Woolf put all her energy into writing what are now the most famous pieces from the twentieth century. Woolf was unlike average writers in her day, Woolf liked to focus on changes in the literature world. Although she was a dark writer, she liked to mix her darkness in with the changes the world was experiencing. Woolf’s famous novels are Mrs. Dalloway, The Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own, and Orlando.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Introduction by D.M. Hoare, Ph.D. London: J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1960
Woolf presents three characters who embody three different gender roles. Mrs. Ramsay is the dutiful wife and mother. Mr. Ramsay is the domineering patriarch. Lily Briscoe is an independent, aspiring woman. Woolf sets these three roles in contrast with each other. She allows the reader to see the power and influence each character has. Mrs. Ramsay’s submissive and supportive nature arouses admiration. Mr. Ramsay’s condescending manner provokes animosity. Lily Briscoe’s independence enables her to find meaning and fulfillment in her life.