To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
When speaking of modernism in the work Virginia Woolf, scholars too readily use her innovations in style and technique as the starting point for critical analysis, focusing largely on the ways in which her prose represents a departure from the conventional novel in both style and content. To simply discuss the extent of her unique style, however, is to overlook the role of tradition in her creation of a new literary identity. In To the Lighthouse, Woolf's invention reveals itself instead as a reinvention, a recasting of the conventional through the use of the traditional. Within the text, this relationship manifests itself in Lily Briscoe's relationship with Mrs. Ramsay and the extent to which the domestic woman influences Lily Briscoe's own reinvention of her feminine identity (Barett 33). But Woolf’s reliance on the traditional as a means of reinvention runs deeper than the prose alone; it extends into the very structure and arrangement of the narrative itself, where Woolf considered To the Lighthouse an elegy to her parents rather than a novel. Such a distinction does more than simply underscore Woolf’s intention in writing To the Lighthouse; the invocation of the classical Greek poetic form demands a reconsideration of the work’s structural and rhetorical influences. As this essay will suggest, a critical analysis of Woolf’s elegiac aims in To the Lighthouse does not merely illuminate its autobiographical nature, but also reveals the extent to which the traditional concept of elegy shapes Woolf’s modernist construction of space-time.
Before examining the effect of the elegiac structure within the text, however, it is necessary to define more specifically the concept...
... middle of paper ...
... last, the renewal of traditional elegiac form in an innovative way, influenced by the past without becoming its imitation.
Works Cited
Aiken, C. (1927). The Novel A Work of Art. Dial, 83, 4.
Boland, E. (2000). To the Lighthouse (pp. ix-xxv). London, England: Vintage Classics.
Ellmann, M. (2000). To the Lighthouse (pp. xvi-xxvi). London, England: Vintage Classics.
Kelley, A. V. (1973). To the Lighthouse. The Novels of Virginia Woolf: Fact and Vision (pp. 114-143). Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press.
Woolf, V., & Barrett, M. (1980). Introduction. Virginia Woolf, women and writing (pp. 1-57). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Woolf, V. (1992). To the Lighthouse. London, England: Vintage Classics.
Zwerdling, A. (1986). Virginia Woolf and the real world. Berkeley: University of California Press.
I have chosen to write about Virginia Woolf, a British novelist who wrote A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, to name a few of her pieces of work. Virginia Woolf was my first introduction to feminist type books. I chose Woolf because she is a fantastic writer and one of my favorites as well. Her unique style of writing, which came to be known as stream-of-consciousness, was influenced by the symptoms she experienced through her bipolar disorder. Many people have heard the word "bipolar," but do not realize its full implications. People who know someone with this disorder might understand their irregular behavior as a character flaw, not realizing that people with bipolar mental illness do not have control over their moods. Virginia Woolf’s illness was not understood in her lifetime. She committed suicide in 1941.
Delany, Sheila. Writing Women: Women Writers and Women in Literature: Medieval to Modern. New York: Schocken, 1983.
*"(Adeline) Virginia Woolf." Feminist Writers. St. James Press, 1996.Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRCć
Throughout Virginia Woolf’s writings, she describes two different dinners: one at a men’s college, and another at a women’s college. Using multiple devices, Woolf expresses her opinion of the inequality between men and women within these two passages. She also uses a narrative style to express her opinions even more throughout the passages.
In her extended essay, A Room of One’s Own (1928), Virginia Woolf argues that in order to write great literature, women have two central needs: an incomes and a room with a locking door. For Woolf, the figure standing between women and literature is the patriarch: “Professor von X, engaged in writing his monumental work entitled The Mental, Moral, and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex” (Woolf 2107). The Professor becomes the face of oppression in Woolf’s text as she discusses the “dominance of the professor” because “[his] was the power and the money and the influence…With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything. Yet he was angry” (Woolf 2109). To Woolf, the patriarch only “seems” to control everything, suggesting he – in reality – does not. Instead, he is unable to control everything, and thus is angry. Yet, because the Professor is in possession of money, he controls influence. Meanwhile, women become the patriarch’s moneyless, influence-less inferior. In James Joyce’s short story “The Dead,” the Professor is Gabriel Conroy. He too “tries to control everything.” For example, when he buys his wife Gretta galoshes, she jokes “he’ll buy [her] a diving suit” next (Joyce 25). Gabriel is the one charged with “piloting” a drunk Freddy Malins into his aunt’s house for their annual dinner party (Joyce 28), the one to give the pre-dinner speech (Joyce 24), and carve the goose (Joyce 38). For most of the story, Gabriel acts as if he controls every aspect of his life: even the weather. When the dinner scene grows claustrophobic, Gabriel imagines people standing in the snow, believing “the air is pure there” (Joyce 46). Separated from the weather by a pane of glass, he imposes meaning upon it as he does everyth...
In Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”, the struggle to secure and proclaim female freedom is constantly challenged by social normalcy. This clash between what the traditional female ideologies should be and those who challenge them, can be seen best in the character of Lily Brisco. She represents the rosy picture of a woman that ends up challenging social norms throughout the novel to effectively achieve a sense of freedom and individuality by the end. Woolf through out the novel shows Lily’s break from conventional female in multiply ways, from a comparison between her and Mrs.Ramsey, Lily’s own stream of consciousness, as well as her own painting.
3 Haines-Wright, Lisa and Kyle, Tracy L. "Fluid Sexuality in Virginia Woolf" Virginia Woolf: Texts and Contexts New York, NY: Pace University Press, 1996
Female Identity in Virginia Woolf’s, To The Lighthouse, Elizabeth Bowen’s, Heat of the Day and Iris Murdoch’s, Under the Net
The opening scene of To The Lighthouse between Mr Ramsay and Mrs Ramsay displays the gender division that flows throughout this passage highlighting Woolf’s own perspective on society and sexuality between genders. Woolf supports the belief in a complete change to society resulting in a non – hierarchical society. Woolf felt for this to happen aside from the practical changes, that a radical redefinition of sexuality was also needed. The novel focuses on sexual issues of the twentieth century central to feminist campaigns, such as marriage being a form of institutionalized slavery . She brings to attention one of Freud’s most well-known theory, the oedipal conflict. The author draws upon the story of Oedipus who kills his father and marries his mother. Freud states that the daughter demands the attention of the father and the son the attention of her father. In doing so this monopolizes the love the son has for the mother at the risk of jealousy from the father, due to the dominating attention the child wants from the mother. Similarly, this oedipal triangle is formed between James and his parents. Woolf gives reference to Freud and his views on male development and family dynamics by sharing his views on the unconscious whilst talking about them in her own way. She “absorbs many of Freud’s insights about male and female gender identity, yet at the same time infected them in a manner now known as feminist.” The dialogue between the Ramsay’s and James is seen by the reader to express feelings equating to sexual intensity in the way he loves his mother and hates his father, simply by his reaction to Mr Ramsay’s comment about the foul weather. His preference for his mother over his father is clear when he states she is “ten thousa...
Virginia Woolf, in her novels, set out to portray the self and the limits associated with it. She wanted the reader to understand time and how the characters could be caught within it. She felt that time could be transcended, even if it was momentarily, by one becoming involved with their work, art, a place, or someone else. She felt that her works provided a change from the typical egotistical work of males during her time, she makes it clear that women do not posses this trait. Woolf did not believe that women could influence as men through ego, yet she did feel [and portray] that certain men do hold the characteristics of women, such as respect for others and the ability to understand many experiences. Virginia Woolf made many of her time realize that traditional literature was no longer good enough and valid. She caused many women to become interested in writing, and can be seen as greatly influential in literary history
Blackstone, Bernard. Virginia Woolf: A Commentary. London: Hogarth Press, 1949. (An older but excellent essay.)
feminism is in actuality quite limited in tha t she only applies it to British, upper middleclass women writers. Virginia Woolf’s essay-which to Bennett seemed non- feminist and to Daiches seemed feminist- universalist-is, by our modern definition, feminist; however, the borders of culture, class, and profession that composed her frame of reference drastically limit the scope of Woolf’s feminism.
Transue, Pamela J. Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Style. Albany: State U of New York P, 1986.
...s. The foremost condition for the creation of fiction is motivation and the imagination of the author. Even Virginia Woolf’s books resulted from such urge and willingness to express her ideas. Unlike, Woolf’s statement of how women need the private space of their own, financial affluence to write fiction, so many things motivate and encourage people to write without considering such circumstances. Woolf argues on the significance of financial affluence in its relevance to social equality. She even states, “Of the two — the vote and the money — the money, I own, seemed infinitely the more important”. However, money can’t represent the ideals of equality. As for women writers, their ideas and stories is the condition that motivates them to write fiction. Thus, the “500-pound a year” cannot replace the innate essence of writer’s passion in writing fiction.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. 1927. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1951. pp 131-133.