Analysis of Similes in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse
`Thoughts are made of pictures.' Our consciousness may be visualized as a photomontage of simultaneous impressions, mostly visual, according to poet John Ciardi (238). In verbalizing conscious experience, authors tend to use metaphor and simile to create images that, like words, possess both denotation, visual identification, and connotation, an emotional aura (Ciardi 239). In To the Lighthouse, by my count, Virginia Woolf employs over one hundred similes, figures of speech making an explicit comparison between two things essentially unlike, to enliven her description of things, places, and people. The majority of these similes relate to people; furthermore, of those relating to people, over thirty describe Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey. The similes Woolf uses to describe Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey fall into three major categories--forces or objects of nature, human, and animal--and reveal Wool's feelings about her parents.
To reveal the climate created in the home by the emotional interplay between a gloomy, childish man and an impulsive, nurturing woman, Woolf compares Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey to forces or objects in nature. When Lily Briscoe and Mr. Banks discover Mr. Ramsey, a professor of philosophy, in the hedge and interrupt Ramsey's thoughts, Ramsey withdraws childishly. Seeking comfort and sympathy from his wife, Ramsey storms into his summer home "fell as a thunderbolt" (30). A later passage reveals that the Ramseys' relationship "was no monotony of bliss": Woolf portrays Mr. Ramsey as a sarcastic man whose violent outbursts shook the house "as if a gusty wind were blowing" (199). Nurturing her child-like husband exhausts Mrs. Ramsey whom Woolf metaphorically calls ...
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...at Woolf uses in To the Lighthouse demonstrate the author's coming to terms with her parents' failures, attempting to become mentally healthier through acknowledging the circumstances of her childhood, and loving her parents in spite of their shortcomings.
Works Cited
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On September 16th 1956 the black and white television became available in Australia. An early model
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.
Hindson, E. E., & Yates, G. E. (2012). The Essence of the Old Testament: A survey. Nashville, Tenn: B & H Academic.
Paul S. Boyer. "Television." The Oxford Companion to United States History. 2001. Retrieved November 24, 2011 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-Television.html
Virginia Woolf, an original, thought-provoking feminist author, influenced women to fight for equality and to question the opportunities for women in literature. With her diaries, novels and poems, she stunned her readers with something they have not seen much before: women rebelling. Woolf was frustrated with women and the untouched and suppressed skills they harbor. She once said, “Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their created force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics” (Feminist 595). Woolf sought to eliminate the perceived ideas of women and enlighten readers of the skills that women possess.
The prevailing standards of masculinity have placed a trivial label on female values compared to the values of men. Most noticeably, A Room of One’s Own, authored by Virginia Woolf, effectively conveys the inequalities between men and women. During this era, Woolf recognizes the literary cannon works of women; her successful recognitions allow for the questioning as to why these accomplished female authors are not given the acknowledgment to which they are entitled. This inquiry is also conveyed in the work of Carol Shield’s, Unless. Unless effectively conveys the progression of anger, which is blamable for Norah’s breakaway from reality. This break from reality causes Reta’s melancholic feelings to transform
Bartholomae, D., & Petrosky, A. (2011). Ways of reading: an anthology for writers (9th ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. “Judith Butler; Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy.”
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
Metzger, B.M. & Coogan, M.D. “The Oxford Companion to the Bible”. Oxford University Press. New York, NY. (1993). P. 806-818.
Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse is a novel dedicated to human emotion and humanity’s innate yearn for interpersonal connection. Woolf’s novel shows how we humans relate and react to the world around us- how we feel about the events we experience, what we perceive about the people we so desperately want to feel close to, and how raw human connection can help us find purpose in our live. Whether it is Mrs. Ramsay tirelessly working to aid her husband in his war against himself or Mrs. McNab contemplating the lives of the people she cleans after, all the characters in Woolf’s novel lack human closeness and try to find that closeness through interpreting what those around them experience. As the novel and the First World War progress so do
To the Lighthouse is an autobiographical production of Virginia Woolf that captures a modern feminist visionary thrusted in a patriarchal Victorian society, as embodied by Lily Briscoe. Lily’s unique feminist vision and her ability to transcend artistic and patriarchal conventions progressively allows her to locate her quest for identity as an aestheticized epiphany journey. However, no matter how Woolf attempts to present Lily’s aestheticized exploration of her identity as a radical opposition to patriarchy alone, therein lies a specific aspect of feminism that Lily secretly wants to achieve. Therefore, I argue that although Lily is a symbolic rebel of patriarchal conventions who strives for women individuality, she brings her struggles a
Work Cited Woolf, Virginia. A. Mrs. Dalloway. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc., 2005.
A lighthouse is a structure that warns and navigates ships at night as they near land, creating specific signals for guidance. In Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, the Lighthouse stands a monument to motivation for completion of long-term goals. Every character’s goals guides him or her through life, and the way that each person sees the world depends on goals they make. Some characters’ goals relate directly to the Lighthouse, others indirectly. Some goals abstractly relate to the Lighthouse. The omnipresent structure pours its guiding light over every character and every action.
In the Broadview Anthropology of Expository Prose, Buzzard et al. describe Virginia Woolf’s essay “Professions for Women” as a “lecture to a society of professional women” (100). As a queer writer, Woolf’s voice during the 1930’s received much attention, along with praise and criticism. Woolf’s fight for women’s empowerment and gender equality are evident throughout her essay, and as of now, in the 21st century, it is unequivocal that Woolf saw herself as a feminist. However, as Woolf writes her “Professions for women” she makes use of the blanket terms “the woman” and “herself” to refer to a general professional woman. It leads us to question who the woman really is: which kinds of individuals are included in and excluded from Woolf’s filtered view of women. How does