Brief Biography of Virginia Woolf

Born into a prestigious literary family (her grandfather was William Thackeray), Virginia
Stephen became an important part of London’s literary scene at a young age. She married the
writer Leonard Woolf with whom she founded the Hogarth Press in 1917, which published all of
her later novels as well as works by T.S. Eliot and other literary luminaries of the time. Woolf’s
experiments with prose marked a radical departure from the tradition of the Victorian novel and
created fresh possibilities for the novelistic form. Her works such as Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves,
and To the Lighthouse, are to this day widely influential. Following the early deaths of her
parents and sister, Woolf suffered periodic nervous breakdowns throughout her life and, in 1941,
fearing another break-down, she drowned herself in the River Ouse.

Historical Context of To the Lighthouse

At the turn of the nineteenth century, new scientific developments usurped long-held
worldviews and raised new questions about the nature of reality and human experience. Charles
Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection subverted traditional beliefs in a world
governed by God, and, as Darwin’s work contradicted people’s understanding of the world
around them, Sigmund Freud’s theories of the unconscious undermined people’s understandings
of themselves by pointing out a mysterious region of the mind to which no one had conscious
access. In To the Lighthouse, Woolf’s interest in the equal unknowability of the world and the
human brain reflect the influence of such contemporary scientific theories.

Other Books Related to To the Lighthouse

The novel’s most closely related literary works are Woolf’s other novels, including Mrs.
Dalloway and The Waves, also written in the stream of consciousness form that characterizes To
the Lighthouse. Yet, around the time of Woolf’s writing, other novelists were experimenting with
stream of consciousness, too, and their resultant works – including Marcel Proust’s In Search of
Lost Time, Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and William
Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury – serve as productive points of contrast and comparison with
Woolf’s own prose experiment.

Key Facts about To the Lighthouse

 Full Title: To the Lighthouse

 When Written: 1925-1927
 Where Written: London and Sussex
 When Published: 1927
 Literary Period: Modernism
 Genre: Novel of Consciousness
  Setting: Isle of Skye, Scotland 1910-1920
 Climax: Mrs. Ramsay’s vision of eternity at the dinner table
 Point of View: Multiple

Extra Credit for To the Lighthouse

Semiautobigoraphy.

Although the plot of To the Lighthouse shares many similarities with Woolf’s own
biography (Woolf’s family rented a summerhouse on the Hebrides in view of a lighthouse,
Woolf’s father could be stifling, Woolf’s mother and sister died when she was young), Woolf
correctly insisted that the novel should not be read as a straightforward autobiography.

Bestseller.

Upon completion, Woolf declared To the Lighthouse her best book and, indeed, the book-
buying public agreed. Outselling all her previous novels (including Mrs. Dalloway), To the
Lighthouse earned Woolf enough money to buy a car for her and Leonard.

To the Lighthouse Summary

In a summerhouse on the Isle of Skye, James is enraged when Mr. Ramsay insists he
won’t get to go to the Lighthouse the next day. Mr. Tansley echoes Mr. Ramsay. Mrs.
Ramsay tries to preserve James’ hope. She reflects on Mr. Tansley’s charmlessness, then recalls
his confiding in her about his poverty. Lily struggles to paint on the lawn. She agrees to
accompany Mr. Bankes on a walk and they discuss the Ramsays. Meanwhile, Mr. Ramsay
argues with his wife about the Lighthouse again, aggravating James. Mr. Ramsay meditates by
the sea. After walking, Mr. Bankes admires Mrs. Ramsay and Lily considers the vivacity
distinguishing her beauty. Lily explains her painting to Mr. Bankes.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Ramsay wishes Cam and James could stay small, thinking she’s not
pessimistic (as her husband says), just realistic. She worries about Nancy, Andrew, Paul,
and Minta on their walk. After James goes to bed, Mrs. Ramsay watches the Lighthouse,
thinking, a sight which saddens Mr. Ramsay. She walks with him, chatting affectionately. Mr.
Bankes and Lily walk, too, discussing painting, then the Ramsays. They come upon Mr. and
Mrs. Ramsay who seem suddenly symbolic in the spell of evening.

On the cliffs, Nancy, Minta, Paul, and Andrew have separated and reunited awkwardly
on the sight of Minta and Paul embracing. Their return is delayed by Minta’s lost brooch, which
Paul chivalrously determines to find. He has successfully proposed to Minta. Minta sobs for
more, Nancy feels, than the brooch.

At the summerhouse, Mrs. Ramsay lets Jasper and Rose help her dress and is relieved
when the walk party returns. Though she despairs at dinner’s start, Lily helps her manage small
talk and the conversation eventually carries the night into an orderly beauty that Mrs. Ramsay
believes partakes of eternity. Mr. Tansley and Mr. Bankes flounder, then find footing at the table.
Lily feels burned by lovestruck Paul’s indifference, and decides not to marry. After dinner, Mrs.
Ramsay coaxes Cam and James to sleep, sends Prue, Paul, Minta, Lily, and Andrew off on a
walk, then joins Mr. Ramsay reading. She feels transported by a sonnet. After reading, Mr. and
Mrs. Ramsay say little but still express their deep love for one another.

Nights pass, then the season. Mrs. Ramsay dies suddenly. The house stays empty. Prue
marries, then dies in childbirth, and Andrew dies in World War I. Mr. Carmichael gets
famous. Mrs. McNab eventually gives up on caring for the house, which falls into disrepair.
Then, after ten years, Mrs. McNab receives word to prepare the house and laboriously does so.
Lily and Mr. Carmichael return.

The first morning back, Mr. Ramsay forces the teenage Cam and James to go to the
Lighthouse with him. Lily fails to avoid him before they leave. During an awkward conversation,
Lily feels Mr. Ramsay silently pleading for her sympathy and feels like a defective woman for
not giving it. Mr. Ramsay sets off with a resentful Cam and James and Lily feels guilty. She tries
to paint but is distracted by thoughts of Mrs. Ramsay and questions life’s meaning.

At sea, Cam and James have a pact of silence against their father’s imperious bossiness.
Cam doesn’t break it even as she’s tempted to give in to her father’s attempts to engage her,
admiring him as she does.

Lily considers Paul and Minta’s failed marriage and her own singleness and wants to
show the matchmaking Mrs. Ramsay how wrong her instincts were. Suddenly, Lily tears up at
Mrs. Ramsay’s ghost and life’s senselessness. She looks for Mr. Ramsay’s sailboat, wanting to
give him her sympathy.

At sea, James inwardly contrasts his father and mother. Cam feels spontaneously joyous
and loves Mr. Ramsay.

On land, Lily observes how little one can know of other people’s lives and reminisces
about the Ramsays. She reflects that the greatest skill is to see the world as simultaneously
ordinary and miraculous.

At sea, Mr. Ramsay finally gives James the praise he craves, but James conceals his joy.
Reaching shore, Mr. Ramsay leaps eagerly towards the Lighthouse.

On land, Lily and Mr. Carmichael agree Mr. Ramsay has reached the Lighthouse. Lily paints a
final line and is satisfied, even knowing her painting will be forgotten. She has had her vision.
 Mrs. Ramsay Character Analysis

Beautiful, charming, and nurturing, Mrs. Ramsey holds the Ramsay family together as
she holds together every social context she enters by her charisma and instinct for putting people
at ease. Mrs. Ramsay also holds To the Lighthouse together, for the novel’s shape is structured
around her: her perspective dominates Chapter 1 and, even after she dies in Chapter 2, Mrs.
Ramsay remains central in Chapter 3 as the surviving Ramsays manage their grief
and Lily revisits her memories of Mrs. Ramsay and makes peace with her ghost. For her own
part, Mrs. Ramsay exalts in the beauty of the world and, though she insists she is no thinker,
frequently reflects on the nature of time and human experience. An eager matchmaker, Mrs.
Ramsay is also, as Lily sees, an artist who can make out of the fleeting moment “something
permanent”

Lily Briscoe Character Analysis

Observant, philosophical, and independent, Lily is a painter pitied by Mr. and Mrs.
Ramsay in Chapter 1 for her homeliness and unattractiveness to men. Still, though Mrs. Ramsay
thinks nothing of her painting and wants her to marry, she admires Lily’s independence. In
Chapter 3, Lily struggles (and eventually succeeds) in painting the picture she had first attempted
in Chapter 1, all the while revisiting memories of Mrs. Ramsay and contemplating the great
mysteries of life, death, art, and human experience.

Mr. Ramsay Character Analysis

As brilliant and passionate as he is petty, bossy, and demanding, Mr. Ramsay is a victim
of his own mercurial moods and is always shifting in the opinion of those around him.
Characters loathe his imperiousness and neediness, then admire his courage and dignity. In
Chapter 1, Mr. Ramsay adores Mrs. Ramsay and his children but struggles with angry outbursts
and self-doubt about his career. In Chapter 3, Mr. Ramsay remains just as needy of female
sympathy (especially since Mrs. Ramsay is no longer around to dispense it) but wishes, looking
back, that he had not been so quick to anger.

James Ramsay Character Analysis

One of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s children, James is as bitter and resentful of his father as a
six-year-old in Chapter 1 as he is as a sixteen-year-old in Chapter 3. Yet, by Chapter 3, James
has learned to distinguish between his father’s person and his father’s imperious moods and can
identify some of his own similarities to Mr. Ramsay.

The Lighthouse Symbol Analysis

The Lighthouse symbolizes human desire, a force that pulsates over the indifferent sea of
the natural world and guides people’s passage across it. Yet even as the Lighthouse stands
constant night and day, season after season, it remains curiously unattainable. James’ frustrated
desire to visit the Lighthouse begins the novel, and Mrs. Ramsay looks at the Lighthouse as she
denies Mr. Ramsay the profession of love he wants so badly at the end of Chapter 1. James,
finally reaching the Lighthouse in Chapter 3 a decade after he’d first wanted to go, sees that, up
close, the Lighthouse looks nothing like it does from across the bay. That misty image he’d
desired from a distance remains unattainable even when he can sail right up to the structure it’s
supposedly attached to. The novel’s title can be understood as a description for experience itself:
one moves through life propelled by desire towards the things one wants, and yet seems rarely to
reach them. One’s life, then, is the process of moving towards, of reaching, of desiring. It is “to”
the Lighthouse, not “at” it.

The Sea Symbol Analysis

 The sea symbolizes the natural world and its utter apathy towards human life. The natural
world – which encompasses time and mortality – proceeds as usual regardless of whether
humans are happy or grieving, in peace or at war. Like the incontrovertible fact of death
gradually claiming human youth and beauty, the sea slowly eats away at the land, dissolving it
minute by minute. Like the relentless progression of a clock’s hand, the waves beat ceaselessly
on the beach and slow for no one. The sea itself is unchangeable, and the many different
descriptions of the sea throughout the novel in fact describe shifting human opinions. As if it
were a mirror, people see in the sea a reflection of their own state of mind. Thus, when Mrs.
Ramsay feels safe and secure, the waves sound soothing, but when she feels disoriented, the
sound of the waves seems violent and ominous. Thus, during World War I, the ocean appears
senseless and brutal, but in peacetime it appears orderly and beautiful.

Biography of Virginia Woolf

In 1878, Leslie Stephen and Julia Jackson Duckworth married, which was the second
marriage for both of them. They gave birth to Adeline Virginia Stephen four years later, on the
25th of January at 22 Hyde Park Gate, London. Virginia was the third of their four children.
Leslie Stephen began his career as a clergyman but soon became agnostic and took up
journalism. He and Julia provided their children with a home of wealth and comfort.

Though denied the formal education allowed to males, Virginia was able to take
advantage of her father's abundant library and observe his writing talent, and she was surrounded
by intellectual conversation. The same year Virginia was born, for instance, her father began
editing the huge Dictionary of National Biography. Virginia's mother, more delicate than her
husband, helped to bring out the more emotional sides of her children. Both parents were very
strong personalities; Virginia would feel overshadowed by them for years.

Virginia would suffer through three major mental breakdowns during her lifetime, and
she would die during a fourth. In all likelihood, the compulsive drive to work that she acquired
from her parents, combined with her naturally fragile state, primarily contributed to these
breakdowns. Yet other factors were important as well. Her first breakdown occurred shortly
following the death of her mother in 1895, which Virginia later described as "the greatest
disaster that could have happened." Some have suggested that Virginia felt guilt over choosing
her father as her favorite parent. In any case, her father's excessive mourning period probably
affected her adversely.

Two years later, Virginia's stepsister, Stella Duckworth, died. Stella had assumed charge
of the household duties after their mother's death, causing a rift between her and Virginia.
Virginia fell sick soon after Stella's death. The same year, Virginia began her first diary.
 Over the next seven years, Virginia's decision to write took hold and her admiration for
women grew. She educated herself and greatly admired women such as Madge Vaughan,
daughter of John Addington Symonds, who wrote novels and whom Virginia would later
illustrate as Sally Seton in Mrs. Dalloway.

Her admiration for strong women was coupled with a growing dislike for male
domination in society. Virginia's feelings were likely affected by her relationship to her
stepbrother, George Duckworth, who was fourteen when Virginia was born. In the last year of
her life, Virginia wrote to a friend regarding the shame she felt when, at the age of six, George
fondled her. Similar incidents recurred throughout her childhood until Virginia was in her early
twenties. In 1904, her father died, shortly after finishing the Dictionary and receiving a
knighthood. Though freed from his shadow, Virginia was overcome by the event and suffered
her second mental breakdown, combined with scarlet fever and an attempted suicide.

When she recovered, Virginia left Kensington with her three siblings and moved to
Bloomsbury, where she began to consider herself a serious artist. She immersed herself in the
intellectual company of her brother Thoby and his Cambridge friends. This group, including
E.M. Forster and Lytton Strachey, later formed what was known as the Bloomsbury Group,
under the Cambridge don G.E. Moore. They were dedicated to the liberal discussion of politics
and art. In 1906, Thoby died of typhoid fever and Virginia's sister married one of Thoby's
college friends, Clive Bell. Virginia was on her own.

Over the next four years, Virginia would begin work on her first novel, The Voyage Out
(1915). In 1909, she accepted a marriage proposal from Strachey, who later broke off the
engagement. She received a legacy of 2,500 pounds the same year, which would allow her to live
independently. In 1911, Leonard Woolf, another of the Bloomsbury Group, returned from
Ceylon, and they were married in 1912. Woolf was the stable presence Virginia needed to
control her moods and steady her talent. He gave their home a musical atmosphere. Virginia
trusted his literary judgment. Their marriage was a partnership, though some suggest their sexual
relationship was nonexistent.

Virginia fell ill more frequently as she grew older, often taking respite in rest homes and
in the care of her husband. In 1917, Leonard founded the Hogarth Press to publish their own
books, hoping that Virginia could bestow the care on the press that she would have bestowed on
children. (She had been advised by doctors not to become pregnant after her third serious
breakdown in 1913. Virginia was fond of children, however, and spent much time with her
brother's and sister's children.) Through the press, she had an early look at Joyce's Ulysses and
aided authors such as Forster, Freud, Isherwood, Mansfield, Tolstoy, and Chekov. She sold her
half interest in the press in 1938.
 Before her death, Virginia published an extraordinary amount of groundbreaking
material. She was a renowned member of the Bloomsbury Group and a leading writer of the
modernist movement with her use of innovative literary techniques. In contrast to the majority of
literature written before the early 1900s, which emphasized plot and detailed descriptions of
characters and settings, Woolf's writing thoroughly explores the concepts of time, memory, and
consciousness. The plot is generated by the characters' inner lives, rather than by the external
world.

In March 1941, Woolf left suicide notes for her husband and sister and drowned herself
in a nearby river. She feared her madness was returning and that she would not be able to
continue writing, and she wished to spare her loved ones.

Over the course of her many illnesses, however, Woolf had remained productive. Her
intense powers of concentration had allowed her to spend ten to twelve hours at a time writing.
Her most notable publications include Night and Day, The Mark on the Wall, Jacob's Room,
Monday or Tuesday, Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, Orlando, A Room of One's Own, The
Waves, The Years, and Between the Acts. In total, her work comprises five volumes of collected
essays and reviews, two biographies (Flush and Roger Fry), two libertarian books, a volume of
selections from her diary, nine novels, and a volume of short stories.

To the Lighthouse Study Guide

To the Lighthouse (1927) is widely considered one of the most important works of the
twentieth century. With this ambitious novel, Woolf established herself as one of the leading
writers of modernism. The novel develops innovative literary techniques to reveal women's
experience and to provide an alternative to male-dominated views of reality. On the surface, the
novel tells the story of the Ramsay family and the guests who come to stay with them at their
vacation home on the Hebrides Islands in Scotland. At its heart, however, the novel is a
meditation on time and how humans reckon with its relentless passage.

The novel was written and published during one of the most dense and impressive
periods of development in English literary history. The modernist period gave rise to many
groundbreaking and enduring masterworks, such as T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, William
Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and James Joyce's Ulysses. This was also a period of rapid
intellectual achievement, and Woolf's emphasis on consciousness and a character's inner lives is
consistent with the scientific and psychological ideas posited at the time. As Sigmund Freud
explored theories of consciousness and sub consciousness, Virgina Woolf wrote a novel that
focuses not on the events of the external world but on the richness and complexity of mental
interiority.
 Thus, to convey this sense of human consciousness, Woolf's narrative departs from the
traditional plot-driven structure as it is often expressed by an objective, third-party narrative.
Instead she incorporates highly innovative literary devices to capture the thought process, using
in particular stream of consciousness and free indirect discourse. Given that the novel is defined
by subjectivity, it focuses on the subjectivity of reality, experience, and time. The novel also
represents the interweaving of various perspectives and individual trains of thought that, strung
together, constitute a cohesive whole.

To the Lighthouse Summary

Mrs. Ramsay, Mr. Ramsay (a philosopher), their eight children, and several guests are
staying at the family's summer home in the Hebrides, on the Isle of Skye, just before the start of
World War I. Just across the bay is a lighthouse, which becomes a prominent presence in the
family's life. James Ramsay, the youngest child, wants to go to the Lighthouse the next day, but
Mr. Ramsay crushes his hopes, saying that the weather will not be pleasant enough for the trip.
James resents his father for his insensitivity as well as for his emotional demands on Mrs.
Ramsay, and this resentment persists throughout the novel.

The houseguests include Lily Briscoe, an unmarried painter who begins a portrait of Mrs.
Ramsay; Charles Tansley, who is not very well liked; William Bankes, whom Mrs. Ramsay
wants Lily to marry, but Lily never does; and Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle, who become
engaged during their visit.

Mrs. Ramsay spends the afternoon reading to James as Lily watches her from the lawn,
attempting to paint her portrait. Mr. Ramsay also watches her as he walks and worries about his
intellectual shortcomings, afraid that he will never achieve greatness. Andrew Ramsay, Nancy
Ramsay, Paul Rayley, and Minta Doyle take a walk on the beach, where Paul proposes to Minta.

For the evening, Mrs. Ramsay has planned a dinner for fifteen guests including Augustus
Carmichael, a friend and poet. The dinner gets off to a shaky start as Mr. Ramsay becomes angry
with Mr. Carmichael for requesting more soup and no one seems to be enjoying the
conversation. However, at a certain magical moment, everyone in the room seems to connect,
and Mrs. Ramsay hopes that something permanent will result from this connection. Following
dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay sit together in the parlor, and Mrs. Ramsay finds that she is unable
to tell her husband that she loves him. Nevertheless, though their unspoken communication she is
sure that he knows. The Ramsays and their guests go to sleep.

In the second section of the novel, "Time Passes," the house is abandoned for ten years,
suffering the ravages of time, neglect, and decay. Mrs. Ramsay unexpectedly dies one night, as
does Prue in an illness related to childbirth. Andrew is the third Ramsay to die when he is killed
instantaneously in battle. Mrs. McNab goes to the house occasionally to tidy it up and restore it,
but it is not until she hears word that the remaining Ramsays will be returning for the summer
that she gets everything in order.

In "The Lighthouse," all of the living Ramsays, as well as other guests (including Lily
Briscoe), return to the summer home. Mr. Ramsay decides that he, James, and Cam Ramsay will
finally take the trip to the Lighthouse, but the children are resentful of his domineering manner.
He is angry about delays on the morning of the trip, and he approaches Lily for sympathy, but
she is unable to feel any sympathy for him until he has already set off on the journey, when it is
too late. Just as Mr. Ramsay decides to finally take this journey, Lily Briscoe decides to finally
finish the painting that she started ten years ago.

On the boat, the children continue to resent their father's self-pity, yet as the ship
approaches the Lighthouse, they find a new tenderness for and connection to him. As the boat
reaches its destination, Lily paints the final stroke on her canvas and finally achieves her vision.

To the Lighthouse Character List

Mrs. Ramsay

Mrs. Ramsay is the loving and hospitable wife of Mr. Ramsay. She is highly domestic,
focusing on her roles as mother and wife. She deeply admires her husband, although she cannot
tell him that she loves him. She is responsible and strong, but she dies unexpectedly in her fifties.

Mr. Ramsay

Mr. Ramsay is dominated by rationality and scientific reason. He is in search of truth and
greatness, and he fears that he is rather inadequate for not achieving his aims. Neither
affectionate nor sentimental, he nevertheless inspires admiration in his wife, although she
becomes irritated with his insensitivity.

Lily Briscoe

A young, unmarried painter friend of the Ramsays. She is extremely fond of Mrs.
Ramsay and feels a profound sense of emptiness after she dies. She begins a portrait at the
beginning of the novel that she cannot finish until the end, ten years later, when the Ramsays
reach the Lighthouse.

James Ramsay

The youngest Ramsay child, James is six years old when the book begins. He adores his
mother and is violently resentful of his father. He enjoys cutting images out of magazines and
wants desperately to go to the Lighthouse when he is young.
Paul Rayley

A young friend of the Ramsays, visiting them at their summer home, Paul proposes to
Minta Doyle on the beach as Mrs. Ramsay wished.

Minta Doyle

A young woman visiting the Ramsays at their summer home, Minta accepts Paul
Rayley's marriage proposal.

Charles Tansley

An odious athiest whom none of the Ramsays particularly like, Charles is one of Mr.
Ramsay's philosophy pupils. He is insulting and chauvinistic, trying to discourage Lily from
painting. He is often concerned with the affairs and status of others and is very self-centered. He
finds Mrs. Ramsay quite beautiful and is proud to be seen walking with her.

William Bankes

An old friend of the Ramsays visiting their summer home, William is a botanist. He is a
gentle man of about 60, and Mrs. Ramsay hopes that he will marry Lily Briscoe--making thinly
veiled attempts at getting them together. He and Lily remain close friends, and she trusts him
deeply.

Augustus Carmichael

An unhappy poet who takes opium and achieves little success until after World War I.
Because of his controlling wife, he is not fond of Mrs. Ramsay.

Andrew Ramsay

The oldest son of the Ramsays, Andrew accompanies Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle on
their engagement walk to the beach. He is a gifted mathematician, but he dies fighting in World
War I.

Jasper Ramsay

One of the Ramsay sons. He enjoys shooting birds, which disturbs his mother, while Mr.
Ramsay thinks that doing so is normal for a boy of his age.
Roger Ramsay

One of the Ramsay sons, Roger is adventurous and most similar to his sister, Nancy.

Prue Ramsay

Prue is the oldest of the Ramsays' daughters, and her mother expects her to be an
exceptional beauty when she grows up. Although Prue marries, she dies during the following
summer of an illness related to childbirth.

Rose Ramsay

One of the Ramsay daughters, Rose is aesthetically inclined. She enjoys making beautiful
arrangements and choosing her mother's jewelry.

Nancy Ramsay

One of the Ramsay daughters, Nancy is adventurous and independent, secretly hoping for
a life much different from her mother's. She does not seem domestic. She accompanies Paul
Rayley and Minta Doyle on their engagement walk to the beach.

Cam Ramsay

Cam is the Ramsays' youngest daughter. She is an energetic and mischievous child, and
Mrs. Ramsay laments that she must grow up and suffer. Cam sails with James and Mr. Ramsay
to the Lighthouse in the final section of the novel.

Mrs. McNab

The witless and leering housekeeper, Mrs. McNab is asked to enter the Ramsays' home
after years of disuse to open the windows and dust the bedrooms.

Macalister

A fisherman friend who accompanies the Ramsays to the Lighthouse.

Macalister's boy

The fisherman's son who rows the Ramsays to the Lighthouse.

Badger

The Ramsays' toothless dog.

Kennedy

The Ramsays' lazy gardener.

Mrs. Bast

A woman who comes to help Mrs. McNab clean the Ramsays' summer home during the "Time
Passes" interlude.

George Bast

Mrs. Bast's son, who also helps clean the Ramsays' house.

Mrs. Beckwith

A visitor to the Ramsay house at the Lighthouse.

To the Lighthouse Themes

Ephemerality

Few novels capture the ephemeral nature of life as poignantly as Virginia Woolf's To the
Lighthouse. Reality, when conceived of as a collection of fleeting moments, seems as chaotic
and fluid as ocean waves. Each of the main characters struggles with this realization, and they all
grasp for symbols of permanence and stability despite their understanding of the transience of
experience. Mrs. Ramsay, consumed by a need to connect herself to lasting experiences, looks to
the pulsating glow of the Lighthouse to unite her experience with a sense of endurance. For her,
the steady stroke of the Lighthouse light represents stability and permanence. For this reason, she
connects herself to it, unites herself with it, in the hope of gaining a similar sense of connection
both to her present and to eternity. In fact, she seeks not only to unite herself with the permanent
objects in the physical world, but also to unite her friends, family, and guests in the creation of
lasting beauty.

Whereas Mrs. Ramsay's search for permanence lies in the emotional realm of experience, her
husband's is based entirely in the intellectual sphere. He longs to transcend his own lifetime with
an important philosophical contribution, yet feels practically certain that this goal is
unachievable. Lily Briscoe suffers from a similar fear that her paintings will be thrown into the
attic, never to be fully appreciated and never to make a lasting impression.
By the culmination of the novel, however, Lily is able to surrender this need for permanence and
meaning, and she is thus finally able to fulfill her artistic vision. This final scene suggests that
Lily can only achieve a sense of fulfillment because she is able to relinquish her need for a
permanently significant existence. She finally embraces the ephemeral nature of the countless
experiences that constitute a lifetime.

Subjective Reality

The omniscient narrator remained the standard explicative figure in fiction through the end of the
nineteenth century, providing an informed and objective account of the characters and the plot.
The turn of the 20th century, however, witnessed innovations in writing that aimed at reflecting a
more truthful account of the subjective nature of experience. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse
is the triumphant product of this innovation, creating a reality that is completely constructed by
the collection of the multiple subjective interiorities of its characters and presented in a stream-
of-consciousness format. Woolf creates a fictional world in which no objective, omniscient
narrator is present. There is a proliferation of accounts of the inner processes of the characters,
while there is a scarcity of expositional information, expressing Woolf's perspective on the
thoughts and reflections that comprise the world of the Ramsays.

Time is an essential component of experience and reality and, in many ways, the novel is about
the passage of time. However, as for reality, Woolf does not represent time in a traditional way.
Rather than a steady and unchanging rhythm, time here is a forward motion that both accelerates
and collapses. In "The Window" and "The Lighthouse," time is conveyed only through the
consciousness of the various characters, and moments last for pages as the reader is invited into
the subjective experiences of many different realities. Indeed, "The Window" takes place over
the course of a single afternoon that is expanded by Woolf's method, and "The Lighthouse"
seems almost directly connected to the first section, despite the fact that ten years have actually
elapsed. However, in "Time Passes," ten years are greatly compacted into a matter of pages, and
the changes in the lives of the Ramsays and their home seem to flash by like scenes viewed from
the window of a moving train. This unsteady temporal rhythm brilliantly conveys the broader
sense of instability and change that the characters strive to comprehend, and it captures the
fleeting nature of a reality that exists only within and as a collection of the various subjective
experiences of reality.

The Presence of the Lighthouse

The Lighthouse is distant, old, and set against a landscape that fades to the farthest horizon,
encompassing the length of visible space. This is a majestic image of a pillar of presiding
stability and constant observation. It is a presence that extends beyond the physical and
chronological boundaries of the Ramsays and their world, observing them and illuminating the
rooms in which the contents of their minds are bared.
The Lighthouse offers a life force to Mrs. Ramsay and her family, propelling both the plot (the
novel opens with the conflict surrounding James's desire to go to it) and the streams of
consciousness that ensue. It has a clear and significant presence in this world, yet it is inanimate,
not conscious, and it is a figure characterized by its distance from the immediate events of the
novel. It seems somewhat elusive and intangible, having indistinct boundaries and features. The
setting of the Lighthouse recedes into a realm "uninhabited by men" and therefore signifies a
realm and life force that the characters cannot enter themselves. It is distant, intangible, and
elusive.

Yet its qualities are permanent and everpresent. The Lighthouse is Mrs. Ramsay's source of
stability and permanence, and it is the force that defines and joins the members of the Ramsay
family. It is even present in their home during the ten years that the family is not there--presiding
over the abandoned house.

Art as Unity and Permanence

In the novel, art is defined by Lily (the novel's central artist) as something able to unify disparate
elements into a cohesive whole. When she looks at her canvas, awaiting the fulfillment of her
vision, she contemplates how she will incorporate several people and objects into the work in
order to create a unified and singular product. This goal, she believes, is the responsibility of the
artist, and her artistry represents her way of finding a sense of meaningful permanence in her
existence.

Unity is also directly associated with permanence in the novel. Mrs. Ramsay's most active desire
is to create moments of complete connection and unity between people. At her dinner party, she
is disturbed by the lack of cohesion, and it is not until a fleeting moment when everyone seems
to merge and assimilate into a single unit that she feels fulfilled. Such moments provide her with
a sense of stability and endurance, for she knows that they will continue to exist in the memories
of others even after she is dead.

In Mrs. Ramsay's preoccupation with cohesion, and in the connection between cohesion and art,
Mrs. Ramsay herself comes to be a sort of artist. Lily acknowledges this figuration near the end
of the novel, creating yet another connection with the deceased woman.

The Dichotomous Representation of Water

Water has a great role throughout the novel, in particular as the characters spend a great
deal of time looking at the sea that separates the Ramsay's summer home from the Lighthouse.
The symbolism of the water is complex, however, for it seems to represent both permanence and
ephemerality. Mrs. Ramsay enjoys listening to the waves beating against the shore. The rhythm
is steady and constant, serving as a symbol of consistency and eternity. She learns to depend
upon this sound, and it soothes her, providing a deep sense of stability.

Yet water also represents a destructive and erosive force. As Mr. Ramsay stands outside
viewing the sea, he reflects that the piece of land beneath his feet will one day be completely
worn away and consumed by the sea. In this sense, the sea is a constant and eternal force that
magnifies its effects over time and ultimately proves the ephemerality of whatever it touches.

Time

Time is one of the major themes of To the Lighthouse. Most of the adult characters fixate
on the concept of time in one way or another. Mrs. Ramsay cannot help but notice that the
present moment becomes the past, and she seeks objects in the external world to ground her in
the moment. She also frets endlessly about how time will change her children's lives. She does
not want James and Cam to grow up, for she knows that they will inevitably suffer. In essence,
she wishes to stop time for her children, allowing them to be young and carefree forever.

Mr. Ramsay is obsessed with the future and, more specifically, the future of his career.
He desperately longs to achieve greatness as a philosopher, but is almost certain that he will not,
and he is preoccupied by envisioning the future and predicting whether or not he will be
recognized and remembered. He is grief-stricken with the notion that no one will read his books
after he has gone, and he laments the fact that young scholars are not interested in his work
because they are, after all, the future leaders in the field.

Lily Briscoe is also preoccupied with time, but her fixation changes shape over the course
of the novel. Originally, she shares similar concerns with Mr. Ramsay, wondering if her
paintings will amount to anything and whether anyone will ever see them. By the final section of
the novel, however, her thoughts are located more in the past and in her memories of Mrs.
Ramsay. It is partially the effect of these memories that propels her forward and brings her vision
into focus.

The Subversion of Female Gender Roles

Many of the women in To the Lighthouse either overtly or silently subvert conventional
female gender roles. Lily Briscoe, for example, has no desire to marry, but rather wants only to
dedicate herself to her work (much like Mr. Ramsay and Mr. Bankes). She is independent and
self-sufficient, and she is able to disregard Mr. Tansley's chauvinistic comments about women
being unable to paint. Despite Mrs. Ramsay's persuasion, she holds her ground throughout the
novel, refusing to become any man's wife. These choices and ideas were very unconventional in
the early 20th century.
Three of Mrs. Ramsay's daughters (Nancy, Rose, and Cam) also silently reject the life that their
mother chose for herself, in all of its domesticity. They know that they want their lives to be
different and more complex than what they perceive as the limited realm of wife-mother, and
they are headstrong and adventurous.

Moreover, the novel promises only misfortune for the women who accept the roles carved out for
them. Mrs. Ramsay dies unexpectedly at a relatively young age. Prue, shortly after getting
married, dies as a result of childbirth. Even Minta, who had been a somewhat unconventional
lady, suffers in her marriage, for Paul leaves her for another woman. The novel seems to punish
the women who accept positions as wife and mother, while it abounds with young women who
are sure that they want a different existence.