To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

Virginia Woolf

Image taken from:  https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

Virginia Woolf, London January 25th, 1882, - Lewes, Sussex, March 28, 1941), is considered one of the best English writers of all time, and one of the most representative modernist writers.

Her real name was Adeline Virginia Stephen, a rich family member. However, She complained of having a limited education level just for being a woman.  (at 16, she had access to the whole family library).

Among her most important works are the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928). She also wrote important essays and plays.

Critics considered her as an exceptional woman who knew how to draw the conflicts of the English society of the XX century and her own sufferings through her pen. She developed a literary style called self-reflection or inner consciousness.

Unfortunately, Virgina made the fatal decision to jump into the River Ouse, where she drowned on March 28, 1941, perhaps as a way out of her mental problems and physical pain. Virginia Woolf suffered from manic-depressive psychosis, which is called bipolar disorder today.

Her incredible search to position women as the axis of society from a leading environment in art and family can be seen in the characters of the work that will be analyzed below, where Mrs. Ramsay, one of the central characters, is masterfully drawn as the leader of her family.

To the Lighthouse:

Faro de Godrevy, which inspired the story. Image taken from https://www.istockphoto.com

To the Lighthouse, one of the most important Woolf´s works, published in 1927, is divided into three chapters or sections, (The Window, 'Time Passes, and The Lighthouse).

It is the story of a typical Victorian family, the Ramsay Family, and their visitors, each chapter is a summary of what Virginia considered the patriarchal institution, and the role of gender of the time. She used to describe herself as the daughter of a well-educated man to reinforce the position of women in society, who used to be behind a man's figure, which was wrong.

In this sense, she developed women characters that have a protagonist figure in society, such as Mrs. Ramsay, who appears in the story as the true leader of the family.

 Through each character, Virginia uses the stream-of-consciousness technique to explore the complexity of the human mind and how the characters interact with each other, or simply navigate in their own thinking while enjoying nature, which is perfectly described in the story.

Throughout the whole text, it seems like characters fight with their feelings while talking to someone, this double-thinking actions could be confusing, making readers sometimes must go back to a specific passage to know what is happening.

The story begins with the desire of James Ramsay, the youngest member of the family,  to visit the lighthouse a trip that was done many years later when some members of the family had died.

In the last chapter, the struggle of the First World War is softly mentioned, which was the reason why the Ramsay family left the house and moved to London, three members of the family died, Mrs. Ramsay and two of her eight children, Prue and Andrew.

When the war ended the family came back to their house on the Scottish island.  They found the house plunged into silence and abandonment, as they felt themselves.  Anyway, life had to go on and finally, the trip to the lighthouse was done.

It has been said based on fragments of Woolf's diary that the story was inspired in her own life by drawing her memories of her childhood and long summers spent in Cornwall.


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