Criticism In Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse

Language has been used in many writing’s to convey the authors point. In the memoirs, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) the author uses many rhetoric in the passage such as allegory, anecdote, and rhetorical question. The author uses rhetoric to write the passage so that she can convey the last significance of the moments of her pass.

Freudian theory in the same way also creates a great conflict between mother and daughter. While the mother-son relationship allows the mother to reach fulfillment by giving birth to a son to on whom she can project her ambitions, the mother-daughter relationship never reaches a resolve. Freud states that tensions start with a denial of love when the mother chooses to stop breast feeding the daughter. These tensions grow further when the daughter gains an understanding of genital dominance and holds hostility for the mother because she denied her a penis. This changes her father into her object of love and her mother into her greatest rival. Freud pits the women as rivals, which undermines the mother-daughter relationship and leaves the feminine bond completely fractured.

James life, causes him to struggle with his self-actualization because he does not know who he is or his true identity. However, because he knows so little about his own life, he is led to ask questions and find out answers. “Yet I myself had no idea who I was. I loved my mother yet I looked nothing like her. Neither did I look like the role-models in my life” (91). The only way he figures out who he is, is by asking questions and finding bits and pieces of information. He struggles greatly with himself, and the only way for him to know himself is to know his mother. This gets back to the idea that the parallelism between him and his mother, or chapters 9 and 10, helps him in his

Freud’s theory of personality examined the interplay between the primitive, instinctual urges—the ‘id’; the practical and rational ‘ego’; and the morally attuned ‘superego’; ‘object relations’ refer to the "object" of an instinct”, which is “the agent through which the instinctual aim is achieved”—most often a person and, according to Freud, most often the mother (Ainsworth 1969, p. 1). The psychosexual development theory that Freud launched reduces our behaviour to mechanistic responses to an instinctive need for pleasure fueled by the ‘libido’ and barriers or distortions to the gratification of the libido at various delineated stages of development were responsible for later problems in life (Kail & Zolner 2012, p. 5). Erik Erikson later added depth to the approach by including more humanistic elements to Freud’s stages and including more periods of development (p.

Over the centuries, the concept of fate is constantly being changed to adapt to our current way of living. In modern times the concept of fate is usually connected to the themes of love and romance. However the ancient Greeks recognized fate as an inescapable reality that shaped their lives. The famous playwright, Sophocles, adopts the idea of fate in his plays to control the character’s actions. In both plays, “Oedipus the King” and “Antigone”, the writer uses the concept of fate to show human’s inability to conquer the will of the gods.

Tragedy can either be the darkest part of life for one person or it can be a learning opportunity for the other person. Of all the tragedies written in the literate, “Oedipus the King” written by ‘Sophocles’ is one of the oldest and the most prominent tragedy written till date. It is the story of the king, who is brutally left to die by his own parents, luckily survived, unknowingly killed his own father and married his mother. Although this story was written 2000 years ago, but it still has a great significance in the modern world. Of the most powerful tragedies of the time, “Oedipus the king” discloses such values and situations as parental aggression, child abandonment, self-confidence, ability to handle trauma, and parent-child intimate relationship that people are struggling with in today’s world. Sophocles reveals these behaviours and incidents through the actions of Oedipus.

Freud believed during this stage all needs are satisfied orally or through the mouth; for example, eating and drinking. The anal stage takes place during the second year of life. During this stage the battle between control and letting go begins. The phallic stage takes place during the third and fifth years of life. During this stage a child develops a fixation with the genitals. Freud’s psychosexual stages focus on developmental changes in the first 5 years of life and transformation of the id.

This research paper will compare and contrast two of the most influencial psychologists who helped shape the way we understand the development of the human mind; Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson. The paper will focus on the similarities and differences between Freud’s Psycho-sexual theory, and Erikson’s psychosocial theory. Freud was one of the very first influencial psychologists who changed the way we study humans. Erikson recognized Freud’s contributions, and although he felt Freud misjudged some important dimensions of human development, he was still influenced by Freud, which caused some similarities in their theories.

The triangle is the strongest geometric shape. It cannot physically collapse, and stresses are equally distributed over all three legs. But the triangle, like many things that have roots in the number three, requires a dichotomy of balance and instability. To illustrate this dichotomy, take two triangles, one that sits upright with its single point above its base, and the other that is inverted, with the wide base above the single point, on which the shape balances and teeters. In Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927), the solitary points of these two triangles are personified in Mrs. Ramsay (in the upright, stable triangle) and Lily Briscoe (in the inverted triangle). The novel itself takes on a triad form, separated into three sections: “The Window,” “Time Passes,” and “The Lighthouse.” Mrs. Ramsay rules in the first section, and Lily Briscoe in the last, with the middle section—a mere twenty pages that covers ten years of time, including the death of Mrs. Ramsay—acting as a transient moment of flux in which the careful balance established during the dinner party scene in “The Window” fades and leaves Lily Briscoe the sole triangle. It is in “The Lighthouse” that Lily Briscoe finally finishes her painting and has her “vision” (Woolf, 209). This vision, and the creation and protection that both Lily and Mrs. Ramsay specialize in, are essential to their queering of their family unit.

The dark is often a scary place. It is a place that is inherently uncertain and obscure and is therefore perceived as an unfortunate state to be in. Yet in Rebecca Solnit’s essay on Virginia Woolf, entitled Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable, Solnit disagrees with this perception of the dark and on the contrary labels it as something to celebrate, using Woolf’s writing as evidence. Solnit frequently refers to Woolf in her writing as the basis for what she has to say and uses Woolf’s ideas to expand her own thinking. While there are many clear arguments being made by Solnit, it is unclear where Solnit’s essay as a whole is leading the reader. The exact destination seems undefined but there is significance in the journey on the way. She makes good points as she asks the reader to dive deeply with her into the concepts of uncertainty and imagination but where she is going with her thoughts is hard to pinpoint. The way she flows from concept to concept, intertwining the thoughts of others with her own but with no clear final goal, ties nicely into the idea of what an essay is. Overall, Solnit’s journey seeks to analyze Woolf by drawing on principles of uncertainty and the future and using such analysis to inspire the reader’s writing, to enable their imagination. Solnit does this effectively by using an investigative and critical narrative that celebrates the mysteries of uncertainty and all it contains.

The tale of Oedipus and his prophecy has intrigued not only the citizens of Greece in the ancient times, but also people all over the world for several generations. Most notable about the play was its peculiar structure, causing the audience to think analytically about the outcomes of Oedipus’ actions and how it compares with Aristotle’s beliefs. Another way that the people have examined the drama is by looking at the paradoxes (such as the confrontation of Tiresias and Oedipus), symbols (such as the Sphinx), and morals that has affected their perceptions by the end of the play. Nonetheless, the most important aspect is how relevant the story is and how it has influenced modern ideas like that of Freud and other people of today.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), was an influential Austrian psychologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud went on to produce several theories, such as his theory on psychosexual development, which will be the focus of this assignment. Using the case study of a six-year-old patient, I will discuss the key principles of Freud’s theory on psychosexual development. Including, comprehensive definitions of the concepts used, and the stages of Freud’s psychosexual development. Lastly using Freud’s theory, I will explain how the patient’s current behaviour, could impact her behaviour in adulthood.

From a Freudian perspective human development is based on psychosexual theory. From a psychosexual perspective maturation of the sex drives underlies stages of personality development (Shaffer et al., 2010). Ultimately, Freud believed that sex was the most important instinct and any mental disturbance revolved around sexual conflicts that were suppressed from childhood. Furthermore, Freud believed that parents permitting too much or too little gratification of sexual needs led

She was not inventing; she was only trying to smooth out something she had been given years ago folded up; something she had seen. For  in the rough and tumble of daily life, with all those children about, all those visitors, one had constantly a sense of repetition-of one thing falling where another had fallen, and so setting up an echo which chimed in the air and made it full of vibrations. (199)

As we read, Woolf’s novel, to the Lighthouse we see different aspects of art being used and how it is being used. Lily Briscoe plays a huge role in art in the story. She is working on a painting throughout the book but she does not want anyone to see it (Woolf 17-18). She feels that it is not good enough. However, Mrs. Ramsay, William Bankes and Charles Tansely seem to have different opinions about the painting. During Mrs. Ramsay’s dinner party, Lily realizes what she needs to do to fix her painting but does not until the end of the story. The painting itself grows and changes throughout the book, just as Lily grows and changes as a person as she lives her life (Woolf 102).