Essay on Reader Response to Woolf’s To The Lighthouse

The Ramsey Summer House remains abandoned during those ten years, decaying slowly, groaning and weeping as it remembers the tenants it once possessed and the movements they made “how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again” (Woolf 1927, 339). The house bore witness to every breath and every argument; it absorbed fluttering eyelashes, clapped hands, and footsteps; drowned in laughter and in tears; the house was enraptured by the Ramsey’s and remembers them fondly as their images haunt its halls (Wisker 2011, 6).

Into the Wild, written by Jon Krakauer, is a memoir about how living in the wilderness and how Chris McCandless lived nearly two years in the wild. Throughout the novel, Krakauer relates Chris’ adventures to his own experience in mountain climbing and living on his own. This is not your typical memoir where the author tells a story about their lives. Jon Krakauer is not the main character; however he tells a story of this boy who leaves his well-developed family for no apparent reason. But not only does he tell Chris’ story, he tells his own by fusing them altogether.

    Grand Isle is the movie adaptation of Kate Chopin's 1889 novel, The Awakening. Turner Network Television (TNT) made the movie in 1991, and it stars Kelly McGillis as Edna Pontellier and Adrian Pasdar as Robert Lebrun. To say that this movie is based, even loosely, on The Awakening is an insult to Kate Chopin's colorful literary work. A reviewer from People Weekly calls it a "tedious melodrama" and sees it as Kelly McGillis's "vanity project" because she is star, producer, and narrator ("Grand Isle" 13). Grand Isle is an example of how Hollywood's ratings scramble can tear apart a striking piece of literature.

The first stage of Ramsay's journey, Mrs. Dempster's injury, has enormous effects on Ramsay's life, requiring him to make difficult choices for the betterment

As in contrast to “A Match to the heart” by Gretel Ehrlich, she also thinks about the good

In the story about Edna Pontellier a major theme is her omitted self discovery. In the story we can see how Chopin uses style, tone and content to make the reader understand how it was for a person challenging many of the beliefs of the society at the beginning of the twentieth century.

“That Evening Sun” by William Faulkner is a good example of a great emotional turmoil transferred directly to the readers through the words of a narrator who does not seem to grasp the severity of the turmoil. It is a story of an African American laundress who lives in the fear of her common-law husband Jesus who suspects her of carrying a white man's child in her womb and seems hell bent on killing her.

In Virginia Woolf’s feminist essay “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf argues that “a woman must have money and a room of her own” (16) if she is to write fiction of any merit. The point as she develops it is a perceptive one, and far more layered and various in its implications than it might at first seem. But I wonder if perhaps Woolf did not really tap the full power of her thesis. She recognized the necessity of the writer’s financial independence to the birth of great writing, but she failed to discover the true relationship to great writing of another freedom; for just as economic freedom allows one to inhabit a physical space---a room of one’s own---so does mental freedom allow one to inhabit one’s own mind and body “incandescent and

Disillusionment does not merely occur in only novels; every single individual to walk the Earth will experience mental displeasure at some point within their lives. Nevertheless, many choose to let unfortunate events circle within their souls and become encrypted into their memory. Once this happens, the role of aimlessness takes its course, adverse fate reigns, and the feeling of disenchantment dwells in the mind. Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, grasps this very subject in a subliminal way; one must accurately analyze Hemingway’s somber tone and sparse writing style in order to find the hidden symbolism and themes captured within this literary work. His protagonist, Jake Barnes, has certainly experienced prodigious pain, but

Lily Briscoe is a character that can be viewed as unique. Unique in the sense that she was living in an era when women were expected to take on the domestic role and fulfill the role as a traditional woman. Lily did not live up to those expectations. She struggled to stay true to herself and found it a difficult task to conform to society’s conventions as it relates to gender roles and expectations. The novel “To The Lighthouse” takes place in the 19th century during that time often referred to as the Victorian era. During the Victorian era, the expectation was that individuals should follow strict gender roles and people who did not follow those roles were frowned upon. Women were expected to take care of their husband and children, take care of the home and make themselves available to fulfill their family’s needs. Men on the other hand were expected to provide for the family, work outside of the home and do “manly” things. They were considered to be the breadwinner for their family. As one reads throughout the novel, you are able clearly identify Lily’s struggles with society’s expectations of her as a woman and the difficult task of staying true to oneself as she visits and shares with the Ramsay family.

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never." (9)

Of the many concepts Virginia Woolf has made in her works, the idea of “moments of being” in her autobiography, A Sketch of the Past, is of special interest because of its possible application to other works of literature which focus on the composition of life. After reading the fictitious Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, one could wonder how Woolf’s concept is evident or not so evident in Johnson’s narration to test the concept’s applicability. It seems that Johnson’s moments of clarity or “being” are reminiscent of Woolf’s own “moments of being” in the way their senses interacted with the memories and the manner with which those memories present themselves, particularly when Woolf hears of Valpy’s suicide and

In her essay “In Search of a Room of One’s Own” Virginia Woolf used Shakespeare’s sister as a metaphor to explain the position of women in Elizabethan era. Since author finds it difficult to find any trace of women in the Elizabethan era, she creates a fictional character through imagination, and to feel situations that the women in Elizabethan society would have had to go through. Woolf compares fiction to a “spider’s web” (520) that permeates life “at all four corners” (520). Through this metaphor, she personifies narratives of women suffering as a spider’s web that cling to our material reality. For Woolf, our lived stories are a part of this web which can be changed, destroyed or, re-spin with our imagination. In my paper, I argue that Wolfe uses the metaphor of a spider’s web as a heuristic device to make a case for literacy analysis and fiction as tools for exercising narrative agency and challenging stories that deny us representation in this world. To illustrate this, she creates an imaginative character, named Judith Shakespeare, to surface the gender inequality in the Elizabethan era. For this purpose, she not only writes a new chapter of Elizabethan history that centers the perspective of the women, but she also gives voice to women of that era who, like Judith her main character, were silenced and delegitimized by the spider’s web of their time.

Through their works, Kate Chopin and Virginia Woolf were able to portray a certain relationship between women and society. While some literary pieces are optimistic towards women, others are not. In this case, The Awakening, a novella written by Kate Chopin, focuses on the inner battle that the main character Edna faces throughout her life. On the other hand, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, discusses ideas related to gender inequality. Both women seem to be facing inner turmoil that correlates back to the relationship between women and society during these time periods. Ultimately, their experiences are what drives them to change how they fit into societal norms. Therefore, the texts in this essay theorize the relationship between women and society in a way that can be encouraging towards women.

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).