The Development of the Artist in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse Essay

Lily starts off stuck living in an unloving, abusive household and decides to free herself from the negative atmosphere that she had been living in her whole life. Lily is perpetually abused by her father. He forces her to kneel on Martha White's, gets exasperated every time she speaks, and yells at her for no reason. Lily is not the only one noticing the terrible treatment, Rosaleen does too. Once after Lily had to kneel on the Martha White's Rosaleen said to her, “Look at you, child. Look what he’s done to you” (Kidd 25). Noticing the unloving treatment Lily gets, Rosaleen knew that their household was demoralizing place for Lily to be in, which is why she didn’t question when Lily when she later runs away. Lily one day realizes she needs to do something about her horrible life at home. While sitting in her room she hears a voice in her

Through use of indirect characterization, Lily’s words and actions reveal a pivotal part of her character: her clever intelligence. This first becomes evident after her African American friend, Rosaleen, spills a cup of her snuff spit on the shoes of a racist white man that was provoking her. The minister at her church is

Edna seeks occupational freedom in art, but lacks sufficient courage to become a true artist. As Edna awakens to her selfhood and sensuality, she also awakens to art. Originally, Edna “dabbled” with sketching “in an unprofessional way” (Chopin 543). She could only imitate, although poorly (Dyer 89). She attempts to sketch Adèle Ratignolle, but the picture “bore no resemblance” to its subject. After her awakening experience in Grand Isle, Edna begins to view her art as an occupation (Dyer 85). She tells Mademoiselle Reisz that she is “becoming an artist” (Chopin 584). Women traditionally viewed art as a hobby, but to Edna, it was much more important than that. Painting symbolizes Edna’s independence; through art, she breaks free from her

In addition, after Lily’s liberation from T. Ray, another character pushed Lily to make a choice without even saying a word to her and that character was Lily’s mother, Deborah, who was dead and yet she still guided Lily to her next destination. Deborah’s largest contribution to Lily’s life was leaving behind a trail of love for Lily to follow, giving Lily someplace to go when she had no home. Lily immediately knows where to go after leaving her father's trammel, for she finds a picture of Deborah in Tiburon, South Carolina. Lily’s eagerness to learn more about her mother urges her to travel to Tiburon. Lily reveals her desperation on finding out more about her mother’s love towards her when she said, “ Well, think about it. She must have been there some time in her life to have owned this picture. And if she was, a person might remember her, you never know” (Kidd 51). Lily’s voice held a sense of hope as she believed that there was something in

Lily herself feels “her own inadequacy, her insignificance” (Woolf 19). It is difficult for Lily to accurately transfer the scenes that she saw onto her canvas. “It was in that moment’s flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child” (Woolf 19). Charles Tansley’s words, “women can’t paint, women can’t write...” (Woolf 48) echo in Lily’s head, causing her to further doubt her ability and whether or not her painting will be accepted. Charles Tansley represents some of the views of women during that period of time. Many men believed that women could not write or create art (Woolf 48).

Luckily for Lily, she comes upon the Boatwright sisters once she reaches Tiburon. Because of the fact Lily does not have anyone to share her love with, she is compelled to stay and live with the Boatwrights. At one point in the novel, Lily and August are having a conversation when August asks Lily “What else do you love Lily?”(Kidd 39). Lily then thinks to herself, “No one had ever asked me that before. What did I love? Right off the bat I wanted to say that I loved the picture of my mother…but I had to swallow that back”(39). Lily does not feel comfortable enough yet that she says, “ I love writing poems, just give me something to write, and I’ll love it” despite the fact that Lily really loves August (39). She loves August so much that she would rather stay in Tiburon with the Boatwrights than be with her own father T. Ray. The loss of Deborah results in Lily going to obtain love somewhere other than her own home. This is also why Lily takes Rosaleen with her. Rosaleen is a black nanny who used to work on T. Ray’s farm. She has been there for Lily in the past but she cannot always be there one hundred percent because of her race. Due to Deborah’s death, Lily does not have a mother figure, however, he journey to Tiburon with Rosaleen proves to be a success as she finds the Boatwrights and strengthens her relationship with her nanny, Rosaleen.

Instead of relying on another power that is above her, she takes her fate into her own hands and tries to save her own home. This self reliance develops early, and can also be seen much later in her life. When she is twenty-seven, Lily learns that her husband has a secret second family. She leaves him immediately and manages to annul the marriage. Although he had taken all of her money from their joint bank account, she does not go back to her parents in Arizona or try to find another husband to take care of her. Instead, she begins preparing for her future alone. “Since I obviously couldn't count on a man to take care of me, what I needed more than ever was a profession. I needed to get my college education and become a teacher . . . the time flew by, and when both the dispensation and the acceptance letter arrived, I had enough money for a year of college” (p. 90). Instead of wondering what to do and moping about her ex-husband, Lily is practical and knows what she wants to do next. She also mentions that she cannot depend on a husband to take care of her. If she did not have to fend for

Mullen describes Lily’s situation as “Lily Bart has been predominantly framed as a tragic victim caught within the irresistible market forces of capitalism and the fatal contradictions of gender and class politics” (45). The novel, “The House of Mirth” filled with nuances of gender and class politics. Mullen points out a weakness in Lily’s character, her position in the forces of the capitalist circle. The females in the novel face the pressures from the social circle as well. Lily is a product of her culture and upbringing. Success is measured by the capital worth and how one would survive in their social class. Unfortunately, Lily didn’t have to chance to remain in her former social class circle, after trying to pay off her debts. She died the night that she received her

As a two-and-a-half year-old, Lily is not only developing gross-motor skills, or better balance, but she is also developing fine-motor skills as she starts to have better control of her hands and fingers. This explains her attraction to artwork. As her progression of 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

One of the greatest concerns in the theory about feminism is the role that women play in relationships and also the identity that is placed upon them as a lover and as an artist. Many females during the time that Elizabeth Browning wrote "Aurora Leigh" felt discomfort by becoming an artist or anything besides a housewife. As mentioned before this was a stepping-stone for women in this time period. Society put women into separate social classes. And on top of the classes they were categorized in they had the class of being a woman also. With this passage from "Aurora Leigh" Browning describes and criticizes the works of the woman during this time period. The works

Ramsay that regards her as an archetype for the female form, and because of this, Lily is denied contentment due to her awareness that she and Mrs. Ramsay are dissimilar in many ways. In Part III of the text, Lily effectively fulfils the role of the now-dead matriarch, but upon this, she is also required to address the fact she is not, and never will be, Mrs. Ramsay. At the beginning of this section, Lily repeatedly laments Mrs. Ramsay’s death and is so preoccupied with the loss that she was “unable to do a thing, standing there” (Woolf, 164). As Mrs. Ramsay was often the Muse for Lily’s work, Lily’s art reaches a point of stasis after Mrs. Ramsay’s death in which Lily is haunted by the vision of Mrs. Ramsay and unable to find inspiration in anything else. Yet, it is this art that also allows Lily to lessen the extent to which she is “involuntarily haunted” by Mrs. Ramsay and subvert the order to ensure that “dead are at the mercy of the living” (Whitworth, 102).

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.

When speaking of modernism in the work Virginia Woolf, scholars too readily use her innovations in style and technique as the starting point for critical analysis, focusing largely on the ways in which her prose represents a departure from the conventional novel in both style and content. To simply discuss the extent of her unique style, however, is to overlook the role of tradition in her creation of a new literary identity. In To the Lighthouse, Woolf's invention reveals itself instead as a reinvention, a recasting of the conventional through the use of the traditional. Within the text, this relationship manifests itself in Lily Briscoe's relationship with Mrs. Ramsay and the extent to which

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).