To The Lighthouse By Virginia Woolf

Time serves as one of the key structures of our society. Throughout each day we are constantly reminded of time: What time is it? What time did I start work? What time is the game? Remember that one time? Time flies when you are having fun! These expressions of time are categorized into two types of time: external time which labels our presence in reality and internal time which guides our actions, thoughts, and emotion. Naturally, we assume that these times are set in unison to each other, as time is always relative to an observer. But what happens when the times of the external and internal differ? In the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Woolf begins to explore this question through her unique writing style of free indirect discourse to travel forward and back in time, as Woolf narrates freely through the thoughts and memories of each character. With each half-hour and hourly strike of Big Ben in the heart of London, the clock serves as a tool to remind each character of the reality of life. The clock further provides physical structure and unity in a post-World War I society, connecting characters of the past at specific moments in time. Through the use of flashbacks we can parallel characters of the past into the present moment, which supports Woolf’s intricate understanding of time as circular not merely linear. Wolf further guides the reader to see how time can provoke daunting effects of fear and anxiety upon one’s life, which is displayed through

Mrs.Dalloway, written by Virginia Woolf in 1925 is about a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway as she gets ready to host a party that evening. Mrs.Dalloway is a stream of consciousness story and the readers get a chance to know not only Clarissa’s though but also other character that have very different lifestyles and social/economic status from Clarissa. The story closely tracks Clarissa, Septimus Warren Smith, Peter Walsh, Miss Kilman and a few other characters. Throughout the day the different characters face different struggles and Woolf shows the reader how each character reacts to their own struggles and their thinking patterns when facing these situations. Mrs. Dalloway is a critique on the class structure and the social structure in the nineteenth century and the everyday struggles faced by people in different social and economic structures.

Pause, reflect, and the reader may see at once the opposing yet relative perceptions made between life, love, marriage and death in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. In this novel, Woolf seems to capture perfectly the very essence of life, while conveying life’s significance as communicated to the reader in light tones of consciousness arranged with the play of visual imagery. That is, each character in the novel plays an intrinsic role in that the individuality of other characters can be seen only through the former’s psyche. Moreover, every aspect of this novel plays a significant role in its creation. For instance; the saturation of the present by the past, the atmospheres conjoining personalities and separating them, and the moments

Life, when viewed as a compilation of fleeting memories and moments, seems chaotic, miserable and causes one to question the purpose of it. Each of the characters of To the Lighthouse struggle with this same realization and all strive to find permanence and meaning within their lives. While the characters search for the meaning of life within their realms of experience, ultimately they all fail to find lasting meaning. To the Lighthouse, a novel structured by Woolf as deeply involved in the consciousness of the characters, their perception of meaning in the world, and the ephemeral nature of life, ultimately suggests that although the goal of finding meaning in life is unattainable, it is the struggle for balance and meaning that achieves purpose and self-contentment. Throughout the novel, the lighthouse symbolizes the ultimate destination, as it represents the moment the characters find the true meaning of life. Once the characters complete the journey to the lighthouse they are able to embrace the ephemeral nature of life and find meaning within it.

Often the descriptions, favoring the night to the day, are subtle but quantitatively apparent. The title of the book itself, is supposed to be summary of Katherine and Mary’s foil to each other, as they differ like “Night and Day.” But, Woolf’s fascination with the night sky contributes more to her favor of one character over the other. The book ends with Katherine’s engagement and overall ignorant bliss, but Mary remains a sole axis of freedom, as she denies Ralph Denham’s proposal, even though she is in love with him.

The structure of Woolf’s book, is a fictional form, the idea that she writes in a way which keeps reminding one that the narrator is a fictitious character, and the story too is fiction (although based on reality), she reinforces her message that just how a ‘room of one’s own’ is the very necessity women desire and deserve, so too she writes it in a fictional way, perhaps to suggest that this dream of the privileges men have to be given to women may very well be an illusion, and stay fiction.

Virginia Woolf was a significant figure in London modernist literary society and she was considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. Due to her hard childhood, as her mother, sister-in-low and

Woolf portrays the character of Mrs. Ramsay as a self sacrificing woman and mother as defined through her interactions with men: Charles Tansley, Mr. Carmichael, Paul, Mr. Bankes, Mr. Ramsay, and James. During Mrs. Ramsay's lifetime she is admired by most of these men, and is continually striving to be esteemed by all of them, at any sacrifice to herself. Although there is goodness in Mrs. Ramsay, not unselfishly given, there are also rising questions of this representation of mother by Woolf, primarily put forth through the characters of Lily and Mrs. Ramsay's daughters.

So Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse” shows how each person has an inner life, separate from the outside world, hidden from the public eye, with which the stream of consciousness is working so as to express feelings and thoughts. External events occupy little space in the novel, meanwhile the writer as an omniscient narrator

“When men are oppressed it is a tragedy, when women are oppressed it is a tradition”. This clearly indicated the mentality of people back in 1800’s and even now. Some people think the same; women are made to be oppressed and to be treated badly. From the beginning women were looked as inferior to men. They are confined in an area where they are allowed to do their duties. They were not supposed to get out that localization. They were treated inferior just because they are women. In Charlotte Perkin “The Yellow Wallpaper “it determines the mental and physical health of a women, how the society effect it. In A Rooms of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf it basically represents the gender inequality in every aspect of life. Both A Rooms of One’s Own and “The Yellow Wallpaper” have a different kind of approach but both of them have a same basic core or problem which is women oppression.

Virginia Woolf opens her novel with a statement in reported speech: “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” (3). Clarissa then makes a list of reasons behind this decision, concluding it with a surge of elation at the day ahead of her: “And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning – fresh as if issued to children on a beach” (3). This unspoken exclamation announces her engaging stroll through the streets of London. Flowers are, of course, a mere excuse to enjoy the sunlit morning: as a wife of a MP, she has a number of servants to take care of the party preparations. Yet,

In the book Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf, it is evident that the main character, Clarissa Dalloway, double persona is Septimus Smith. While Clarissa proves to be more rational, Septimus is irrational. Clarissa shows optimism with her life and finding her true identity while Septimus is someone who experiencing insanity and madness. Although she never meets him and their lives are vastly different, the two characters actually mirror each other. Clarissa and Septimus share many characteristics and think in similar manners. Septimus serves as a contrast between the veteran working class and upper class. Throughout the book, Septimus’ thoughts parallel Clarissa’s and can be seen as an echo in some ways. This illustrates how the line between sanity and insanity can become blurred. Both characters have similar experiences, but how they go about interpreting them and finding deeper meaning about it differ because of their different personalities and experiences.

Virginia Woolf is considered one of the acknowledged avant–gardes of the 20th century. She is an English writer, a novelist, an author, and a publisher. Woolf is well – known for her unique writing style in her novels and essays. Although her misery at a young age, she insisted on continuing her education and becoming a writer. Unfortunately, she ended her life by committing suicide. Virginia’s works made a controversy around her even after her death which is still going in the 21st century ; being related to feminism. In this essay, more focus is put on Woolf through her life, literary works, and the controversial opinions about her.

Though the problems with which Woolf is presented in A Room of One’s Own are significantly attached to historical problems, her main role in the work is as a literary critic rather than historian, though on the surface she does not seem to say much about style, method and criticism in it. She mentions Jane Austen’s sentences, how material concerns influence writers, a few words about the structure of the novel and that “fiction is like a spider’s web” (Woolf, AROO 35). These themes seem to be contained in greater detail throughout the work, but hidden, just beneath the surface. There are other places, however, where Woolf speaks more directly about the aims and methods of writing. In her 1925 essay, “Modern Fiction,” she claims that it is Life that good writing must search for and somehow capture. She writes: “Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; but a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end” (287-88). Life is like the sea, with its ebb and flow; it is like a river, constantly changing, yet always the same. Navigating these waters is the ultimate goal of writing for her, but this alone does not account for her use of the subjective, of impressions, in her own

The passage discussed from Virignia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse takes place in the chapter ‘Time Passes’, and indeed, the passing of time is a central theme. Literary devices such as assonance, imagery and narrative voice are utilised to explore the tension between the brevity of human life and the expansion of natural time. The structure of the passage, especially the final paragraph in parenthesis, highlights the distinction between the finite human life and the infinite course of time.