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To The Lighthouse is a relatively short and simple novel, but it is one of the most complex works I have ever read. Virginia Woolf presents not a book about a life but a book about a multitude of lives; all who are striving to make sense of their world and their lives. ... Virginia Woolf was successful in creating a new type of writing that broke free of conventional modes.
Virginia Woolf was born in London on January 25, 1882, to a family that was full of unconventional ways and fully unpredictable. ... Virginia claimed to have come up with the idea for To The Lighthouse in the midst of one of her particularly lengthy spells of illness, somewhere in between 1914 and 1915. It is my belief that she wrote To The Lighthouse to exorcise some of the demons of her childhood, and that it is based closely upon her own family, particularly her parents.
To The Lighthouse is broken down into three primary parts, The Window, Time Passes, and The Lighthouse. ... They have a summerhouse, which faces the oceanfront, and the lighthouse is easily visible from their home. The lighthouse fascinates their youngest child, James, and Mrs. ... In the last section of the book, The Lighthouse, Lily comes back to the house and remembers that she wants to finish her painting. ... Ramsay finally set out on the long-awaited trip to the lighthouse. ...
To The Lighthouse could not be anything but an attempt by Woolf to recreate a piece of her family life. In Microsoft’s Encarta entry of Virginia Woolf, it is noted: “the couple of Mr. ... Woolf writes of Mr. ... Ramsay “the bill for the greenhouse would be fifty pounds” (Woolf, 60). ... Ramsay, “the most sincere of men, the truest, the best; but he is absorbed in himself, he is tyrannical, he is unjust” (Woolf, 46). Woolf wrote [’that old wretch, my father; but he was an adorable man, and somehow, tremendous. ... It is obvious that even though in the novel the child James is a boy, his feelings are based upon those Woolf had as a child and later as a young adult. ... Ramsay, having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty] (Woolf, 128). ... Virginia said while writing To The Lighthouse, “this is not made up - it is the literal fact,” (Ingram). ... Ramsay, too, is rather stern, but her daughters “honor her strange severity, her extreme courtesy” although “there was in all their minds a mute questioning of deference and chivalry” (Woolf, 7).
Approximate Word count = 1977
Approximate Pages = 7.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
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