Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

Shatt AL-Arab University College

Faculty of Arts
Department of English

Bachelor’s diploma thesis

A critical study of Virginia Woolf’s to the lighthouse

Submitted by
Ali Hussein Rejeb Askar

Supervised by
Dr. Ali Madlom

2019/2020
I .INTRODICTION

To the Lighthouse, which Virginia Woolf published in 1927, was her

fifth novel. In her two previous works, Jacob’s Room (1922) and Mrs
Dalloway (1925), she had already tested readers’ expectations about the
nature of fiction. In them, as in To the Lighthouse, the centre of
consciousness shifts from one character to another, and from their
perceptions of the external world at any given moment to their inner life,
their associations and memories. As Woolf wrote in her 1921 essay ‘Modern
Fiction’, she wanted to show how ‘an ordinary mind on an ordinary day’
receives and organises ‘a myriad impressions’. She abandons the neat
ordering of life into fictional chapters, and sidelines the usual staples of
novels – marriage plots, death bed scenes, coincidences and suspense. The
overt story of To the Lighthouse, indeed, is slender. It is set on a Hebridean
island, in a holiday house occupied by a large family and their guests.
Contemporary novelist Arnold Bennett – one of Woolf’s critical targets –
wrote, scathingly: ‘A group of people plan to sail in a small boat to a
lighthouse. At the end some of them reach the lighthouse in a small boat.
That is the externality of the plot.’ But what mattered to Woolf, far more than
any strong story line, was her presentation of how individuals see and
experience life. ‘The proper stuff of fiction does not exist,’ she concludes.
‘Everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every
quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss.’

It is the task of the novelist, however, not just to convey, but also to
organise all this raw material, and To the Lighthouse is very carefully
structured. Each of the two longer sections, ‘The Window’ and ‘The
Lighthouse’, takes place over the course of one day: an experiment with
representing multiple, overlapping, differently focussed and expressed layers
of consciousness that James Joyce anticipated when he set all the action of
Ulysses (1922) on a single day. Woolf engages the perspective of numerous
characters, above all, however, Mrs Ramsay, the matriarch of the family,
who sees it as one of her major tasks to ensure that everyone is sociable and
happy – especially around the dinner table in the evening; Mr Ramsay, her
husband, a scholar, irascible and insecure; and Lily Briscoe, a younger, single
woman and an amateur artist. In ‘The Window’, it looks as though a planned
expedition to the lighthouse in the bay will be thwarted by bad weather; in
‘The Lighthouse’, such an expedition successfully takes place, marking
something of a reconciliation, or at least an understanding, between Mr
Ramsay and his two youngest children, who accompany him. Lily stays on
shore, painting a new version of the picture that she could never quite get
right on her previous visit.

But these two single days are 10 years apart. They are connected by a
shorter, much more impersonal section, ‘Time Passes’. ‘Here is the most
difficult abstract piece of writing – I have to give an empty house, no people’s
characters, the passage of time, all eyeless and featureless with nothing to
cling to’ (Diary, 30 April 1926). During this interval, much, in a sense,
happens – including the First World War. Mrs Ramsay herself dies, an event
recorded in parentheses – a marginalisation of this event through punctuation
that is far more effective at creating shock than a drawn-out death bed scene
would be. One of the Ramsay children is killed in the war; another dies
during an illness connected with childbirth. The violent destruction of
mechanised warfare on a vast scale is treated in a compressed, but vivid way:
‘flesh turned to atoms which drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their
hearts’ – Woolf references explosions, the passage of a life and eternity in a
single phrase.

The protagonist in this section is the house itself and its shabby
furnishings. Rather like European civilisation during the war perhaps, it
nearly collapses into rubble. But rather than explain this analogy – for this
novel has no omniscient narrator who spells things out for readers – we sense
this near destruction through the way that time creeps in like a devouring
animal, that gusts of air move around and sigh tentatively, furnishings grow
mould or slip out of place. Even without human presence Woolf creates
emotional impact through presenting the material world as sensate (able to
experience physical sensation). This treatment of the passage of time
temporarily distances us from the domestic groupings, and also helps to
dramatise the very noticeable shift in British social attitudes that took place
during this 10-year period. Mrs Ramsay, anchoring ‘The Window’, holds
traditional Victorian views about the importance of family and philanthropy,
although a younger, more irreverent generation is pushing up against her
beliefs. After the war, the stability of the family, and, especially, the role of
women within society, no longer looks so certain. The organisation and
rhythm of To the Lighthouse, including the distancing of human engagement
in this section, underscores the sense of an immense rupture.

Alongside Woolf’s representation of history on a grand scale is some

highly personal material. ‘This is going to be fairly short,’ she wrote, ‘to have
father’s character done complete in it; and mother’s; and St Ives; and
childhood; and all the usual things I try to put in – life, death, etc.’ (Diary, 14
May 1925). Although To the Lighthouse is not, strictly speaking,
autobiographical, the Hebridean house, with its view of a lighthouse in the
bay, is a thinly disguised version of Talland House, near St Ives, Cornwall,
where the Stephen family spent their summers between 1882 and 1895 (the
year of the death of Woolf's mother Julia Stephen). The book functions as an
‘elegy’ – Woolf’s term – for her parents, and for aspects of her own
childhood. Like her father Leslie Stephen, the author and editor, Mr Ramsay
is presented as something of a domestic tyrant, pacing the terrace as he recites
Tennyson, but also very vulnerable in his emotional volatility. Like Julia
Stephen, Mrs Ramsay is charismatic and extraordinarily beautiful, but
emanates a sometimes stifling form of femininity.
II. WOOLF MODERNISM AND HER CONTRIBUTION TO
THE ENGLISH NOVEL

Virginia Woolf is one of the noteworthy writers of the twentieth

century who contributed monstrously to the turn of events and
renewal of the novel as a type of writing. Perusers, from the
beginning, have displayed enthusiasm for her life and works because
of the all-inclusive intrigue and reality of her statements about the
novelistic craftsmanship. Being a delegate writer of her occasions,
close by James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence, she built up a remarkable
strategy in her books coming full circle in The Waves (1931) and
Between the Acts (1941). The recharged enthusiasm for her life,
scholarly thoughts, governmental issues, brain research, basic
compositions and books started with Quentin Bell's life story of
Woolf in 1972, and the ensuing distribution of her total journals,
letters and gathered papers opened new vistas for basic reevaluation
and re-assessment of Woolf as an essayist in the light of postmodern
hypotheses of information, craftsmanship and brain research.

On the off chance that we take a gander at the historical backdrop of

the novel, it is continually seen like it were not workmanship, however a
prompt transcript of life, which all around, worried about genuine people and
their day by day lives. The 'life-like' materials of the class have by and large
been seen as some way or another equivalent with the class itself. Woolf was
one of those couple of authors who looked to change this recognition by
rethinking the ideas of 'life' and 'reality' as materials of fiction and by
underlining formal association of the material as an unadulterated story, for
example without the superimposition of life. All the while, she set up the
novel as a gem, a gem slice to-estimate, implied for tasteful consideration.
 Her advancements in the craft of fiction, in the achievement of her
destinations as far as structure, topic, strategies and language improved the
novelistic craftsmanship. She developed another style similar with her
imaginative purposes. It supplanted the customary verbose style as utilized
by her forerunners from Defoe to Galsworthy with the conscious non-
authentic utilization of language and symbolism. In this, she is obliged to
Lawrence Sterne, Henry James and Marcel Proust, among others.

Inspired by the lost bliss of her childhood summers in Cornwall,

Virginia Woolf bproduced To the Lighthouse. Baldanza states that
“speculation on the sources of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse has
centered largely on the autobiographical aspect of the material” (548).
This novel is one of the most complex and accomplished novels of the
Modernist movement. The novel presents the war years in a historical
perspective. The readers learn about the Ramsay family’s life during the pace
of the First World War.

In To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf maintains a consistent and clear

analogy between the human problem of truly knowing and experiencing
another person and the aesthetic problem of creating a unified work of art, in
other words, between human relations and aesthetic relations. This analogy
is most explicit in the frame of the novel’s action: Lily Briscoe’s
simultaneous efforts to complete her painting and to know Mrs. Ramsay, to
become one with the object one adored. (212)

In order to reflect this analogy strikingly, the novel is divided into three
parts which are named as “The Window”, “Time Passes” and “The
Lighthouse”. “The Window” is about the years before the war. “Time
Passes” reflects the theme of death during the war. “The Lighthouse” is about
the period after the war. These three parts and their reflection of the war
period help to the novel’s theme of death within the process. The theme of
death is apparent in modernist works since people are in the post-war period
and they are still under the effects of it. They experienced death literally
during the war and this has also become an important feature of the modernist
works. They question life and try to find a meaning in life just like the
characters of the novels. Because many people died, the destructive effects
of war cannot be eliminated when working on the modernist works. Like
many other writers, Virginia Woolf is also effected by war so this effect is
apparent in her novels.

The representatives of Modernism generally present subjectivity in

their narratives. Because of this, modernists rejected the omniscient narrator.
They use multiple narrators and narrative perspectives and they also create
unreliable narrators. Woolf also uses these multiple narrators and the other
techniques used by the representatives of the Modernism. For example, at the
beginning chapter of the “Time Passes”, the narrator is more objective and
he/she tries to isolate himself from the minds of the characters:

"Well, we must wait for the future to show," said Mr. Bankes, coming
in from the terrace. "It's almost too dark to see," said Andrew, coming up
from the beach. "One can hardly tell which is the sea and which is the land,"
said Prue. "Do we leave that light burning?" said Lily as they took their coats
off indoors. "No," said Prue, "not if every one's in." "Andrew," she called
back, "just put out the light in the hall." One by one the lamps were all
extinguished, except that Mr Carmichael, who liked to lie awake a little
reading Virgil, kept his candle burning rather longer than the rest. (103)

Here one can see that the narrator transmits the actions and dialogues
without giving any clues about the ideas of the characters. A more objective
narration is used in this first chapter. Generally, this novel is composed of
interior thoughts or monologues of the characters rather than dialogues or
actions of them. However, in this example, the opposite of this is observed.
There is a dialogue here, which makes it something special. The shift of
narration is a technique Wollf uses intensely in her work To the Lighthouse.
This is also something new about the form of her work. She experiments with
the form of the work with the help of these narration shifts. Modernists also
reflect subjective realities and Woolf also does that in To the Lighthouse.
With poetic grace, Woolf shifts between times and characters.

With some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one's
relations changed, she looked at the steady light, […] and she felt, It is
enough! It is enough! He turned and saw her. Ah! She was lovely, lovelier
now than ever he thought. But he could not speak to her. He could not
interrupt her. He wanted urgently to speak to her now that James was gone
and she was alone at last. But he resolved, no; he would not interrupt her.
She was aloof from him now in her beauty, in her sadness. (55)

In this quotation there is a quick shift in the narration from Mrs.

Ramsay to Mr. Ramsay. Just after the reader learns about the thoughts of
Mrs. Ramsay, with the sentence “He turned and saw her.”(55), the reader
starts to learn about the thoughts of Mr. Ramsay. Just after the readers learn
about the actions and the thoughts of Mrs. Ramsay, they start to learn about
those of Mr. Ramsay immediately. One can clearly see the shift between the
characters’

Thoughts in this example. This is something very new for that time
Woolf made use of this technique.

III. SUMMARY OF THE STORY OF THE NOVEL

“The Window” opens just before the start of World War I. Mr. Ramsay
and Mrs. Ramsay bring their eight children to their summer home in the
Hebrides (a group of islands west of Scotland). Across the bay from their
house stands a large lighthouse. Six-year-old James Ramsay wants
desperately to go to the lighthouse, and Mrs. Ramsay tells him that they will
go the next day if the weather permits. James reacts gleefully, but Mr.
Ramsay tells him coldly that the weather looks to be foul. James resents his
father and believes that he enjoys being cruel to James and his siblings.

The Ramsays host a number of guests, including the dour Charles

Tansley, who admires Mr. Ramsay’s work as a metaphysical philosopher.
Also at the house is Lily Briscoe, a young painter who begins a portrait of
Mrs. Ramsay. Mrs. Ramsay wants Lily to marry William Bankes, an old
friend of the Ramsays, but Lily resolves to remain single. Mrs. Ramsay does
manage to arrange another marriage, however, between Paul Rayley and
Minta Doyle, two of their acquaintances.

During the course of the afternoon, Paul proposes to Minta, Lily begins
her painting, Mrs. Ramsay soothes the resentful James, and Mr. Ramsay frets
over his shortcomings as a philosopher, periodically turning to Mrs. Ramsay
for comfort. That evening, the Ramsays host a seemingly ill-fated dinner
party. Paul and Minta are late returning from their walk on the beach with
two of the Ramsays’ children. Lily bristles at outspoken comments made by
Charles Tansley, who suggests that women can neither paint nor write. Mr.
Ramsay reacts rudely when Augustus Carmichael, a poet, asks for a second
plate of soup. As the night draws on, however, these missteps right
themselves, and the guests come together to make a memorable evening.

The joy, however, like the party itself, cannot last, and as Mrs. Ramsay
leaves her guests in the dining room, she reflects that the event has already
slipped into the past. Later, she joins her husband in the parlor. The couple
sits quietly together, until Mr. Ramsay’s characteristic insecurities interrupt
their peace. He wants his wife to tell him that she loves him. Mrs. Ramsay is
not one to make such pronouncements, but she concedes to his point made
earlier in the day that the weather will be too rough for a trip to the lighthouse
the next day. Mr. Ramsay thus knows that Mrs. Ramsay loves him. Night
falls, and one night quickly becomes another.
 Time passes more quickly as the novel enters the “Time Passes”
segment. War breaks out across Europe. Mrs. Ramsay dies suddenly one
night. Andrew Ramsay, her oldest son, is killed in battle, and his sister Prue
dies from an illness related to childbirth. The family no longer vacations at
its summerhouse, which falls into a state of disrepair: weeds take over the
garden and spiders nest in the house. Ten years pass before the family returns.
Mrs. McNab, the housekeeper, employs a few other women to help set the
house in order. They rescue the house from oblivion and decay, and
everything is in order when Lily Briscoe returns.

In “The Lighthouse” section, time returns to the slow detail of shifting

points of view, similar in style to “The Window.” Mr. Ramsay declares that
he and James and Cam, one of his daughters, will journey to the lighthouse.
On the morning of the voyage, delays throw him into a fit of temper. He
appeals to Lily for sympathy, but, unlike Mrs. Ramsay, she is unable to
provide him with what he needs. The Ramsays set off, and Lily takes her
place on the lawn, determined to complete a painting she started but
abandoned on her last visit. James and Cam bristle at their father’s blustery
behavior and are embarrassed by his constant self-pity. Still, as the boat
reaches its destination, the children feel a fondness for him. Even James,
whose skill as a sailor Mr. Ramsay praises, experiences a moment of
connection with his father, though James so willfully resents him. Across the
bay, Lily puts the finishing touch on her painting. She makes a definitive
stroke on the canvas and puts her brush down, finally having achieved her
vision.

IV. COMMENTARY AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS

1- SETTING

To the Lighthouse is set in the Hebrides Islands off the west shoreline
of Scotland. The setting looks to some extent like the Hebrides, drawing as
it does on Woolf's youth summer home in St. Ives, Cornwall, especially
Talland House, the house Leslie Stephen purchased there the year Virginia
Woolf was conceived. Like Talland House, the Ramsay house in the
Hebrides watches out to the ocean and has a perspective on a beacon. The
house was so clearly associated with Stephen's family, that the main visit
back to the house following Julia Stephen's passing was the germ for the
novel.

To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf's most generally acclaimed novel.

It stands, immovably and midway, in her work and her life, revealing insight
into both her past and her future, as a lady and as an author. It is more
legitimately self-portraying than the greater part of her fiction, as she makes
plain in her remarks on it in the two letters and journals, so no conciliatory
sentiments are required for presenting it at first as far as her history. It is
established in family memory. It is an endeavor at the expulsion of
apparitions.

For sure, it is so firmly associated with memories of her mom and her
dad that she herself pondered whether it was a novel by any means. Her dad,
Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), was, as Mr. Ramsay, a notable thinker not
at the principal rank, be that as it may, not at all like Mr. Ramsay, he was
likewise a scholarly pundit and biographer, and the primary editorial
manager of that gigantic landmark to the renowned dead, the Dictionary of
National Biography. Like Ramsay, he would cry resoundingly to himself
verse both great and terrible; he was a pioneer of men, an extraordinary
walker, and a climber of mountains tops; he was sporadically domineering,
irascible and flighty, became restless with visitors, and moaned with fatigue
during supper; he was exact and loathed the female propensity for
misrepresentation; he ached for applause and esteem; and, like Ramsay, he
was significantly reliant on his better half.
He wedded Julia Duckworth in 1878, a second marriage for the two,
and was, similar to Mr. Ramsay, significantly influenced, in reality, broke,
by her abrupt and sudden demise in 1895, when Virginia was thirteen.
 The setting of this novel is as significant as its cast, and it also is
profoundly established in recollected reality. The activity happens in an
extensive family occasion home in Scotland leased by the Ramsays, which
they visit each late spring, as the Stephen family visited St Ives in Cornwall.

This tale is a significant work of the recovering creative mind, wherein

the desires to change grasps and moves the inclination to record. This is
Virginia Woolf's endeavor to comprehend and acknowledge not just her past
and its extraordinary distresses yet besides the idea of time and everlasting
status. Like Mr. Ramsay, Woolf is fixated by the perishability of the
distinction and the threatening obscurity of death. The tale is organized cycle
a progression of pictures which recommend the difficulty among perpetual
quality and vanishing (the beacon itself, the lost ornament, the pig's skull, the
body saved in peat, crafted by workmanship, the supper table), and Woolf's
writing catches the uncommon beating and flashing instabilities and
vibrations among solidness and transition, the fleeting and the endless, the
trifling and the grave in day by day life.

In the main segment, 'The Window', we are acquainted with the

Ramsays in an excursion, and to their visitors. James, the most youthful,
aches enthusiastically to go to the beacon the following day; his mom
empowers him in his expectation, yet his dad state it will rain. The fluctuating
relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay is additionally investigated. Lily
Briscoe work at her artistic creation at the nursery. In this area, we see Mrs.
Ramsay in her residential job, weaving a stocking; we consider her to be a
mother, perusing stories to James, ameliorating the more youthful youngsters
when they hit the hay, and we consider her to be spouse, respecting however
all the while triumphing over her husbands.

In the subsequent part, 'Times Passes', we visit the house without its
proprietors and note the impacts of time upon it. We discovered that Mrs.
Ramsay has kicked the bucket out of nowhere, the oldest little girl Prue has
hitched and she has passed on. The most encouraging child, Andrew, has
likewise passed on, exploded by a shell in the First World War. Time goes,
until the old charwoman, Mrs. McNab hears that finally the family is
returning. She cleans and cleans the house.

In the third and last area, 'The Lighthouse', Lily Briscoe, who is as yet
single and now matured forty-four, finishes her work of art, and Mr. Ramsay
and the two most youthful kids, Cam and James, presently sixteen and
seventeen, set off for and arrive at the beacon.

In 'To the Lighthouse', Woolf is eager to look at both the bliss and the
despondency of her own past, and her upsetting relationship with her dad.
The book obviously has Freudian resonances, which advise us that she was
writing in a period when Freud's work was especially in the general educated
cognizance. She would in general joke contemptuously about Freud and his
hypotheses in her letters, yet as he was distributed by her own Hogarth Press,
and in interpretations by James Strachey, she can scarcely have dodged his
impact. One must be careful with deciphering all references and images in
Freudian terms; one questions whether the scorching pokers have a sexual
message. By the by, it is obvious that Woolf is setting up in the book a
discussion about male and female characteristics and qualities, which focuses
in the significant figure of the abiogenetic 'old house cleaner' Lily
Briscoe.Lily, as Woolf herself, is trying to override and rise above the craft
of the past, to constrain her medium to comply with her own more brilliant
firmer vision.

We realize that when Woolf kept in touch with 'the Lighthouse', she
was perusing her close to contemporary Marcel Proust, who had kicked the
bucket in 1922 and whose perfect work of art A la recherche du temps perdu
was showing up in England volume by volume. His venture isn't divergent
in point. Her book also is about Time Lost and Time Regained; her book also
tries to remember and recover and discharge friends and family from death
into the unending length of time of workmanship. It isn't unexpected to find
that she read him with blended emotions, recognizing his virtuoso to her
journal, and contrasting her own accomplishments ominously and his.
2- STRUCTURE AND THEMATIC CONCERNS.

The structure of the novel, which is isolated into 3 sections, mirrors a

specific thought of time: the initial segment, The Window, is determined to
a pre-fall evening and evening and presents the fundamental

Characters and their relationship to one another. I t opens on a mid-

September evening on the Isle of Skye, in the Hebrides where the Ramsay
family is on vacation. There are 8 kids and a little gathering of learned people,
all displayed on Virginia own loved ones. Mr. Ramsay is a famous London
teacher of reasoning, Mrs. Ramsay is an excellent, sweet lady who has
guaranteed her most youthful child to go out traveling to the beacon, however
the excursion doesn't happen inferable from awful climate. The subsequent
part, Time Passes, is set during a night however it is a night wherein ten years
are evoked. The taking a break is passed on by the portrayal of the
progressions and rot which the house experiences during these years in which
the Ramsays can't return to their late spring house. The peruser discovers that
Mrs. Ramsay has rashly kicked the bucket and her child Andrew and her little
girl Prue are likewise dead...

The third part, The Lighthouse, is set toward the beginning of the day,
after ten years. The Ramsays come back to the old house with a portion of
the past visitors and, at last,James can take the since a long time ago
postponed excursion to the beacon along with his dad and a sibling. As they
arrive at the beacon, Lily finishes an image she had begun ten years prior
.Everything is diverse now: just the beacon is as yet the equivalent, along
with the enduring memory of Mrs. Ramsay.So the novel for all intents and
purposes covers one day, however time extends to an any longer period. In
the initial segment a cheerful family is portrayed with Mrs. Ramsay as the
primary character, who can fit and impact all the individuals around her. In
the second there is a wonderful depiction of the powers of obscurity and of
the disorder brought about by the war. Mrs. Ramsay and two of her kids are
dead, yet these occasions appear to be irrelevant : contrasted and the
tremendousness of forever singular carries on with appear to be good for
nothing.
 In the third part there is a resurrection: Mr. Ramsay and the kids are
joined in a sentiment of fellowship and they arrive at the lighthouse.
Moreover the three sections graphically duplicate the light emissions of the
beacon: a first long one, trailed by a delay of murkiness and the by another
blaze. The excursion is simply the partner of an inward journey of attention
to the primary characters.

The tale is exceptionally personal and it depends on Virginia's youth

memories of occasions in St. Ives. The two principle characters and their
relationship depend on Virginia own dad and mom and the unexpected
passing of Mrs. Ramsay compares to her own mom's initial passing.

On account of the way that the structure of the book depends on the
inside monolog, the awareness of the individual is especially featured. Each
character battles for a reason in a world that is continually changing and finds
what is important from a horde of encounters, yet particularly looks for their
own personality.

In the noivel the manly and the female are profoundly examined and
there is a solid case of the ideal relationship between the two. Mrs. Ramsay
represents gentility, she is the focal point of the house and with her vitality
she makes agreement. She is extremely instinctive and sense what her better
half, kids and companions need. Rather Mr. Ramsay is the intelligent person;
he is deductive, male, hard alone and demanding.He and his better half speak
to two sorts of truth, two different ways of moving toward reality which are
both vital: discernment and instinct.

Two degrees of reality equal one another in the novel: the surface
degree of outer reality and activities administered by clock time and the
profound degree of mental reflection and,inner contemplations which is
created through incredible images and pictures.
)(
After numerous long periods of her demise, Virginia Woolf started to
be viewed as an ace essayist. In 1927 she distributed her magnum opus novel
"To the Lighthouse". It is a novel of vacation home, youth and recollections.
In which the occasions of an evening are described in about a large portion
of the book, at that point the occasions of ten years are compacted in scarcely
any pages.

"To The Lighthouse" doesn't have a customary plot; it comprises of a

progression of encounters, recollections and sentiments that alludes to
Woolf's characters' awareness. The tale is separated into three areas; "The
Window", "Time Passes" and "The Lighthouse". Its occasions occurred
throughout a late spring evening and night, and ten dull years, in a vacation
home on the Isle of Skye in Hebrides where Mr. what's more, Mrs. Ramsay
pass their late spring with their youngsters.

That night Mrs. Ramsay tended to various visitors to supper, for

example, the botanist William Bankes, the artist Augustus Carmichael, a
savant Charles Transley, the painter Lily Briscoe and others, the evening
gathering was what meant the main area. In the subsequent area, "Time
Passes", the kids grow up, the war broken out, Mrs. Ramsay kicks the bucket
abruptly one night, her oldest child, Andrew is slaughtered in fight, and her
little girl Prue passes on as well. So the vacation home goes into a condition
of demolition for a long time. In the last area, "The Lighthouse", Mr. Ramsay
chooses to go to the beacon with his two youngsters James and Cam, and this
experience is a snapshot of association for them, and Lily prevails with
regards to completing her composition.

The characters of the novel are drawn from Virginia Woolf's own
family at that point at the point when her folks were alive and spending
summers at Talland House in St. Ives, Cornwell, regularly with various gests.
In the novel Mr. also, Mrs. Ramsay are depicted in such a manner that evoked
Vanessa Stephen to state that it seems as though Virginia has bring their folks
again from death, and the painter Lily Briscoe, who is endeavoring to draw
a representation dependent on Mrs. Ramsay perusing to her most youthful
child whose fantasy of an excursion to the beacon has been drops by his
uncaring dad.

In "To the beacon", Virginia Woolf managed her own distraction with
death and the difficulty of grieving. Anyway she impeccably managed the
quintessence of life, as a focal subject, through passing on its hugeness to the
peruser in tones of awareness joined with visual symbolism.

Most pundits recognize that Woolf did never lose seeing passing in her
books. She never overlooked the way that time moves individual toward
death, for Woolf the magnificent magnificence of life is upset when realizing
that we people carry on with short lives and lose everything when we bite the
dust.

Truth be told demise is the principle topic which catches the greater
part of the novel's body, what gives it an elegiac tone. At that point grieving
is a characteristic and essential response to death, particularly the instance of
Woolf; since she lost her adored relatives. The tale likewise was an event to
Virginia Woolf to communicate her sentiments of the impact of the Great
War on individuals and the open grieving after the First World War.

While managing the importance of life and demise individuals' very

own discernments come just when they are compelled to manage passing.
For Virginia Woolf, passing made significance throughout everyday life, and
without death there would be nothing to live for. From this point of view and
along with time as an inborn factor, Virginia Woolf show up at devastating
her negative recognition to life as she had gotten away from her agonies by
investigating her artistic ability recorded as a hard copy composition. The
third segment of the novel is an incredible proof for Virginia Woolf hopeful
discernment wherein Mr. Ramsay and his two children, James and Cam,
arrived at The Lighthouse, and Lily Briscoe prevailing with regards to
completing her work of art (Aytaç 43).
 To the beacon is a profoundly close to home novel where Virginia
Woolf confronted her past in a way that freed her to talk and compose as she
had never done. At the hour of stating "To the Lighthouse", Virginia Woolf
had survived one World War. After World War One there was a lot of distress
in Europe and an open grieving.

The war had extraordinary effect on Woolf's works and on her vision
of the world. At the point when she distributed her novel, Mrs. Dalloway, in
1925, she comprehends that composing was her solitary getaway from
individual torment and loses, as she discovers her own voice and work
through her pastbycreating new life on paper.

By drawing motivation for Mrs. Ramsay from her mom and Mr.
Ramsay from her dad, Woolf prevailing with regards to introducing her
torment by moving it to the characters, and subsequently permitting them to
grieve in her place (Ibid 10).

"Time Passes", the second piece of the novel, is a scholarly expressive

investigation of life from Woolf's origination that takes us through ten dull a
very long time to her recollections. This segment is an imagery for certain
components in life that are not influenced by death. Those components, for
example, their home, when it was left away for quite a while, in any case;
dimness encompasses it, the phantoms of the past were settling there, the
residue settles all over the place, and quiet occupying the rooms with
vacancy.

As Spilka puts it, the novel is set apart by an "impulsive need to adapt
to death", in any case; obviously the elegiac tone in the novel is quieted as
though she were reluctant to communicate her grieving legitimately. In this
regard note that Virginia Woolf abstains from giving demise legitimately,
rather, she likes to portray its scenes questionably in the middle of sections.

While perusing the novel, clearly Mrs. Ramsay is passed on. Be that as
it may, Virginia Woolf put it: (she had kicked the bucket unexpected toward
the end, they said). (Woolf 114), additionally Prue Ramsay, the most
wonderful of Mrs. Ramsay's kids, she is passed on too following two years
of her marriage. Rather Virginia Woolf stated: [Prue Ramsay passed on that
late spring in some ailment associated with labor, which was undoubtedly a
tragedy]. (Woolf 110), Andrew has been murdered in the war. Be that as it
may, it is given such a way: [a shell detonated twenty or thirty youngsters
were exploded in France, among them Andrew Ramsay, whose demise,
kindly, was instantaneous]. (Woolf 111) In her journal, Woolf portrays
telling the passings of the characters in sections, as "the trip of time and the
subsequent break of solidarity in my structure", it seems as though she needs
to be confined from the world, by managing reality as a uninterested existent
(Benefiel 5).

3- CHARACTERS

a) MAIN CHARACTERS

1- Mrs. Ramsay

Mrs. Ramsay emerges from the novel’s opening pages not only as a
woman of great kindness and tolerance but also as a protector. Indeed, her
primary goal is to preserve her youngest son James’s sense of hope and
wonder surrounding the lighthouse. Though she realizes (as James himself
does) that Mr. Ramsay is correct in declaring that foul weather will ruin the
next day’s voyage, she persists in assuring James that the trip is a possibility.
She does so not to raise expectations that will inevitably be dashed, but rather
because she realizes that the beauties and pleasures of this world are
ephemeral and should be preserved, protected, and cultivated as much as
possible. So deep is this commitment that she behaves similarly to each of
her guests, even those who do not deserve or appreciate her kindness. Before
heading into town, for example, she insists on asking Augustus Carmichael,
whom she senses does not like her, if she can bring him anything to make his
stay more comfortable. Similarly, she tolerates the insufferable behavior of
Charles Tansley, whose bitter attitude and awkward manners threaten to
undo the delicate work she has done toward making a pleasant and inviting
home.

As Lily Briscoe notes in the novel’s final section, Mrs. Ramsay feels
the need to play this role primarily in the company of men. Indeed, Mrs.
Ramsay feels obliged to protect the entire opposite sex. According to her,
men shoulder the burden of ruling countries and managing economies. Their
important work, she believes, leaves them vulnerable and in need of constant
reassurance, a service that women can and should provide. Although this
dynamic fits squarely into traditional gender boundaries, it is important to
note the strength that Mrs. Ramsay feels. At several points, she is aware of
her own power, and her posture is far from that of a submissive woman. At
the same time, interjections of domesticated anxiety, such as her refrain of
“the bill for the greenhouse would be fifty pounds,” undercut this power.

Ultimately, as is evident from her meeting with Mr. Ramsay at the close
of “The Window,” Mrs. Ramsay never compromises herself. Here, she is
able—masterfully—to satisfy her husband’s desire for her to tell him she
loves him without saying the words she finds so difficult to say. This scene
displays Mrs. Ramsay’s ability to bring together disparate things into a
whole. In a world marked by the ravages of time and war, in which
everything must and will fall apart, there is perhaps no greater gift than a
sense of unity, even if it is only temporary. Lily and other characters find
themselves grasping for this unity after Mrs. Ramsay’s death.

2- Mr. Ramsay

Mr. Ramsay stands, in many respects, as Mrs. Ramsay’s opposite.

Whereas she acts patiently, kindly, and diplomatically toward others, he
tends to be short-tempered, selfish, and rude. Woolf fittingly describes him
as “lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one,” which conjures both his
physical presence and suggests the sharpness (and violence) of his
personality. An accomplished metaphysician who made an invaluable
contribution to his field as a young man, Mr. Ramsay bears out his wife’s
philosophy regarding gender: men, burdened by the importance of their own
work, need to seek out the comforts and assurances of women. Throughout
the novel, Mr. Ramsay implores his wife and even his guests for sympathy.
Mr. Ramsay is uncertain about the fate of his work and its legacy, and his
insecurity manifests itself either as a weapon or a weakness. His keen
awareness of death’s inevitability motivates him to dash the hopes of young
James and to bully Mrs. Ramsay into declaring her love for him. This
hyperawareness also forces him to confront his own mortality and face the
possibility that he, like the forgotten books and plates that litter the second
part of the novel, might sink into oblivion.

3- Lily Briscoe

Lily is a passionate artist, and, like Mr. Ramsay, she worries over the
fate of her work, fearing that her paintings will be hung in attics or tossed
absentmindedly under a couch. Conventional femininity, represented by
Mrs. Ramsay in the form of marriage and family, confounds Lily, and she
rejects it. The recurring memory of Charles Tansley insisting that women can
neither paint nor write deepens her anxiety. It is with these self-doubts that
she begins her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay at the beginning of the novel, a
portrait riddled with problems that she is unable to solve. But Lily undergoes
a drastic transformation over the course of the novel, evolving from a woman
who cannot make sense of the shapes and colors that she tries to reproduce
into an artist who achieves her vision and, more important, overcomes the
anxieties that have kept her from it. By the end of the novel, Lily, a serious
and diligent worker, puts into practice all that she has learned from Mrs.
Ramsay. Much like the woman she so greatly admires, she is able to craft
something beautiful and lasting from the ephemeral materials around her—
the changing light, the view of the bay. Her artistic achievement suggests a
larger sense of completeness in that she finally feels united with Mr. Ramsay
and the rational, intellectual sphere that he represents.

4- James Ramsay
 A sensitive child, James is gripped by a love for his mother that is as
overpowering and complete as his hatred for his father. He feels a murderous
rage against Mr. Ramsay, who, he believes, delights in delivering the news
that there will be no trip to the lighthouse. But James grows into a young man
who shares many of his father’s characteristics, the same ones that incited
such anger in him as a child. When he eventually sails to the lighthouse with
his father, James, like Mr. Ramsay, is withdrawn, moody, and easily
offended. His need to be praised, as noted by his sister Cam, mirrors his
father’s incessant need for sympathy, reassurance, and love. Indeed, as they
approach the lighthouse, James considers his father’s profile and recognizes
the profound loneliness that stamps both of their personalities. By the time
the boat lands, James’s attitude toward his father has changed considerably.
As he softens toward Mr. Ramsay and comes to accept him as he is, James,
like Lily, who finishes her painting on shore at that very moment, achieves a
rare, fleeting moment in which the world seems blissfully whole and
complete.

b) MINOR CHARACTER

1- Paul Rayley
A young friend of the Ramsays who visits them on the Isle of Skye.
Paul is a kind, impressionable young man who follows Mrs. Ramsay’s
wishes in marrying Minta Doyle.

2- Minta Doyle
A flighty young woman who visits the Ramsays on the Isle of Skye.
Minta marries Paul Rayley at Mrs. Ramsay’s wishes.

3- Charles Tansley
A young philosopher and pupil of Mr. Ramsay who stays with the
Ramsays on the Isle of Skye. Tansley is a prickly and unpleasant man who
harbors deep insecurities regarding his humble background. He often insults
other people, particularly women such as Lily, whose talent and
accomplishments he constantly calls into question. His bad behavior, like
Mr. Ramsay’s, is motivated by his need for reassurance.

4- William Bankes
A botanist and old friend of the Ramsays who stays on the Isle of Skye.
Bankes is a kind and mellow man whom Mrs. Ramsay hopes will marry Lily
Briscoe. Although he never marries her, Bankes and Lily remain close
friends.

4-Augustus Carmichael
An opium-using poet who visits the Ramsays on the Isle of Skye.
Carmichael languishes in literary obscurity until his verse becomes popular
during the war.

5- Andrew Ramsay
The oldest of the Ramsays’ sons. Andrew is a competent, independent
young man, and he looks forward to a career as a mathematician.

6- Jasper Ramsay
One of the Ramsays’ sons. Jasper, to his mother’s chagrin, enjoys
shooting birds.

7- Roger Ramsay
One of the Ramsays’ sons. Roger is wild and adventurous, like his sister
Nancy.

8- Prue Ramsay
The oldest Ramsay girl, a beautiful young woman. Mrs. Ramsay
delights in contemplating Prue’s marriage, which she believes will be
blissful.

9- Rose Ramsay
 One of the Ramsays’ daughters. Rose has a talent for making things
beautiful. She arranges the fruit for her mother’s dinner party and picks out
her mother’s jewelry.

10-Nancy Ramsay
`One of the Ramsays’ daughters. Nancy accompanies Paul Rayley and
Minta Doyle on their trip to the beach. Like her brother Roger, she is a wild
adventurer.

11- Cam Ramsay

One of the Ramsays’ daughters. As a young girl, Cam is mischievous.
She sails with James and Mr. Ramsay to the lighthouse in the novel’s final
section.

12- Mrs. McNab

An elderly woman who takes care of the Ramsays’ house on the Isle
of Skye, restoring it after ten years of abandonment during and after World
War I.

13- Macalister
The fisherman who accompanies the Ramsays to the lighthouse.
Macalister relates stories of shipwreck and maritime adventure to Mr.
Ramsay and compliments James on his handling of the boat while James
lands it at the lighthouse.

14- Macalister’s boy

The fisherman’s boy. He rows James, Cam, and Mr. Ramsay to the
lighthouse.

4- STYLE

Despite the fact that the graceful exposition language style has been
usually gotten as an significant perspective in Woolf considers, the
examinations concentrating on parallelism and its connection to Woolfian
beauty, to the extent we can see, are a long way from satisfactory. When
perusing the parallelism-related investigations of Woolf's books, we
discovered numerous conversations focus on phonetic varieties, to be
specific, different types of phonological parallelism (for average
examinations see Bezircilioglu, 2009, McCluskey, 1986) or resembled
artistic symbolisms (see Bell, 1979). Parallelism of other etymological
levels, particularly lexical parallelism and semantic parallelism,
notwithstanding, merit further request. In the mean time, resembled
structures installed in various expository gadgets are regularly refered to as
guides to help diverse exploration subjects concerning Woolf's language
style yet precise investigations on the expressive highlights of Woolfian
parallelism itself are to some degree lacking.

Moreover, when alluding to the lovely part of Woolf's language,

numerous investigations tend to pick The Waves and Mrs. Dalloway for
representation. To the beacon, as we would see it, speaks to a considerably
more elevated level of the mixing and the harmony among verse and writing
however the inquiry concerning what semantic assets Woolf utilizes to
achieve such tasteful impact has not been sufficiently replied.

V. CONCLUSION

The goal of this thesis was to show that modernist writing, in this case
represented by Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and does not aim to kill
or in any way suppress beauty. Moreover, the experimental forms of writing
used by Woolf only extend the variety of ways from which beauty can be
examined and presented to the readers. The first chapter focused on exploring
a number of factors that were influential on the development of Woolf’s
perception of beauty. Her family background, especially her parents, had
been identified as a source of deepest and primary influence, resulting in a
need to stress the difference between the perception of the genders and a
certain ambiguity in Woolf’s relationship towards beauty.
The Bloomsbury Group proved itself to be an important factor in Woolf’s
artistic life. Influenced by such personas as Roger Fry and Clive Bell and
their artistic contribution in terms of introducing the Post-Impressionism to
Britain and exploring new art forms, she had managed to create her own
experimental and unique form of writing that allowed her to express abstract
ideas in a variety of new ways.

E. M. Forster and his critical notes on Woolf’s work had been used as
an example of the way Woolf’s art and form had been perceived by her
contemporaries and the way she responded to others. Their mutual criticism
also highlights different values they had in terms of their work and explains
certain choices that Woolf had made in the process of writing.

The second and third chapter are both analysis of Woolf’s To the
Lighthouse. The focus of the second chapter are the specific instances of
beauty in the work. It examined them in a contrasting relationship with other
elements, focusing on the examples of its depiction through the experimental
form. This chapter aimed to show that beauty can be portrayed in a variety
of, sometimes unexpected and new, ways.

The analysis in the third chapter of this thesis focused on the major
characters of To the Lighthouse and the way their perception of beauty is
influenced by the given factors–age, gender and occupation. Due to this
approach, Mr. Ramsay had been chosen as an “ideal character” since he
possesses the traits that were important based on the late-Victorian values–
he is elderly (wise), male and an academic. The other characters, their views
and actions, were then compared to this ideal. Despite the initial expectations
that the greatest difference in perception would be caused by gender, the
analysis showed that it is the age and the wisdom that comes with it that alter
the characters the most. Another very important factor connected to the
perception of beauty is the system of values of each character. Most
importantly though, it has shown that such deeply developed characters as
Woolf had created cannot be simply reduced to a set of variables and
compared based on them. Naturally, there are differences that have a
common traceable origin, but they can all be overcome in an effort to
understand each other and to become open-minded.

These two analytical approaches to To the Lighthouse had shown that

Woolf is able to preserve beauty in her works. Furthermore, the experimental
form she is using and the focus on the thoughts and emotions of the characters
allow her to present beauty in a variety of ways. In Woolf’s work, beauty is
not bound to the physical and shaped by the social expectations, but can take
its own course, appear everywhere and in everything, unexpectedly, as a tiny
flicker of the light or as a rapturous revelation and anything in between
(Melinsova, 2018. Pp 38_40).
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Dalloway”. Pp 1_ 9. Retrieved in June 24, 2020, from
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Melinsova, K. (2018). “Conceptions of Beauty in Virginia Woolf’s
To the Lighthouse”. Pp 38_40. Retrieved June 24, 2020 from
https://is.muni.cz/th/e0ob3/diplomova_prace.pdf
Millar, L. (2011).” Virginia Woolf’s Journey to the Lighthouse: A
hypertext essay exploring character development in Jacob’s Room, Mrs.
Dalloway, and To the Lighthouse”. Pp 48_ 58. Retrieved June 24, 2020,
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Saunders, R. (1993). Language, Subject, Self: Reading the Style of "To the
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