“She would never marry; one could not take her painting very seriously": A Feminist approach to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

Abstract

The title’s opening quote from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927) illustrates not only the relationship between the two main women characters in the novel – Mrs Ramsay and Lily Briscoe – but also the existing tension between the patriarchal assumptions regarding the traditional roles of women in society and women’s artistic aspirations. In the novel these two characters are apparently presented as antagonists since they stand for contrasting models of femininity and have different outlooks on life. However, Woolf also undermines such opposition by emphasising how their relationship is based on mutual love and admiration for each other: “she [Briscoe] was and independent little creature and Mrs Ramsay liked her for it”. The aim of this work will be produce a critical analysis of Virginia Woolf’s modernist novel To the Lighthouse from a feminist perspective. Therefore, I will make a special emphasis on topics such as the role of the narrative’s female characters as well as the relationship between them, Woolf’s representation of both traditional roles of women and unconventional subjectivities in the novel, the relation between art and gender or the connection of this narrative with the author’s own experiences as a woman and as a writer. For this purpose, I will be using a range of critical works which comprise both primary sources, such as Virginia Woolf’s personal diaries, letters and essays, along with a selection of criticism which tackles nor only Woolf’s personal life but also To the Lighthouse in particular from a gender perspective.