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To the lighthouse

To the lighthouse. An Introduction to Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). Prominent modernist author Father, Leslie Stephen, an eminent Victorian philosopher and historian Mother, Julia Duckworth, a renowned beauty Sister, Vanessa Bell, a gifted painter

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To the lighthouse

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  1. To the lighthouse An Introduction to Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel

  2. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) • Prominent modernist author • Father, Leslie Stephen, an eminent Victorian philosopher and historian • Mother, Julia Duckworth, a renowned beauty • Sister, Vanessa Bell, a gifted painter • Was a member of the Bloomsbury Group – a fashionable modernist coterie in London, mostly associated with the University of Cambridge. • Included T.S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Roger Fry, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Vita Sackville-West, Clive & Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Thoby & Adrian Stephen (her brothers), E.M. Forster, among others.

  3. The Setting • Edwardian (1901-1910) English family vacationing on the Isle of Skye, Summer 1910 • Skye is in the Hebrides, a group of islands off western coast of Scotland • The Family is of the middle class, the father a philosophy professor • Many of the characters and events are based on autobiographical detail: • Mr. & Mrs. Ramsay are based on Woolf’s parents, Leslie Stephen & Julia Duckworth

  4. Themes • Greatest threats and dangers are those from within, moresothan from without • Lighthouse – signal and promise of stability amid chaos of modernity (viii) • Cf. T.S.Eliot on the “immense panorama of futility and anarchy that is contemporary history” (The Egoist) • Rhythm – “heterochronicity” – multiple modalities of time • Pattern of waking & sleeping, cycle of seasons, cycle of years, cycles of human history, presence & absence • Reality is what looms; love what pervades (x)

  5. A High Modernist Novel • Fragmented and difficult, yet ordered. • It is about philosophical introspection more than plot • Plot: potential trip to a lighthouse in the bay; touches off a number of conflicts within/among the characters. • Interiority: We read mostly thoughts, observations, and memories of various characters. • Emphasis on perspective – how a person’s background and self determine how they see and understand. • Some preference seems to be given to the perspective of Lily Briscoe. • Her status as female, single, and artist marks her as an “outsider”

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