To the Lighthouse
By Virginia Woolf
2020
Summary
Set in the summer home of an English family, the novel unfolds through shifting perspectives of each character's stream of consciousness, recalling childhood emotions and highlights of adult relationships. Shifts occur even mid-sentence, and in some sense they resemble the rotating beam of the lighthouse. A landmark of high modernism and one of Woolf's best works. To the Lighthouse features the serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests who are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Virginia Woolf constructs a moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflicts within a marriage.Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. During the inter-war period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own, with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."




