Viginia Woolf

Throughout her life she suffered mental breakdowns and ended up committing suicide on March 18, 1941.

“To The Lighthouse” was a book about the Ramsay Family and a brief history on their fictional life which took place in Europe. The story starts at their vacation house on the Isle of Skye and the events that spanned there in a time period of approximately ten years. The book focuses mainly on Mrs. Ramsay, her son James and their friend Lilly Briscoe, who is also staying with them. James wants to sail to a lighthouse that is close to their island. His father keeps telling James that they will go to it “tomorrow” but they never do. A whole series of events then springs up around this in which Mrs. Ramsay is shown as a strong, beautiful woman who represents the “Good” in the story and her husband as the “Bad.” All the while Lilly Brisco is off to the side dealing with her own problems of

Normally I wouldn’t have read this book on my own time. It’s not what I am interested in and its ideals have already been met for the most part by our society and Woolfs ideals are already shared by me anyway. I admit that I found this book difficult to read because of the grammar. It was outdated so I couldn’t understand some of her words or the way she used some of her sentences. It slowed down the flow of reading, which is something that for me at least makes a book very enjoyable. I also was confused at the end of the book because I couldn’t figure out what the purpose of the book was. To me, it seemed like a long story about some people who lived on an island and wanted to go to a lighthouse. All the people were emotionally undeveloped, especially the men. It was really hard for me find any meaning whatsoever. I’m sure there was plenty of symbolism in there somewhere, but I still had trouble finding it. I think I probably would have picked up on some of it if I was completely enthralled in the book, but I wasn’t.

Virginia Woolf seemed objective, but one couldn’t tell clearly what about because there was so much being addressed in only one short novel and she didn’t list her sources so she left you wondering where all her ideas came from. If Woolf has a thesis statement I think it is that life is short and unfair and that daily life can be an extraordinary event if we look at it through everyone’s point of view all at once.

So, the summer passes and they end up never going to the lighthouse. Then a span of ten years occurs and all the events during that period are told in brief. Basically people get married, a lot of people die or become unhappy with their life and no one visits the island of Skye within that ten year timeline.

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Some topics in this essay:
Virginia Woolf, Lilly Brisco, Lilly Briscoe, Press Throughout, Isle Skye, Ramsay Family, Ramsay James, virginia woolf, Leonard Woolf, book enjoyable, woolf wrote, people lived, found book, virginia woolf wrote, lilly brisco, book ramsay,