(855) 4-ESSAYS

Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

Viginia Woolf


            Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was a female writer who pioneered the field of modernism with novels and essays that focused on the female point of view. She was active in social criticism and her opinions were quite well known throughout the western world. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf with whom she founded Hogarth Press.
             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 not being married at age thirty-four and how she fits into the big picture. .
             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. .
             Then, in the last section of the book, Mr. Ramsay and James and some family and friends come back to the island (without Mrs. Ramsay because she had died several years earlier) and make the trip to the lighthouse together. Lilly Brisco is once again off to the side telling the reader more of her emotions and philosophies and gives a unique, female perspective on all the events that happened at the beginning of the book up till now, the end of the book.


Essays Related to Viginia Woolf


Got a writing question? Ask our professional writer!
Submit My Question