"To the Lighthouse"

Book Review # 109796

Literature > English

"To the Lighthouse"

A discussion on art and reality in Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse".

4,253 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2006 Canada

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses that from the outset of Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" the reader is presented with the theme of conflict. The initial conflict that we are exposed to is the proposed expedition to the Lighthouse.The paper notes that we soon become aware that there is more that needs to be reconciled than a father and his son; an equally important conflict is the relationship between art and reality which, like the discord between father and child, becomes synthesized by the end of the novel. The paper continues that this theme of conflict and the wish for unity are perpetually present in the novel, whether it is in Mrs. Ramsay's efforts to unify her dinner guests , or in Lily trying to achieve balance in her painting. The paper shows that it is evident that the characters are eager to achieve unity in their tumultuous, changing world as they move from the values of Victorianism to that of post war modernism, just as Woolf herself felt that she needed to find a new art form to give shape to the chaos of the modern world.

From the Paper:

"Similarly, later on in "the Lighthouse", Lily reflects on the marriage of the organic and the material while she contemplates the problem of space on her canvas. She decides that "beautiful and bright it should be on the surface, feathery and evanescent, one colour melting into another like the colours on a butterfly's wing; but beneath the fabric must be clamped together with bolts of iron"(186). These observations of Lily's encapsulate the essential nature of a unified reality as seen in the novel: the marriage of the tangible with the intangible, the masculine with the feminine, past with present, rational with emotional. "

Sample of Sources Used:

Cohn, Ruby. "Art in To the Lighthouse." Modern Fiction Studies 8 (1962): 127-136.
Gay, Jane de. "Behind the Purple Triangle: Art and Iconography in To the Lighthouse."Woolf Studies Annual 5 (1999): 1-23.
Kelley, Alice van Buren. To the Lighthouse: the marriage of life and art. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987.
May, Keith M. "The Symbol of 'Painting' in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse." Review of English Literature 8 (1967): 91-98.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Toronto: Penguin Books, 2000.