To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse
FictionPsychological FictionFamily & Domestic Fiction
7h 51m listening·Also in Romanian
3.81from 226,678 ratingson Goodreads
The Ramsays and their guests spend a summer at their house on the Isle of Skye, where a small boy wants more than anything to sail out to the lighthouse tomorrow. Ten years pass in a few pages, and some of them come back to finish what was started. Woolf's novel of memory, marriage and time (1927).
Contains spoilers for the entire book
- Themes
- Atmosphere
About the book
Published in 1927, To the Lighthouse is set at the Ramsay family’s summer house on the Isle of Skye. In its first part, young James longs to sail to the lighthouse across the bay, while his father insists the weather will not allow it; around them move Mrs. Ramsay, their children and guests, among them the painter Lily Briscoe. Virginia Woolf divides the novel into three parts, with a short central section, “Time Passes”, in which ten years go by and the empty house decays. Drawing on her own childhood summers in Cornwall and on memories of her parents, she follows the shifting thoughts of her characters, and the book turns on memory, loss and the effort to capture a moment in art.
Characters
Mrs. Ramsay — Central figure
A hospitable mother whose efforts to comfort and unite others organize life at the summer house.
Mr. Ramsay — Philosopher
Her husband, an exacting thinker troubled by the limits of his achievement and his need for reassurance.
Lily Briscoe — Painter
A guest whose work on a painting becomes entangled with her observations of the Ramsays.
James Ramsay — Youngest son
A child whose wish to visit the lighthouse concentrates his feelings toward his parents.
Cam Ramsay — Daughter
A Ramsay daughter whose loyalties are tested by her father's demands.
Charles Tansley — Guest
A young academic whose insecurity often takes the form of condescension toward others.
William Bankes — Family friend
A widowed botanist whose friendship with Lily offers a quieter view of the household.
About the author
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English novelist and essayist, and one of the central figures of literary modernism. She wrote novels that follow consciousness rather than plot — a day in a city, a decade passing in an empty house — and found a form for the way attention actually moves. With her husband Leonard she ran the Hogarth Press, which published her own books along with T. S. Eliot and the first English translations of Freud. Her work includes Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves and the essay A Room of One's Own.