ABSTRACT
To the Lighthouse (1927) takes the experiment a step further, ranging among the consciousnesses of many characters but focusing especially on Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, Woolf's portraits of her parents. The novel explores their modes of thinking: Mr. Ramsay's egocentric, intellectual, self-pitying and ambitious grapplings with philosophy; Mrs. Ramsay's maternal, emotional, manipulative, and affectionate attempts to achieve connections among the members of her extended family circle. We observe them from their own points of view as well as through the eyes of their children and friends, especially Lily Briscoe, an unmarried painter who tries simultaneously to come to terms with the Ramsays' relationship and with the frustrations of being a woman artist.
