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Lighthouse Reading Guide

This document provides an overview and discussion questions for Virginia Woolf's novel "To the Lighthouse". It summarizes that the narrative shifts between members of the Ramsay family and their guests over two occasions at their holiday home in Scotland. It focuses intensely on the internal thoughts of characters. At the heart is Mrs. Ramsay, an enigmatic matriarch that the others look to for fulfillment. Virginia Woolf was an influential Modernist writer and member of literary circles in the early 20th century. She suffered from mental illness and took her own life in 1941.

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237 views1 page

Lighthouse Reading Guide

This document provides an overview and discussion questions for Virginia Woolf's novel "To the Lighthouse". It summarizes that the narrative shifts between members of the Ramsay family and their guests over two occasions at their holiday home in Scotland. It focuses intensely on the internal thoughts of characters. At the heart is Mrs. Ramsay, an enigmatic matriarch that the others look to for fulfillment. Virginia Woolf was an influential Modernist writer and member of literary circles in the early 20th century. She suffered from mental illness and took her own life in 1941.

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chucky_fanto
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Orange Inheritance Reading Guide To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf Chosen by Helen Dunmore

More beauty and penetrative characterization than can here be described resides within this book Spectator One of the finest novels in the English language Helen Dunmore Thrillingly introspective Independent
About To The Lighthouse Using Virginia Woolfs distinctive stream-of-consciousness approach, the narrative of To the Lighthouse wavers between members of the Ramsay family and their guests on two separate occasions, at their remote holiday house in the Isle of Skye. Flitting lightly over major events, the book focuses intensely on the internal life of the characters. The immediate experience of each moment, and thew changing atmosphere between a group of human beings and within individual minds, are vividly explored. At the heart of the novel is the matriarch Mrs Ramsay, an enigmatic and saintly figure, to whom the others look for the achievement of the perfect, if temporary fulfilment that transcends the transient nature of day-to-day life. About the Author

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, first editor of The Dictionary of National Biography, and sister of the artist Vanessa Bell. In 1912 she was married to the writer Leonard Woolf, and moved in advanced, bohemian circles for most of her life. An influential member of the Modernist movement, her contemporaries included T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence and Roger Fry. Besides founding the Hogarth Press with her husband in1917, Woolf was a prolific writer, a thinker and an essayist, author of the progressively feminist A Room of Ones Own. Having suffered from a series of mental breakdowns throughout her life, on the 28th of March 1941 she killed herself.

Points for Discussion

Which characters did you most sympathise with?

What could the lighthouse represent in the novel?

What is the effect of Mrs Ramsays death, both on the other characters and the atmosphere of the book? How do you react to the revelations in the section, Time Passes? How is artistic ambition treated in various characters in the book? What is the nature of Mrs Ramsays female power? In what ways is her evening meal similar and different to the artistic endeavours of those around her? How much do working class characters come into the book? Is its middle-class focus a failing, or an accurate representation of the social world that the Ramsays live in? Do the shifts in time and narrative focus create a feeling of restlessness? How does this reflect the way Woolfs characters experience the world? Does each character tend to find an icon or symbol of some sort, like James obsession with the lighthouse, or Mr Ramsays lines of verse? How does this affect our understanding of the characters? How effectively do the different viewpoints co-exist within the novel?

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