The plot ofVirginia Woolf ’s fifth novel , To the Lighthouse , is thin : The Ramsey family and their guests are on holiday and resolve to put off a misstep to a nearby lighthouse until a former visit . The book has thrilled and frustrated reader since it was published in 1927 ; today , it ’s conceive a chef-d’oeuvre , and oftentimes seem on lists of the best novels of the 20th hundred . Here ’s are a few fact about Woolf ’s novel , as seen in Mental Floss ’s bookThe Curious Reader .
1.To the Lighthouseis loosely based on events from Virginia Woolf’s life.
To the Lighthouseis Woolf ’s most autobiographical novel , and , according to Shirley Panken inVirginia Woolf and the luxuria of Creation : A Psychoanalytic Exploration , she wrote it“to grapple with the impaction of unresolved feelings concern her parent . ” Like the Ramseys , Woolf ’s family had eight child . They also , like the Ramseys , expend summers vacation on the coast — in this case , St. Ives in Cornwall , where her don , Leslie Stephen , hire a home every yr until Woolf ’s female parent , Julia , go when the future source was 13 .
2. Woolf based Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey on her parents.
Asshe wrote in her diaryin 1925 , “ This is going to be fairly curt : to have father ’s character done thoroughgoing in it ; and mother ’s ; & St. Ives ; & childhood ; & all the usual things I seek to put in – aliveness , death & c. ”Mrs . Ramsey was so standardized to Julia that Woolf ’s sis , Vanessa Bell , told her after reading the novel , “ It is almost dreadful to have her so raise from the dead . ” Other characters have much in plebeian with Vanessa and their sidekick Adrian , who — like James in the novel — was disappointed at not being capable to take a stumble to the lighthouse .
3. The lighthouse had real-life inspiration, too.
Woolf ground her literary lighthouse on theGodrevy lighthouse , which also breathe in the covering of the novel . The cover wasdesigned by Bell , an artist , who did all of the covers for Woolf ’s novel ( with the exclusion of her first ) .
4. Woolf purposefully departed from classic novel construction.
cautiously structured in three section ( “ The Window ” ; “ Time Passes ” ; “ The Lighthouse”),To the Lighthousefollows the shift position of each character — a narrative proficiency Woolf had experimented with in her previous books , Jacob ’s RoomandMrs . Dalloway — as they grapple with idea such as metre , loss , gender roles , and the purpose of art . It was n’t even close to the grammatical construction of a classic novel , and it was n’t intend to be .
“ Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged , ” the author wrote in her essay “ Modern Fiction . ” “ Life is a luminous halo , a semi - lucid envelope surrounding us from the root of cognizance to the terminal . Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying , this obscure and uncircumscribed spirit , whatever aberration or complexity it may display , with as little mixture of the alien and outside as potential ? ”
5.To the Lighthousepuzzled critics.
“ My present opinion is that it is easy the best of my books , ” Woolf wrote ofTo the Lighthouse — but not everyone agreed .
Some reader were puzzled by it . “ Dear Mrs. Woolf , ” one wrote , “ do you care to create an atmosphere ? Is there a hidden import there ? … All your reference go aside … after having entered upon the picture unheralded . You assume that your readers are as thinking as you and as accustomed to figure into the abstruseness and resolve secret . ”
Critics were n’t necessarily kind , either . Novelist Arnold BennettwrotethatTo the Lighthousewas “ the just book of hers that I know ” before critiquing both the plot ( “ A group of people contrive to navigate in a small boat to a lighthouse . At the closing some of them reach the lighthouse in a small gravy holder . That is the outwardness of the plot ” ) and her writing ( “ the manakin of her condemnation is rather tryingly monotonic , and the space between her nominative and verbs is steady increasing”).The New York Evening Post , meanwhile , wrote in their critical review of the novel that “Her employment is poetry ; it must be judged as poetry , and all the impuissance of poesy are inherent in it . ”
In the close , the criticism did n’t matter : To the Lighthouseoutsold Woolf ’s previous novel .
6. The lighthouse didn’t symbolize anything.
Since its issue , lecturer have said the lighthouse typify things like desire , stability , and verity . Woolf , however , did n’t assign any symbolism to the lighthouse herself .
“ I meantnothingby The Lighthouse,”Woolf wrote to a friend in 1927 . “ One has to have a central line down the middle of the record book to draw the blueprint together . I saw that all sorts of feeling would accrue to this , but I refused to think them out , & entrust that people would make it the deposit for their own emotion — which they have done , call back it means one affair after another . I ca n’t manage Symbolism except in this vague , generalised way . Whether it ’s right or incorrect I do n’t know ; but now I ’m secernate what a matter means , it becomes mean to me . ”
7. Margaret Atwood wasn’t a fan—until she was.
In a piece forThe Guardian , Atwood writes that she first readTo the Lighthouseas part of a class . “ Virginia Woolf was off on a railroad siding as far as my 19 - year - previous self was concerned,”she retrieve . “ Why go to the lighthouse at all , and why make such a fuss about go or not fail ? What was the book about ? … In Woolfland , thing were so tenuous . They were so knotty . They were so inconclusive . They were so deeply abysmal . ”
Her reaction was much different when pick up the book again , 43 years later , after she was sr. , wiser , and had get deprivation . “ How was it that , this time , everything in the book fell so whole into place ? ” she inquire . “ How could I have miss it — above all , the patterns , the artistry — the first clock time through ? … Some book have to wait until you ’re quick for them . So much , in reading , is a topic of fortune . ”
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