To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse is intended to ‘criticize social system, and to show it at its most intense.’ Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse can readily be seen as a lambaste upon the then society. With regard such characters as Mrs. Ramsay, Woolf embodies servitude and self-sacrifice; womanhood is lost in this age. It appears that Mrs. Ramsay’s chief role in life is as matchmaker, and housekeeper for the men. Mrs. Ramsay is set in …

…self, and his sanctuary. Lily is saying metaphorically that he is well set to make his way past life’s troubles. However the cost of this is what Ramsay craves most: authentic alterity, sincerity, and sympathy. Lily Briscoe, and others reject him this, and this is what Woolf critiques as well; a society seemingly unable to sincerely convey emotion at all. What is left is a society vacant of feeling: a society bereft of nature.