Virginia Woolf's Perspective Of Women Seen In To The Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf was the most important representative writer of stream of consciousness in the 20th century's literature. Constantly exploring the art of modernist novel, she was not only an advocator of modernist novels, but also a precursor of feminine literature. At the same time, she didn't forget to pay attention to the female spirits and to help women realize their own value. In addition, she also expressed her striking opinion about the relationship between women and literature. Her unique perspective of women is shown well in her works A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. Her perspective of women is also displayed in her novels, which is highly appreciated by the feminists afterward, and also gets high assessment in the history of English literature.To the Lighthouse is one of the masterpieces of Virginia Woolf. Many critics have adopted different methods to unscramble this novel in multiple perspectives. This paper analyzes the novel in order to interpret Woolf's unique perspective of women. The first part gives a general overview about Virginia Woolf and other scholars' studies on the novel To the Lighthouse with the conclusion that these studies have explored novels from different perspectives, but they have left some room to study further. The second part is about Woolf's perspective of women got from the analysis of characters in To the Lighthouse. Through the analysis of the three main characters of the novel, namely Mr. Ramsay, Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe, we can see that men and women are oppositein many aspects in society, which leads to a misunderstanding among them. And the most important thing is that it also causes people to believe that women can not achieve anything in society, but stay at home as "the Angle of the House". So, the opposition between men and women has existed for thousands of years. In order to solve the problem, Woolf raised her famous "androgynous theory" to create a harmonious world for the balance of men and women. The third part is about the writing techniques of the novel, from which Woolf's perspective of women also can be seen clearly. In order to distinguish from the traditional writing skills used by male writers, Woolf adopts some techniques which can not only properly show the content of the novel, but also display some female features, such as the changes of narrative perspective, the applying of metaphor and words of colors. In short, this novel clearly expresses her insight about women: women are not inferior to men; women can even surpass men in many aspects. So, women should recognize their vaiue and achieve their goal. However, it doesn't mean to discard the characteristics of men completely. The best way is to combine male features with female features appropriately and become a perfect individual. Above all, the novel To the Lighthouse is a good illustration of Woolf's perspective of women reflected from the analysis of the characters and the writing skills in the novel.