Virginia Woolf’s Humanistic Concerns In To The Lighthouse

Hailed as pioneer of modernism, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) always upholds in her literary creation profound humanistic concerns. In the wake of ceaseless calamities in the20th century, the poets and the writers in that time harboured on the whole an essential disappointment in Mankind itself. As an outstanding author of stream-of-consciousness, though likewise deeply concerned with pursuing an ultimate faith to prop up the breakdown of human’s life, she still focused her attention on Mankind itself. With her profound humanistic concerns and taking Mankind’s existence as the view point, she excavated in the depth of Mankind’s spirit world for love, romance, affection, understanding, compassion, and also men’s capabilities of thinking on and comprehending its meaning and its existence as a whole. She opened up shining and glowing value spaces of humanity in the world’s chaos and disorder, and with her fine and subtle sense as a literary woman, her warm hope and expectation on Mankind’s existence, she eagerly and earnestly appealed for self-salvation and redemption of Mankind.To the Lighthouse has gained wide recognition and is regarded by many as the finest achievement of hers. Literary critics have contributed a lot of assessments to it from a variety of critical approaches. This thesis delves into the text and deals with mainly three aspects to investigate and analyze Woolf s profound humanistic concerns embodied in this work. Firstly, the thesis takes the three major typical characters-the Ramsay couple and Lily Briscoe, the female artist for example, and tries to probe into Woolf s thinking on the nature of self, and the true meaning and value of life and existence. Then it deals with the different relationships between the two sexes, and the two generations reflected in To the Lighthouse and traces the author’s profound thinking on the various relationships the individuals are entangled in with others as well as with society. The last was the reading of the bright and shining moments at the dinner party which enlighten and illuminate like the Lighthouse on the vast sea in people’s life, and get people through conflicts and opposition in their pursuit for individuality and personal values to the realm of harmony, insight and love. By probing into Woolf’s humanistic concerns, we can see that her thoughts emphasize a unity of diversity of Mankind’s existence. She seeks to go beyond-the old binary oppositions and existing conflicts into conciliation and harmony in the human world. Even in the present age, her thoughts are still a key to pursuing a perfect living environment. When people are troubled by cultural, ethnic or religious conflicts nowadays, we can still turn to Woolf’s idea for help, which stresses coexistence and harmony rather than opposition and dominance.