An Ethical Interpretation Of To The Lighthouse By Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse is one of the representatives of stream of consciousness of Virginia Woolf.It is also the most touching and true-to-life book in all her works.As a representative figure of English female writers in the 20^th century,Virginia Woolf is known as one of modernists and feminist vanguards.The novel raises the reader's rethinking on family ethic,personal and social ethic by describing the story of the Ramsays family,who overwhelm numerous obstacles and eventually reach the lighthouse.The novel attracts many comments from home and abroad.Feminist criticism,psychological criticism,archetypal criticism,ecological criticism and other theories have been used to analyze this work's themes and writing techniques.Besides,scholars have also explored the painting and musical factors in this work and different conclusions have been made.Based on the creation background of To the lighthouse,therefore,this thesis aims to employ the method of ethical literary criticism to explore the work,excavate the ethical thoughts contained therein,further deepen the research on the novel and deeply understand Virginia Woolf.Ethical literary criticism,as an approach of literary criticism,requires critics to interpret literary works objectively from the perspective of certain historical and ethical environment.In the specific literary works,ethical literary criticism mainly illustrates the ethical relationships between man and himself,man and man,man and society.As to the relationship between man and himself,the thesis mainly focuses on the self-pursuit of two characters,Lily Briscoe and Mr.Ramsay,showing Woolf's pursuit of the unity and harmony between the external and self-spiritual world.As a typical representative of Victorian patriarchy,Mr.Ramsay tries to reach the philosophical top step by step with his rationality.As a female representative of the new era,Lily Briscoe uses her brush to resist the shackles of tradition.Ten years later,Mrs.Ramsay has died.Both of them finally get what they want in their own ways.As for the relationship between man and others,the thesis mainly studies the interpersonal relationships between two sexes and between two generations in the novel.The relationships among the characters in the novel are complex.The relationships between two sexes includes the relationship between the Ramsays,Mrs.Ramsay and Mr.Tansley,Lily Briscoe and Mr.Ramsay,etc.The inquiry of relationship between two generations is directed at the Ramsays and parent-child relationship.By revealing the ethical relations among the specific characters,the author reveals Woolf's thoughts of ethical care and harmonious ethical views to the readers.In the aspect of man-society relationship,the thesis elaborates and analyzes female's ethical identities existing in society at that time.As a female writer,Woolf shows her own ethical appeals to society and expresses her implicit consciousness of social ethic,humanistic care,and her resorting to the harmonious and peaceful ethical environment.Woolf creates her own unique form of creation in her own way to resist the chaotic order of society.As a great artist,Virginia Woolf explores the unity and harmony in To the Lighthouse.What she wants to convey to mankind is to create meaning in nothingness and to build harmony in chaos.This kind of harmony manifests the relationships between man and man,man and society,as well as between man and himself.Woolf seeks ways to exceed the opposition and conflict to achieve the harmony and wholeness,which has an important practical significance for the community to coexist harmoniously today.