Writing style and major themes

To the lighthouse is a modernist novel, which means that style plays an important role. The
novel is not created as a typical story. There is a variety of perspectives, which can be confusing
for first-time readers.
Virginia Woolf was an innovative thinker, while reading the novel the reader can identify her
ability to balance dream-like scenes with deeply tense plot lines; she intended to write a story not
from an objective narrators point of view, but from inside her characters mind, technique
known as stream of consciousness. The technique implies thoughts suggesting other thoughts,
just like a stream, the thoughts of the characters dont move in a straight line. The writer dances
between literary expression and personal desolation and regards life as a series of separate and
successive moments. The novel is about individual characters striving for a place in a broken,
repressive family structure.
As William James stated in The principle of Psychology (1880), consciousness does not
appear to itself chopped up in bits. The significance, the value of an image is in that halo that
surrounds it, that penumbra; it is nothing jointed, it flows. The novel contains long passages of
introspection describing through some datils what passes through a characters mind. The stream
of consciousness technique is usually regarded as an interior monologue, that traces a characters
fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings. It should be emphasized that the monologue is
represented as being completely candid, as if there were no reader. The writer does not intervene,
or sometimes intervenes but minimally, as a describer, commentator or guide, and does not tidy
any of the characters vagaries of the mental process into grammatical sentences or into a logical
or coherent order. There are also included many metaphors and symbols to fulfill her poetic
fiction theory.
In one sentence we could define this technique as an exact presentation of the process of
consciousness, the omniscient narrator disappears.
To the Lighthouse, is a novel set in two days, with a gap of ten years; it is the drama of the
Ramsay family in its reflections on a visit to the lighthouse.
One of the central themes of the novel is the creative process of the painter Lily Briscoe within
the family drama. The writer sees art as unity and permanence, art is capable to unify disparate
elements into a cohesive whole. Lilys aim is to create a single piece of art that would include
several people and objects, something unified.
Time is also one of the major themes of the novel.. Most of the adult characters concentrate on
the concept of time in one way or another.
Mrs. Ramsay cannot help but notice that the present moment becomes the past, and she seeks
objects in the external world to ground her in the moment. She wishes to stop time for her
children, allowing them to be young and without worries forever.
Mr. Ramsay is obsessed with the future and, more specifically, with the future of his career. He
desperately wants to achieve greatness as a philosopher, but is almost certain that he will not, and
he is preoccupied by envisioning the future and predicting whether or not he will be recognized
and remembered. In his opinion no one will read his books after he has gone, and he laments the
fact that young scholars are not interested in his work because they are, after all, the future
leaders in the field.
Lily Briscoe is also preoccupied with time, but her fixation changes shape over the course of the
novel. Originally, she shares similar concerns with Mr. Ramsay, wondering if her paintings will
make it through time and whether anyone will ever see them.

Another theme of the novel is constructed around the Lighthouse.
The Lighthouse plays a special role in the lives of the Ramsay family members, because it is like
a force which defines and joins them.
Few novels had the power to capture the ephemerality of life, as this novel did. Despite their
understanding of the transience of experience, each of the main characters searches for
permanence, durability, stability and lasting experiences.
Mrs. Ramsays search for permanence lies in the emotional realm of experience, but Mr.
Ramsays is based entirely in the intellectual sphere. Lily suffers from the fear that her paintings
wont make a lasting impression.
The novel also explores the everyday life of people in times of war and the unbalanced
relationship between men and women, primarily revealed through the views of Mister Ramsay.
To the Lighthouse is generally considered to be Woolfs greatest fictional achievement, a striking
mix of social concerns, philosophical questions and autobiographical elements.