Virigina Woolf's To The Lighthouse Ideas & Essay Topics - Spring 2002 Don Skiles Essay Topics Draft due Wednesday 2/13, Final due Wednesday 2/20
TEXT: To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, Harcourt Brace
- "But while I try to write, I am making up To The Lighthouse - the sea is to be heard all through it." - Woolf, A Writer's Diary (Saturday, June 27th, 1925)
"In my opinion the best novel I have written." - Virginia Woolf, Diary
Reading/Discussion Schedule
Monday, January 28: Background of the novel/WW I generation/Timeline
Read: Part 1, The Window (pps 3-125).
Wednesday, January 30 : Initial impressions. Discussion of reading of Part 1.
For Friday , read Part 2, Time Passes ( through page145).
Friday, February 1: Discussion of Part 2. ( "Only connect." - E.M. Forster)Read Part 3 for Monday.
Monday, February 4: __Discussion of Part 3.
Wednesday, February 6: Conclusion of novel. General discussion.
Friday, February 8: Wrap-up/modernity/style in modern fiction. Themes/Organizing Principle.
Virginia Woolf kept a Diary (edited by her husband, Leonard, after her death) through most of her life, and it is the single best primary source for seeing how she conceived and wrote her works. The Diary also records her view of what was happening historically. Check the sections in the Index under Lighthouse; these are excellent in showing the composition process of this work, in her own words. See particularly pps. 77-80, 84, 87-88, 97-103, 105-08.
The following works provide rich perspectives on the realities of World War I:
Goodbye To All That, Robert Graves (Revised Second Edition, Anchor Books)
The First World War, John Keegan (Knopf, 1999)
1914-1918: Voices and Images of the Great War, Lyn Macdonald (Penguin, 1991)
1. This novel is resonant with powerful metaphors (among them the lighthouse itself) and extended (Homeric) similies. Choose three you feel are central to the novel, and demonstrate why in your essay.
2. Many have seen in To The Lighthouse a work demonstrating how art is connected to life, to living. In an essay, indicate how this might be so, and in what ways.
3. Is this a novel which contrasts social conformity and individualism? If so, what are the results?
4. Who is the heroine of To The Lighthouse? In your essay, provide at least three reasons for your choice, and quote from the work accordingly to support your assertions.
5. "The message of great art is "You must change your life"', the great German poet Rilke wrote. Does To the Lighthouse tell us we must change our lives? How?
6. In her Diary, Virginia Woolf recorded that she hoped to write in To The Lighthouse "a hard, muscular book". This may seem to be an odd characterization of this novel. Do you think she succeeded? How, and why?
7. There are many themes (the development of the artist, appearance vs. reality in the family, the inscrutability of the future, the nature of Nature) developed in the novel. Choose the themes most significant to you; in your essay, indicate how the theme is developed and what the novel "teaches" about the theme.
8. Is Mr. Ramsay a "failure"? Numerous characters provide views/opinions on this; in your essay, evaluate these, and provide a conclusion.
9. To The Lighthouse ends with Lily Briscoe thinking "it was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision." Why does the novel end this way? Is this ending successful?
10. Eudora Welty is quoted (on back of our edition): "Radiant as To The Lighthouse is in its beauty, there could never be a mistake about it; here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising. I think beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality." Can you elaborate on Ms. Welty's statement?